While his novels documented the Beat Generation and his essays (just published in three volumes by the University of Arkansas Press) went a long way toward explaining it, Holmes's poetry is hardly what you would expect from a central figure of that era. He is more the artisan, working within tradition, and while he eventually frees his line from meter and rhyme, this freedom is late in coming and seemingly reluctant. In a poem for Robert Lowell, Holmes declares, "This is an age of elegy," and indeed his elegies are among his best poems. Other poems focus on those who stand small but strong-willed in the face of such Goliaths as age, frailty, and the state. Moving from the rich Ozark Mountains to his quiet home in New England, Holmes affirms lives and celebrates living. -- Library Journal.
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