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 187
... artists as ' difficult , ' and the project of Eliot and others to promote literary artists into a spiritually enlightened minority had an élitist pedigree that went back as far as Coleridge.3 - To see the world as ' difficult ' was a ...
... artists as ' difficult , ' and the project of Eliot and others to promote literary artists into a spiritually enlightened minority had an élitist pedigree that went back as far as Coleridge.3 - To see the world as ' difficult ' was a ...
Page 188
... artist is the proper successor to the ancient vocation of the priest ( the artist is ' a priest of the eternal imagination , transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life ' ) , and few modernist artists ...
... artist is the proper successor to the ancient vocation of the priest ( the artist is ' a priest of the eternal imagination , transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life ' ) , and few modernist artists ...
Page 192
... artists of the 1920s only the rich and the privately funded ? Many artists who made their way successfully during those years came from nowhere in particular . There will always ( we must hope ) be jobs in teaching or in libraries for ...
... artists of the 1920s only the rich and the privately funded ? Many artists who made their way successfully during those years came from nowhere in particular . There will always ( we must hope ) be jobs in teaching or in libraries for ...
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