Tony Hoagland: Disproportion: Excess in Poetry (January 1993)

Tony Hoagland identifies and champions poetry which belongs neither to the camp of the well-made and conservative nor to the zany and subversive. He describes how this third type, often excessive and highly dramatic, may not know exactly “what it is,” but can praise and reflect the objective world while at the same time asserting the supremacy of the imagination. Looking at poems by Tess Gallagher, Horace, Susan Mitchell, Wallace Stevens and W.C. Williams, Hoagland argues that much can be gained from studying a poem which absolves its writer from the need “to perfect.”