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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... published throughout the 1990s . He thoroughly discusses the work of more than fifty contemporary poets , includ- ing T. R. Hummer , Miller Williams , Albert Goldbarth , Jane Kenyon , Galway Kinnell , Charles Simic , Ted Kooser , David ...
... published throughout the 1990s . He thoroughly discusses the work of more than fifty contemporary poets , includ- ing T. R. Hummer , Miller Williams , Albert Goldbarth , Jane Kenyon , Galway Kinnell , Charles Simic , Ted Kooser , David ...
Page ix
... published in New England Review / Bread Loaf Quarterly . I am also grateful to the following for permission to use extended quota- tions from the copyrighted works of these poets : Robert Bly , Eating the Honey of Words : New and ...
... published in New England Review / Bread Loaf Quarterly . I am also grateful to the following for permission to use extended quota- tions from the copyrighted works of these poets : Robert Bly , Eating the Honey of Words : New and ...
Page xvii
... published in 1948 . More than half a century later , his reasons for the predicament of poetry are still accurate : “ The American emphasis upon material welfare and mechanical gadgets , the reverence for the mysteries of science , the ...
... published in 1948 . More than half a century later , his reasons for the predicament of poetry are still accurate : “ The American emphasis upon material welfare and mechanical gadgets , the reverence for the mysteries of science , the ...
Page xviii
... published throughout the 1990s . It is a discussion of the work of more than fifty contemporary poets . Herbert F. Tucker's solution to some of the issues he identified in his comment in New Literary History is part of my own impulse ...
... published throughout the 1990s . It is a discussion of the work of more than fifty contemporary poets . Herbert F. Tucker's solution to some of the issues he identified in his comment in New Literary History is part of my own impulse ...
Page xx
... published each year , with many dozen significant prizes and awards for that work , and little actual assessment of that work . I hope that Heresy and the Ideal can take its place for readers as a critical introduction to the work of ...
... published each year , with many dozen significant prizes and awards for that work , and little actual assessment of that work . I hope that Heresy and the Ideal can take its place for readers as a critical introduction to the work of ...
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