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1. Poets, literary critics, scholars comment on Eli Siegel and the Aesthetic Realism understanding of their fields
From the New York Times Book Review, Popular Photography, Library Journal, Smithsonian magazine, the Harlem Times, the Saturday Review, J.E.B. Breslin's Something to Say, and more :
 In the New York Times Book Review, Kenneth Rexroth reviewed Hail, American Development, poems by Eli Siegel —
"I think it's about time Eli Siegel was moved up into the ranks of our acknowledged Leading Poets..."
"His translations of Baudelaire and his commentaries on them rank him with the
most understanding of the Baudelaire critics in any language."
William Carlos Williams wrote to Martha Baird concerning "Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana" and other poems by Eli Siegel [Reprinted in Something to Say, ed. J.E.B. Breslin (New Directions)]—
I can't tell you how important Siegel's work is in the light of my present understanding of the modern poem. He belongs in the very first rank of our living artists....I congratulate you on the intelligent direction of your work and the heart behind it....
Shelby Foote wrote to Margot Carpenter about Eli Siegel's lecture The Orderly Extreme—which discusses Foote's own story "Ride Out" [Note: Shelby Foote, known for his three volume history The Civil War: A Narrative, is also known for his part in PBS documentary series The Civil War ]—
I thank you for sending me the reenactment tapes of Eli Siegel's lectures....As for the one on my story "Ride Out," I had much the same reaction Wm Carlos Williams did in regard to his own work, as explicated by Mr. Siegel—he saw it with "new eyes," eyes that took the trouble and had the insight to perceive the words from inside, so to speak. Moreover, I found much the same quality in the companion tapes, and I am grateful that you took the trouble to send them to me. [Memphis, 23 April 2002]
Library Journal review of Aesthetic Realism: We Have Been There—
Heraclitus, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, and even Martin Buber have posited contraries and polarities in their philosophies. Eli Siegel, however, seems to be the first to demonstrate that "all beauty is the making one of the permanent opposites in reality."...
Huntington Cairns, Secretary of the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC (www.nga.gov) stated—
I believe that Eli Siegel was a genius. He did for aesthetics what Spinoza did for ethics.
Hugh Kenner wrote in Poetry magazine that Eli Siegel's book James and the Children, a Consideration of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw—"the story critics often traverse on their hands and knees"—is
a reading so careful it occupies about as many pages as the story itself, and so candid it reduces most previous discussion to wilful evasiveness....The oddness of a literary critic constantly asking us to think about real children can suggest how odd is the criticism we're accustomed to.
Robert B. Heilman, Chair of the English Department of the University of Washington, wrote this about Mr. Siegel’s consideration of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw:
It is an immense relief to find someone as good as Siegel is, refusing the fashionable explanation of the story, and looking at what it actually says. I like the way in which he constantly points out how the governess goofs or the tone goes awry, something which in my own treatment I failed to do.
[Note: Robert Heilman wrote The Turn of the Screw as Poem and was a founder of the New Criticism.]
Noah Gordon, publisher of the journal Psychiatric Opinion, wrote:
I believe it will be of particular interest to child psychiatrists. It enabled me to reread The Turn of the Screw with new shocks of recognition….Siegel is a critic who assesses style with a poet’s ear and characterization with a philosopher’s eye.
[Note: Noah Gordon also was publisher of the Journal of Human Stress and was the science editor of the Boston Herald as well as a noted novelist (http://www.noahgordonbooks.com/noahstory.htm).]
Ralph Hattersley in Popular Photography. Review ofAesthetic Realism: We Have Been There—Six Artists on the Siegel Theory of Opposites, by David Bernstein and others—
....The book is well written and well conceived. I think it deals with fundamental truths concerning the nature of man, art and reality....
[Note:
Ralph Hattersley was editor of the photography journal Infinity.]
In Smithsonian magazine's review of Self and World: An Explanation of Aesthetic Realism, reviewer Linda Ann Kunz writes—
Whether child or adult is spoken of, this book sees a person's concerns with dignity and compassion. Take the matter of guilt, for example....
Studs Terkel, writer and historian wrote:
I like Eli Siegel's ideas!
Harlem Times review by Alice Bernstein of Children's Guide to Parents and Other Matters: Little Essays for Children and Others by Eli Siegel with introduction by Ellen Reiss, illustrated by Dorothy Koppelman—
They are lively, surprising, and convey so much of the joy, turbulence, and thoughtfulness in a child’s life...
In The Saturday Review Selden Rodman reviewed Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana: Poems by Eli Siegel—
He comes up with poems like "Dear Birds, Tell This to Mothers," "She's Crazy and It Means Something," and "The World of the Unwashed Dish" which say more (and more movingly) about here and now than any contemporary poems I have read....
Poetry by Eli Siegel has been published in the following periodicals: Accent, Antioch Review, Blues, Commentary, Definition, Free Verse, Harper's Bazaar, Hopkins Review, Husk,Hound & Horn, Kauri, Today's Japan, Literary Review of the New York Evening Post, The Literary Review,Minaret,Modern Quarterly,The Nation, The New Act, The New Republic, New Mexico Quarterly,The New York Quarterly, North American Review, The Pegasus, Perspective, Poetry, Poetry Folio, Poetry Public, Prairie Schooner, Poor Old Tired Horse,Prism International, Quarto, The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known; Southwest Review, The Times (London) Literary Supplement; in the International Graphic Arts Society catalog; and as Terrain Gallery broadsides as well as in the following books: Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana: Poems; Hail, American Development.
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Isn't being Anonymous
wonderful?
I can say anything ugly and
dishonest I choose...
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