title: Twenty First Century Blues (Crab Orchard Series in Poetry)
author:  Richard Cecil 
description: <DIV><DIV><P><I>Twenty First Century Blues</I> speaks to all of us whose lives fall short of the triumphs we had planned.&#160;Yet the jaundice in Richard Cecils eye is offset by clear vision.&#160;This book tells bitter truths, redeemed by memory, by wit, by craft, by accurate and resonant details.&#160;These poems say I came, I saw, I did not conquer, exactly, but I understood, I laughed, I celebrated by writing this down. </P><P><B>Charles Harper Webb</B><I></I></P></DIV></DIV><br /><br /><DIV><DIV>Richard Cecils most distinguished poems range persistently along, accumulating data until patterns and conclusions that have been latent become apparent. Again and again a faith in the lurking significance of things pays off, and the early particulars add up to revelation.<B>William Stafford</B></DIV></DIV><br /><br /><DIV><DIV><P>Cecils poems are powerful, moving, and original. There is clarity, honesty, and delightful quirkiness. He captureshe recapturesthe human situation. He is just as shocking, radical, and aggravating, in his way, as language poets, for instance, are in theirs. He makes it almost possiblelet me say possiblefor a well-educated generalist to read poetry again.<B>Gerald Stern</B><I></I></P><P></P><P>Cecil suggests metaphorically his pursuit of all things deemed precious and abandoned or lost. It is a serious theme, and a difficult one to carry off, but Cecil does it again and again, looking squarely into the depths of experience with a great dry wit, and without resorting to nostalgia. . . . Perhaps no poet since Larkin has treated the romance of hope to such a helping of irony and come off in the barely possible human affirmative.<B>Rodney Jones</B></P><P></P><P>The technical skill and humor on display . . . make it likely that Cecils poems will be read long after he joins that ever-longer roll call of poets who have passed on. </P><P><B>Al Maginnes,</B><I>Quarterly West&#160;</I></P><P></P></DIV></DIV>
zlib_text: The	Project	Gutenberg	EBook	of	Crabbe,	(George),	by	Alfred	Ainger
  This	eBook	is	for	the	use	of	anyone	anywhere	at	no	cost	and	with
  almost	no	restrictions	whatsoever.		You	may	copy	it,	give	it	away	or
  re-use	it	under	the	terms	of	the	Project	Gutenberg	License	included
  with	this	eBook	or	online	at	www.gutenberg.net
  Title:	Crabbe,	(George)
  							English	Men	of	Letters	Series
  Author:	Alfred	Ainger
  Release	Date:	February	15,	2004	[EBook	#11088]
  Language:	English
  ***	START	OF	THIS	PROJECT	GUTENBERG	EBOOK	CRABBE,	(GEORGE)	***
  Produced	by	Garrett	Alley	and	PG	Distributed	Proofreaders
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
  ENGLISH	MEN	OF	LETTERS
  
  CRABBE
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
  ENGLISH	MEN	OF	LETTERS
  
  CRABBE
  BY	ALFRED	AINGER
  NINETEEN	HUNDRED	AND	THREE
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
  PREFATORY	NOTE
  The	chief,	and	almost	sole,	source	of	information	concerning	Crabbe	is	the
  Memoir	 by	 his	 son	 prefixed	 to	 the	 collected	 edition	 of	 his	 poems	 in	 1834.
  Comparatively	 few	 letters	 of	 Crabbe's	 have	 been	 preserved,	 but	 a	 small	 and
  interesting	