Peter Szatmary
At its best Reluctantly isolates idiosyncratic clarity. At its worst it betrays arbitrary self-indulgence. The slender volume is most suitable as an addendum for fans of a poet who has won a National Book Award.
Biblio Magazine
Publishers Weekly
- Publisher's Weekly
The myth of the poet as a tortured, suicidal soul unable to cope with the complexities of modern life is deeply ingrained in popular consciousness. Based on the evidence here, prize-winning poet Carruth might well be considered a model case; in any event it seems a wonder he did not succumb to the fate of fellow American poets such as Berryman and Lowell. But, in the fragments of memoir that comprise this book, Carruth, now in his late 70s, demonstrates that there is more to being a poet than merely wearing one's neuroses on one's sleeve. He recounts the peculiarities of growing up in a home pervaded by a 'secular and neurotic puritanism' that, he suggests, formed the basis of his later difficulties. With matter-of-fact forthrightness, Carruth assesses the significance of his hospitalization for chronic depression, debilitating phobias, nearly fatal suicide attempt as well as his love affairs and poverty. He argues that 'a writer's writing occurs in the midst of, and by means of, all the materials of life, not just a selected few,' and although he has taught creative writing at Syracuse University, he believes that 'life in the academy is too easy.' He has been sustained by certain much-loved things: music, 'abandoned places,' and, of course, a lifelong 'fascination with words, grammar, the mechanics of language' with an emphasis on precise writing that is evident throughout. Eccentric, opinionated and cantankerous, Carruth shows that although life is messy and unpredictable, it is possible to survive, to write well and to salvage from the wreckage a redemptive dignity.
Library Journal
Though poet Hayden Carruth writes about his nicotine addiction, his chronic psychiatric disorders, a suicide attempt, and a daughter's death from cancer, this book is a far cry from the current crop of tell-all memoirs. Instead, these three essays read like poems: they start abruptly and ramble purposefully over a variety of topics before concluding in surprising and appropriate ways. As a result, the tragedies assume their proper proportion in life. Carruth describes himself as an 'old man in his cave of darkness, regretting his arthritis and impotence and failing imagination,' though the tone even of that sentence seems deliberately wry. If Carruth's woes loom large, his joys grow even larger, and his treatment of both proves to be a triumph the reader is privileged to share.--David Kirby, Florida State University, Tallahassee
Kirkus Reviews
Frank, curmudgeonly wisdom. Carruth (Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey) is nothing if not a contradiction: a professor who scorns that word and derides academia as antagonistic to art-making; a poet of appealing modesty, erudition, and formal grace whose psychic life, as described here, has veered into every sort of excess; an outsider to the poetry establishment who yet has received many of its most coveted awards, edited its marquee publications, etc. It is thus no surprise that, from the title on, his succinct and wonderful book should declare frequently that it didn't want or even need to be written. (Consider it ironic, then, that much of this collection should have appeared in print before, in the fine Suicides and Jazzers). The centerpiece here is an essay simply entitled 'Suicide,' as moving and original as it is artless, that recounts in occasionally morbid detail the poet's massive drug overdose in 1988: 'In my suicide I experienced a renewal of luck.'
