Description
Book SynopsisIn the 1830s Alexis de Tocqueville prophesied that American writers would slight, even despise, form--that they would favor the sensational over rational order. He suggested that this attitude was linked to a distinct concept of democracy in America. Exposing the inaccuracies of such claims when applied to poetry, Stephen Cushman maintains that Ame
Trade Review"Cushman's position is that major American poets have probably overvalued the formal and perhaps fallaciously have believed that the formal aspects of their poetry reflect deep-seated views of Americanness. The book is vital, new, offering the changing poetic view of America from 1855 to the present."--Choice
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments1Fictions of Form in American Poetry32Walt Whitman's Six Children253The Broken Mathematics of Emily Dickinson424Ezra Pound and the Terrifyin' Voice of Civilization755Elizabeth Bishop's Winding Path1126A. R. Ammons, or the Rigid Lines of the Free and Easy149Envoi187Notes191Index211
