Description

Philip Dacey

Heavenly Muse: Essays on Poetry

ISBN: 978-1-944884-76-5 (pbk.)

Literary Criticism

(April, 2020)

Ebook available in Epub and  MOBI formats.

“Though he is no longer with us in the flesh, Phil Dacey lives on in these inspiring and deeply felt writings of “the poet accused of being prolific.” How sharp his observations on his own writing and the work of others, how deeply felt his conviction that poetry is one of our most sustaining human enterprises. To read this book is a rare treat: these writings stand side-by-side his poems as an immortal gift of the spirit.”
—Peter Cooley, Professor Emeritus of English, Emeritus Director of Creative Writing, Tulane University, Louisiana Poet Laureate 2015-2017

“To read Philip Dacey’s prose is not only to witness a fine mind informed by a lifetime of serious reading, but a man whose judgments about poets and their poems, as well as examinations of self, constitute a complicated portrait of what it means to be scrupulous and generous at the same time. His many poetry books, especially the long dramatic ones on Whitman, Hopkins, and Thomas Aikens, are underrated treasures. I knew Phil first as a colleague, and despite his monkish inclinations, later as a lifelong friend. He had a fierce, inimitable integrity, peculiarly his, as this book does.”
—Stephen Dunn, author of Pagan Virtues: Poems

“No poet had more penetrating things to say about other poets in his own poetry than Philip Dacey did in his amazingly full poetic life. That same penetrating insight is everywhere apparent in his prose as well–in his interviews and essays over the years, which, taken together, form a kind of master seminar on what poetry means and why we can’t live without it.”
—Ed Folsom, Editor, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review; Co-Director, Walt Whitman Archive, Editor, Whitman Series, University of Iowa Press

“I thank my lucky galaxies that I had the good fortune to learn how to read and write poetry from Phil Dacey, first as his student, then as his colleague, coeditor, and friend, and I’m sure that everyone who reads the warm, witty, and wise essays and interviews collected in this book will thank theirs too. No one serious about reading or writing poetry should miss this book.”
—David Jauss, author of Improvising Rivers; coeditor of Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms