The Complete Essays of J. V. Cunningham

A "renegade Irish Catholic from the plains of Montana, upper lower class, a onetime scholar in Latin and in the English Renaissance," J. V. Cunningham is known for formal verse that is clear and concise. A master of the epigram, Cunningham also wrote longer poems in what is often called the Plain Style. Though Cunningham's poetic output was small, he also left us a standout, wide-ranging body of essays. As James Matthew Wilson notes in his introduction, "[Cunningham's] work in verse and prose were two ways of speaking within a single way of life; they were complementary means toward a single end." In these essays, Cunningham makes intelligible the "Tradition and Poetic Structure" of our literary inheritance, taking us from the ancient poet "Statius on Sleep" to the "Woe or Wonder" of Shakespeare's pathos, "Sorting Out," along the way, the legend of Emily Dickinson. In "Logic and Lyric," he presents his soberly learned, but renegade argument against the "incautious romantic's" absolute separation of poetry and philosophy, and with winsome wit he prompts us to consider: "May a lyric be solely or predominantly the exposition of a syllogism?