Description
Book SynopsisThe authority of poetry varies from one period to another, from one culture to another. To explain why a reader might prefer one kind of poem to another, this book analyzes - beyond the political and intellectual significance of poems - the musicality of both lyric poetry and popular song, including that of Tin Pan Alley and doo-wop.
Trade Review"Robert von Hallberg is a careful, deep, and often counterintuitive thinker about poetry in general and about particular strands of modern poetry: his originality makes him impossible to place (or write off) as a partisan of a given school, and his consistent attention to the words on the page means there's scarcely a reading in Lyric Powers that doesn't say something valuable. He's a pleasure to read." - Stephen Burt, Harvard University"