Worlds Woven Together

What would an actually contemporary literary criticism sound like? This magisterial yet companionable book heralds the arrival of a major critical voice and prose stylist, a virtuoso modeling for us ‘styles of attention.’ Vidyan Ravinthiran brings to poetries in English his erudition, formal acuities, a passionately deprovincializing sensibility, political and ethical attunement, and stylistic panache. From Mir Taqi Mir to Thomas Hardy to Elizabeth Bishop to Srinivas Rayaprol, Ravinthiran surveys the territory and remakes it (to use imperial metaphors he would abjure). Impassioned, elegant, sometimes barbed, this is restless, startlingly illuminating criticism. In Ravinthiran, a poet as well as critic, the world-making and world-registering powers of poetry find a brilliant, vivifying advocate. -- Maureen N. McLane, author of My Poets
Ravinthiran is a rare critic: one whose deep-diving, finely wrought readings across multiple poetic traditions are dexterous as well as authoritative. He brings a poet’s enthusiasm for craft and language to a reevaluation of critical culture, speaking with great clarity and personality in a voice so capacious that we are compelled to listen, to learn. -- Sandeep Parmar, author of Reading Mina Loy's Autobiographies: Myth of the Modern Woman
Vidyan Ravinthiran writes with readerly passion and intellectual commitment about poetry he loves, at once deeply expert and finely attuned to the pleasures of literary language. The range of authors he celebrates is as impressive as the critical imagination with which he celebrates them. His is a distinctive and memorable voice which speaks eloquently to readers both within and without the academy. -- Seamus Perry, editor of Essays in Criticism
Vidyan Ravinthiran’s beautifully written, richly insightful collection is extraordinary in its geographic and cultural breadth, its incisive attention to form, its fusion of the strengths of journalistic and scholarly writing, and its chameleonic openness to, and close tracking of, the twists and turns of poetry. An eye-opening delight for poets and poetry readers. -- Jahan Ramazani, author of Poetry in a Global Age
Incisive, reflective, illuminating. -- Jeremy Noel-Tod * Times Literary Supplement's Books of the Year *
Ravinthiran is a rare critical mind whose sovereignty lies in an inextinguishable curiosity and drive to read more deeply. His critical writing is also inexorably beautiful. -- Sandeep Parmar * The White Review, Books of the Year *
Probing and provoking, far-ranging but astringent, Ravinthiran would appear a natural successor to Michael Hofmann as a doyen of the long-form essay […] a steely and eye-opening book. -- David Wheatley * The Review of English Studies *
Provides astute readings in meticulously crafted prose that evinces a refined poetic sensibility...and it does so not by providing clear answers but by inviting and invigorating new conversations. * Modern Language Quarterly *