Affirming Limits

Library Journal

Despite the subtitle, the central thrust of these separately published essays is the interrelationship of sorrow and happiness. Pack (director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference) argues that the ``vision of possible happiness, happiness that comes from the acceptance of limits, enables the artist to place evil and suffering in their proper perspective.'' He reanalyzes familiar classic works of poetry, Macbeth , Keats's letters, Wordsworth's The Prelude , and key texts of Pope, Hardy, Hopkins, Yeats, Frost, W.C. Williams, and Stevens. (Saul Bellow and Howard Nemerov are the only contemporary writers mentioned.) Pack's essays illustrate that ``the power to create grace from disorder or personal sorrow derives from the cultivation of a discipline, the mastery of a craft.'' Frank Allen, Associate Dean, Continuing Education, Allentown Coll., Center Valley, Pa.