Living Name

“For two decades now, I have considered Mark Halliday to be not merely a first-rate poet, but also perhaps the best writer about contemporary poetry that we have in this country. His prose is graceful, elegant, and inviting. His opinions, whether one agrees or not, are invariably invigorating and intelligent. He writes with the attention of someone who has made a lifetime’s study not just of the craft of poetry but of its sources, purposes, and value to us.” ~Kevin Prufer, author of The Fears

“Most of the pieces in Living Name are appreciations—not, commendably, unreserved ones—of some of Halliday’s favorite poets. Close reading abounds: penetrating, sensitive, often revelatory. Every essay in the book is graced with Halliday’s signature virtues: jargon-free eloquence, extreme sanity, humor, intelligence, self-awareness (often manifested in a willingness to qualify his own judgments), a generous sympathy for poetics (most notably Dean Young’s) that differ from his own, all underpinned by a conception and exaltation of poetry as an art in service to humanity.” ~Daniel Brown, author of Subjects in Poetry

“For Halliday, poems are frequently engaged in preserving what is past or passing; so too, his criticism recalls these poets to us with renewed force and a deepened appreciation. In the end, it is Halliday’s ‘spirit of caring attentiveness’ (a quality he finds in Frank O’Hara) that restores these poets to our eyes and ears in all their lively, teeming, and enduring particulars. Acute, humane, and free of cant, this is first-rate criticism.” ~David Yezzi, author of Late Romance: Anthony Hecht—A Poet’s Life