1/ From “Late and Soon,” Dan Chiasson’s review of Robert Hass and Mark Strand in this week’s New Yorker:

The zero-​sum fluc­tu­a­tions of Hass’s mate­r­ial, some intel­lect fol­lowed by some feel­ing, cool­ness here, warmth there, at times become a formula—more a recipe for soup than soup—but at other times yield work that, exquis­itely recep­tive to actual hap­pi­ness, has opened up new ter­ri­tory for the per­sonal poem.

2/ From “The Cat Went out for Good,” Charles Simic’s much-​lamented review of Robert Creeley’s Col­lected Poems:

The aes­thetic theory—and there is always a theory behind such reduc­tive views—may sound per­sua­sive, but it was fool­ish on Creeley’s part to believe that it could ever val­i­date a poem. If poet­ics were like cook­ing and one could write down a recipe for all of one’s future poems, that would be true. How­ever, great cooks rarely bother to con­sult cookbooks.

2.5/ A bonus View, from Chi­as­son again:

Being a poet doesn’t help you cook a meal or bathe your three-year-old daughter…