At Last The Real Distinguished Thing

In his essay on Old Age Emerson wrote that there is a proportion between the designs of a man and the length of his life: there is a calendar of his years so of his performance. In advancing this optimistic theory Emerson suggests that there is a deep and fundamental relationship between creation and the span of a person's life and that fostering creativity over the arc of a long life is essential to cultural as well as to personal health. It is Kathleen Woodward's purpose not so much to test Emerson's theory as to acknowledge our present need for a model of wisdom in old age. She studies the late poems of four twentieth-century American poets in each case focusing on a major meditative poem within the context of earlier work: T. S. Eliot's <i>Four Quartets</i> of 1943; Ezra Pound's <i>Pisan Cantos</i> of 1948; Wallace Stevens's To an Old Philosopher in Rome from <i>The Rock</i> in 1954; and Book V of William Carlos Williams's <i>Paterson</i> of 1958. Some of the important questions she addresses include Do aging and old age bring poetic fulfillment? With what insights into the experience of aging do these writers provide us? What are the satisfactions of old age? How through the work of these poets do we come to understand the nature of wisdom?<b>Kathleen Woodward</b> is assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.