Heresy and the Ideal: On Contemporary PoetryHeresy and the Ideal is a powerful collection of essays and essay-reviews which David Baker wrote and published throughout the 1990s. He thoroughly discusses the work of more than fifty contemporary poets, including T. R. Hummer, Miller Williams, Albert Goldbarth, Jane Kenyon, Galway Kinnell, Charles Simic, Ted Kooser, David Wojahn, Alice Fulton, Louise Glück, and Charles Wright. He takes as his models some of the great critical books of the past three decades, especially Richard Howard's masterpiece, Alone with America, and Helen Vendler's Part of Nature, Part of Us, as well as other works by Laurence Lieberman, Majorie Perloff, Carol Muske, and Mary Kinzie. At its center, Heresy and the Ideal is based on Baker's sense of Romantic poetics, especially on how contemporary poets have applied, altered, or rejected certain Romantic principles. He uses the Romantic trope to measure the tension between passion and reason and between the problems of literary transcendence and the obligations of social engagement. The result is a welcome variety of enlightening, practical criticism devoid of exclusionary jargon and based on persistent attention to an individual poem or book of poems. Utilizing the essay-review, Baker considers each poet's purposes and achievements. He blends the strategies of explanation, analysis, and evaluation, clarifying each poet's work instead of complaining or condemning. Heresy and the Ideal addresses a wide and diverse range of contemporary poetry and should take a deserved place both as a critical introduction to the work of many important poets and as a work that documents and explores the shape of poetry at the end of the millennium. |
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Page 9
... double entendre . He " can't help looking back , ” and in just this way , the language turns back on itself . He clearly enjoys the Biblical applications of his description . The " clipped grass and fresh - picked fruit trees " suggest ...
... double entendre . He " can't help looking back , ” and in just this way , the language turns back on itself . He clearly enjoys the Biblical applications of his description . The " clipped grass and fresh - picked fruit trees " suggest ...
Page 10
... double irony . The Edenic yard with its fruit trees is the province of God- the - Father . But here the carrier substitutes for God in a kind of a personal metonymy . Bearing language , he brings the news of the world , and this ...
... double irony . The Edenic yard with its fruit trees is the province of God- the - Father . But here the carrier substitutes for God in a kind of a personal metonymy . Bearing language , he brings the news of the world , and this ...
Page 18
... double entendre on the beating he gives them , for he also wins the race to an adult - like passion : It wasn't fear That defeated us . It was surprise That it mattered so much what we'd done . How could we know ? He'd been one of us ...
... double entendre on the beating he gives them , for he also wins the race to an adult - like passion : It wasn't fear That defeated us . It was surprise That it mattered so much what we'd done . How could we know ? He'd been one of us ...
Page 28
... double disappointments of romantic love and Romanticism . Both are , to him , false promises , where the attainment of the " other " -the lover or the transcending self - into - god - is an impossible dream . The seventeen dense ...
... double disappointments of romantic love and Romanticism . Both are , to him , false promises , where the attainment of the " other " -the lover or the transcending self - into - god - is an impossible dream . The seventeen dense ...
Page 52
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Contents
3 | |
On Albert Goldbarth Jane Kenyon LiYoung Lee | 61 |
The Push of Reading | 79 |
Framed in Words | 99 |
Smarts | 119 |
On Eric Pankey Louise Glück Linda Bierds | 137 |
Plainness and Sufficiency | 149 |
Line by Line | 169 |
On Restraint | 205 |
Romantic Melancholy Romantic Excess | 221 |
StillHildreth Sanatorium 1936 | 277 |
INDEX | 287 |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic Albert Goldbarth Alice Fulton American Angelic Orders articulate becomes body Boland book of poems book's Charles Simic clarity connection contemporary poetry Coulette critical cultural David Wojahn dead death deep image desire Diane di Prima dramatic Eavan Boland erasure erotic experience Falling Hour figure final formal Glück Goldbarth grace Hell Henri Coulette Heresy Hummer's Ideal imagery imagination impulse Jane Kenyon Jorie Graham kind Kinnell Kooser language lines literary lives loss Louise Glück lover lyric MacNeice means memory Merwin's method Miller Williams mother mystery Naked poets narrative nature night Olds's Pankey passion past poem's poet's poetic political provides rhetorical rhyme Romantic Romanticism seems sense social song sonnet speaker spiritual stance stanzas story strategy syntax T. R. Hummer technique things tion transcendence transcendental trope turns vision voice Whitman Williams's Wojahn woman words Wright writes