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
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Page xxiii
... suggesting or assigning particular volumes for discussion ; by care- ful supervision , prudent advice , and tolerance . For their editorial custody of the present work , I wish to thank David H. Lynn and Marilyn Hacker of The Kenyon ...
... suggesting or assigning particular volumes for discussion ; by care- ful supervision , prudent advice , and tolerance . For their editorial custody of the present work , I wish to thank David H. Lynn and Marilyn Hacker of The Kenyon ...
Page 9
... suggest , for instance , a tamed wilderness and the bitten apple . He likes the gentle epithets , which oper- ate as ... suggestion of his sexual release . He is , at last , “ silent as [ he ] came . " This phrase indi- cates his quiet ...
... suggest , for instance , a tamed wilderness and the bitten apple . He likes the gentle epithets , which oper- ate as ... suggestion of his sexual release . He is , at last , “ silent as [ he ] came . " This phrase indi- cates his quiet ...
Page 12
... suggested in " The Rural Carrier Discovers That Love Is Everywhere . " The father's turning back suggests the trope of delib- eration and vision , of thinking and seeing . The father possesses the further capacity to convert that vision ...
... suggested in " The Rural Carrier Discovers That Love Is Everywhere . " The father's turning back suggests the trope of delib- eration and vision , of thinking and seeing . The father possesses the further capacity to convert that vision ...
Page 20
... suggesting again the agency of the carrier - father who brings language , the world's news . The language itself — the collision of its presences and absences— provides the critical center of the poem . Crisp and unfolded , George's let ...
... suggesting again the agency of the carrier - father who brings language , the world's news . The language itself — the collision of its presences and absences— provides the critical center of the poem . Crisp and unfolded , George's let ...
Page 26
... suggesting not only the Platonic shadow but also the damages ( both natural and human - made ) of Pompeii and Hiroshima , seems considerably more murderous than promising : We were dying blind , turning into permanent shadows Caught in ...
... suggesting not only the Platonic shadow but also the damages ( both natural and human - made ) of Pompeii and Hiroshima , seems considerably more murderous than promising : We were dying blind , turning into permanent shadows Caught in ...
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