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. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 18
Page 4
... original time . " The father of American literary rebellion , Ralph Waldo Emerson , trans- lates this collective Romanticism into the romance of the individual . In his famous essay of 1839 , “ Self - Reliance , ” he argues that merely ...
... original time . " The father of American literary rebellion , Ralph Waldo Emerson , trans- lates this collective Romanticism into the romance of the individual . In his famous essay of 1839 , “ Self - Reliance , ” he argues that merely ...
Page 20
... original vision : " he wants to pray to someone / He doesn't believe in anymore . " Recall that , for Hummer , to overlook passion is the origin of speech . He wants up and yet is drawn down , to the Hell of the world . Throughout The ...
... original vision : " he wants to pray to someone / He doesn't believe in anymore . " Recall that , for Hummer , to overlook passion is the origin of speech . He wants up and yet is drawn down , to the Hell of the world . Throughout The ...
Page 22
... original poetry of The 18,000 - Ton Olympic Dream and Walt Whitman in Hell . Here we see Hummer in the midst of revolutionary anxiety , where he addresses— in order to out - talk , as Bloom might say , or to critique - not only his own ...
... original poetry of The 18,000 - Ton Olympic Dream and Walt Whitman in Hell . Here we see Hummer in the midst of revolutionary anxiety , where he addresses— in order to out - talk , as Bloom might say , or to critique - not only his own ...
Page 23
... original clarity of experience , to merge spiritually with the natural or supernatural , to govern the soul by the laws of love — are found suspect , failed , or at best , misleading . Even his titles indi- cate Hummer's revisionary ...
... original clarity of experience , to merge spiritually with the natural or supernatural , to govern the soul by the laws of love — are found suspect , failed , or at best , misleading . Even his titles indi- cate Hummer's revisionary ...
Page 33
... original as an origin mislaid . ” That is the irony and aptitude of Romantic recursiveness . As much as Hummer has found discouraging and deceitful in history's circumstance , that judgment is a Romantic marker ; it leads to rebellion ...
... original as an origin mislaid . ” That is the irony and aptitude of Romantic recursiveness . As much as Hummer has found discouraging and deceitful in history's circumstance , that judgment is a Romantic marker ; it leads to rebellion ...
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