American and British Verse in the Twentieth Century: The Poetry that MattersWhy is it that almost no one can quote more than a few words from any American or British poet since (say) Robert Lowell or Philip Larkin? asks critic and poet Colin Falck. This volume is a critical history of 20th-century poetry as well as a study of what the author sees as the decline of that poetry during the century's last three decades. Basing his argument in the ideas of English and German romanticism, and developing further the claims of his Myth, Truth and Literature (1994), Colin Falck provides philosophically grounded discussions of such issues as the need for modern poetry to be a poetry of experience, the relationship between poetry and philosophy, the triumph of talk as modern poetry's prevailing diction, the effects on poetry of postmodernist self-consciousness, the centrality of despair to the modern lyric, the means by which modern poetry can validly engage with history, the place of nature and myth in the poetic imagination, and the revelatory power of rhythm, meter and the singing line. as Hardy, Yeats, Eliot and Stevens (and from some of their 19th-century precursors) all the way through to such acclaimed poets as Jorie Graham and Hugo Williams. His argument calls for a middlebrow revival in response to the highbrow deviation of modernism and the late-20th-century professionalization of poetry. It ends with an ambitious claim for poetry as an inscription of reality as part of an aesthetic fundamentalism which may be the true religion of the future. |
From inside the book
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Page 90
The Poetry that Matters Colin Falck. Chapter 5 The lyric of despair [ I ] f way to the Better there be , it exacts a full look at the worst . ( Thomas Hardy ) 1 American poetry came to greatness only when American poets learned to ...
The Poetry that Matters Colin Falck. Chapter 5 The lyric of despair [ I ] f way to the Better there be , it exacts a full look at the worst . ( Thomas Hardy ) 1 American poetry came to greatness only when American poets learned to ...
Page 98
... poet's situation and as creating the conditions from which he or she – and all of us are suffering . All of this is enough to make the writing of poetry itself seem like an un - American activity : American values , operating as a ...
... poet's situation and as creating the conditions from which he or she – and all of us are suffering . All of this is enough to make the writing of poetry itself seem like an un - American activity : American values , operating as a ...
Page 221
... American poetry has really always been an Anglo - offshoot poetry , based on complacent assumptions about a more settled and rooted culture and mentality than America ever possessed or ( as we can now see ) could have expected to possess a ...
... American poetry has really always been an Anglo - offshoot poetry , based on complacent assumptions about a more settled and rooted culture and mentality than America ever possessed or ( as we can now see ) could have expected to possess a ...
Common terms and phrases
actual allowed already American American poetry artists become believe British called character close comes common continues critical cultural early effect Eliot emotional English example experience experiencing expression eyes face fact feel forms Frost give given hand happen heart hope human ideas imaginative interest John Berryman kind language later Lawrence leave less letter lines literary literature lives London look Lowell lyric matter meanings meter mind move nature never ordinary ourselves Oxford particular perhaps philosophical poem's poems poet poet's poetic poetry possible present probably question reader reality reason religion religious rhythms Robert seems seen sense shows situation sometimes sound speaker spiritual talk tells things thought traditional true truth turn twentieth century universal usually verse Whitman whole Wordsworth writing written Yeats York