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 xv
... American professorate senses that the worth of its opinions is being diminished , in the public eye , to the point of obsolescence . The public seldom turns to the xvi professor for intellectual or moral guidance ; hence , INTRODUCTION.
... American professorate senses that the worth of its opinions is being diminished , in the public eye , to the point of obsolescence . The public seldom turns to the xvi professor for intellectual or moral guidance ; hence , INTRODUCTION.
Page xx
... , too . Much of my graduate schooling , and subsequently much of my teaching , has been in American and Romantic literatures . Heresy and the Ideal finds its critical center — its theory — based on my sense of INTRODUCTION.
... , too . Much of my graduate schooling , and subsequently much of my teaching , has been in American and Romantic literatures . Heresy and the Ideal finds its critical center — its theory — based on my sense of INTRODUCTION.
Page xxi
... sense of belatedness . No poets from the generation of the early 1950s write with more intellectual expanse or demanding curiosity than Hummer and , perhaps , Jorie Graham . Unlike Hummer , Miller Williams is a decided realist , a ...
... sense of belatedness . No poets from the generation of the early 1950s write with more intellectual expanse or demanding curiosity than Hummer and , perhaps , Jorie Graham . Unlike Hummer , Miller Williams is a decided realist , a ...
Page 4
... sense is thus , in Harold Bloom's phrase , " to be empowered by eloquence and vision . " Emerson's eminently more practical compatriot , Thoreau , extends such encouragements for rebellion and rejection to include not only social ...
... sense is thus , in Harold Bloom's phrase , " to be empowered by eloquence and vision . " Emerson's eminently more practical compatriot , Thoreau , extends such encouragements for rebellion and rejection to include not only social ...
Page 10
... / Was a name like other names / Scrawled there , a name like Jack or Buck , " but senses a danger attached to it : Whoever Belonged to a name like that Couldn't be spoken of lightly . II He'd drive fast , smoke , Carry a quick. PART ONE.
... / Was a name like other names / Scrawled there , a name like Jack or Buck , " but senses a danger attached to it : Whoever Belonged to a name like that Couldn't be spoken of lightly . II He'd drive fast , smoke , Carry a quick. PART ONE.
Contents
3 | |
On Albert Goldbarth Jane Kenyon LiYoung Lee | 61 |
The Push of Reading | 79 |
Framed in Words | 99 |
Smarts | 119 |
Plainness and Sufficiency | 149 |
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Common terms and phrases
A. R. Ammons aesthetic Albert Goldbarth Alice Fulton American Angelic Orders articulate becomes body Boland book of poems book's Charles Simic clarity connection contemporary 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 Jorie Graham kind Kinnell Kooser's language lines literary lives loss Louise Glück lover lyric MacNeice means memory Merwin method mother mystery Naked poets narrative nature night Olds's Pankey passion past poem's poems poet's poetic poetry political provides rhetorical rhyme Romantic Romanticism seems sense Simic social song sonnet speaker spiritual stance stanzas story strategy syntax T. R. Hummer things tion transcendence transcendental trope turns vision voice Whitman Williams's Wojahn woman words Wright writes