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Richard Poirier (born Gloucester, Massachusetts, September 9, 1925, died New York City, August 15, 2009) was an American literary critic. He co-founded the Library of America, and served as chairman of its board. He was the Marius Bewley Professor of American and English Literature at Rutgers University. He was also the editor of Raritan, a literary quarterly, and an editor of Partisan Review.
In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.
Mr. Poirier (pronounced to rhyme with “warrior”) was an old-fashioned man of letters — a writer, an editor, a publisher, a teacher — with a wide range of knowledge and interests. He was a busy reviewer for publications from The New York Review of Books to The London Review of Books, and his reviews could sting.
His own works were ambitious and forward-looking and idiosyncratic, addressing the teaching profession, the notion of style in American literature and the relationship between high and low culture. He wrote about Walt Whitman and Wallace Stevens, but also George Balanchine and Bette Midler. He wrote admiringly of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Frost, Norman Mailer and the Beatles, finding in all of them a motivating sense of performance that made their otherwise disparate work comparably brilliant.
Mr. Poirier, who was a longtime professor of English at Rutgers, founded Raritan, an influential literary journal based there, in 1981. The magazine was an attempt — successful, by most standards — to engage both academics and non-academics “in a conversation about literature and culture,” in the description of T. Jackson Lears, who took over as editor of Raritan in 2002.
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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/books/18poirier.html
( Further Readings )
“Farming ain’t easy but we make farming fabulous.” 
“Farming ain’t easy but we make farming fabulous.” 
At first I had some difficulties to understand why two men that were so obviously made for each other, like Nick and Holly, were not together. Nick and Holly were best friends at college and maybe even something more, but Nick has always played the role of the caretaker and Holly that of the modern rake, a young man with too much money and too much trouble in his hands than what he could manage. And then college ended and real life kicked in, and Nick moved to New York City while Holly set in Los Angeles, a whole country between them. Why such a choice? 
At first I had some difficulties to understand why two men that were so obviously made for each other, like Nick and Holly, were not together. Nick and Holly were best friends at college and maybe even something more, but Nick has always played the role of the caretaker and Holly that of the modern rake, a young man with too much money and too much trouble in his hands than what he could manage. And then college ended and real life kicked in, and Nick moved to New York City while Holly set in Los Angeles, a whole country between them. Why such a choice? 
I’m always a little worried when I read a Young Adult / Coming of Age novel, since I really care for these young men and I don’t want anything bad to happen to them. That is maybe the reason why, most time than not, I check the last pages to be sure the above young men are all fine at the end of the novel. In The Mariposa Club it’s even more a chance since there are four of them: Lib, Trini, Isaac and Maui, the narrative voice. They are all 17 years old at their last year in high school and surprise, surprise, they are out at school and to their families, with different outcome but still out. 
I’m always a little worried when I read a Young Adult / Coming of Age novel, since I really care for these young men and I don’t want anything bad to happen to them. That is maybe the reason why, most time than not, I check the last pages to be sure the above young men are all fine at the end of the novel. In The Mariposa Club it’s even more a chance since there are four of them: Lib, Trini, Isaac and Maui, the narrative voice. They are all 17 years old at their last year in high school and surprise, surprise, they are out at school and to their families, with different outcome but still out.