Description
Book SynopsisPoetry in Theory: An Anthology 1900-2000 brings together key critical and theoretical texts from the twentieth century which have animated debates about modern poetry.
- Helps readers to think critically about the nature of modern poetry, and to engage with broader questions about aesthetics, language, culture and imagination.
- Includes texts by poets, critics, theorists and philosophers, ranging from Ezra Pound to Jacques Derrida.
- Texts in translation from French, German, Spanish, Italian and Russian are presented alongside the work of writers from Britain, Ireland, the United States, Africa, India and the Caribbean.
- Each text is accompanied by a brief biographical and thematic introduction.
- A system of cross-referencing points up significant connections and disagreements between the texts.
- Includes a thematic index and chronology.
Trade Review"Poetry has always provided the most severe test for theory, and this rich, wide-ranging anthology shows just how fruitful the encounter between the two has been. Jon Cook's excellent collection should prove a salutary lesson for all those who assume, utterly against the evidence, that literary theory has had nothing to say about the shape of the sentences and the texture of the verse."
—
Terry Eagleton, University of Manchester
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction 1
Part I 1900–1920 27
1 W. B. Yeats
The Symbolism of Poetry (1900) 29
2 Rainer Maria Rilke
Three Letters (1903, 1907, 1925) 35
3 Sigmund Freud
Creative Writers and Day-dreaming (1908) 41
4 T. E. Hulme
Romanticism and Classicism (1911) 47
5 Filippo Marinetti
Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature (1912) 56
6 Rabindranath Tagore
Poet Yeats (1912) 61
7 Edward Thomas
Robert Frost (1914) 65
8 Amy Lowell
Poetry as a Spoken Art (1917) 69
9 Guillaume Apollinaire
The New Spirit and the Poets (1917) 75
10 Ezra Pound
A Retrospect (1918) 83
11 Tristan Tzara
Note on Poetry (1919) 91
12 Velimir Khlebnikov
On Poetry and On Contemporary Poetry (1919, 1920) 94
13 T. S. Eliot
Tradition and the Individual Talent and Reflections on Contemporary Poetry (1919) 97
14 D. H. Lawrence
Preface to New Poems (1920) 106
15 William Carlos Williams
Prologue to Kora in Hell (1920) 111
16 Ernest Fenollosa
The Chinese Written Character as the Medium for Poetry (1920) 116
Part II 1920–1940 129
17 Mina Loy
Modern Poetry (1925) 131
18 Hart Crane
General Aims and Theories (1925) 135
19 Langston Hughes
The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain (1926) 139
20 Vladimir Mayakovsky
How Are Verses Made? (1926) 144
21 I. A. Richards
Science and Poetry (1926) 152
22 Robert Graves and Laura Riding
A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927) 160
23 William Empson
Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930) 169
24 Kenneth Burke
The Poetic Process (1931) 175
25 Paul Éluard and André Breton
Poetry’s Evidence and The Automatic Message (1932, 1933) 182
26 F. R. Leavis
New Bearings in English Poetry (1932) 192
27 Federico García Lorca
Play and Theory of the Duende (1933) 201
28 Gertrude Stein
Poetry and Grammar (1935) 208
29 Marina Tsvetaeva
Poets with History and Poets without History (1935) 215
30 Walter Benjamin
Modernism (1938) 223
31 Robert Frost
The Figure a Poem Makes (1939) 234
32 Paul Valéry
Poetry and Abstract Thought (1939) 237
Part III 1940–1960 245
33 Martin Heidegger
Three Lectures on Poetry (1941, 1944, 1946) 247
34 Wallace Stevens
The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words (1942) 256
35 Randall Jarrell
The End of the Line (1942) 268
36 Aimé Césaire
Poetry and Knowledge (1945) 275
37 Charles Olson
Projective Verse (1950) 288
38 Louis Zukofsky
A Statement for Poetry (1950) 296
39 Roland Barthes
Is There Any Poetic Writing? (1953) 301
40 W. K. Wimsatt
The Concrete Universal (1954) 307
41 Jacques Lacan
Excerpts from Seminars and Papers (1954, 1955, 1957) 315
42 Donald Davie
What is Modern Poetry and The Reek of the Human (1955)? 323
43 Maurice Blanchot
Mallarmé’s Experience (1955) 330
44 Philip Larkin
The Pleasure Principle and Writing Poems (1957, 1964) 337
45 Theodor Adorno
On Lyric Poetry and Society (1957) 342
46 Roman Jakobson
Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics (1960) 350
Part IV 1960–1980 359
47 Edward Dorn
What I See in The Maximus Poems (1961) 361
48 Frank O’Hara
Personism: A Manifesto (1961) 367
49 Allen Ginsberg
When the Mode of the Music Changes and Abstraction in Poetry (1961, 1962) 370
50 W. H. Auden
The Poet and the City (1962) 377
51 Imamu Baraka
Hunting Is Not Those Heads on the Wall and State/Meant (1964, 1965) 385
52 Robert Creeley
A Sense of Measure (1964) 390
53 John Ashbery
The Invisible Avant-Garde (1968) 393
54 Barbara Herrnstein Smith
Closure and Anti-closure in Modern Poetry (1968) 399
55 Gerard Genette
Poetic Language, Poetics of Language (1969) 408
56 Paul de Man
Intentional Structure of the Romantic Image (1970) 413
57 Derek Walcott
The Muse of History (1974) 420
58 Julia Kristeva
The Ethics of Linguistics (1974) 437
59 Hans Magnus Enzensberger
A Modest Proposal (1976) 447
60 Veronica Forrest-Thomson
Continuity in Language (1978) 456
61 Geoffrey Hill
Poetry as ‘‘Menace’’ and ‘‘Atonement’’ (1978) 464
Part V 1980–2000 475
62 Shoshana Felman
The Poe-etic Effect (1980) 477
63 Charles Bernstein
The Dollar Value of Poetry (1983) 491
64 Czeslaw Milosz
On Hope (1983) 494
65 Adrienne Rich
Blood, Bread, and Poetry (1984) 503
66 Richard Poirier
Prologue: The Deed of Writing (1987) 514
67 Jeremy Cronin
‘‘Even under the Rine of Terror ’’ (1988) 523
68 Jacques Derrida
Che cos’è la poesia? (1988) 533
69 Thomas Yingling
The Homosexual Lyric (1990) 538
70 Marjorie Perloff
Avant-Garde or Endgame? (1991) 547
71 Eavan Boland
The Woman Poet: Her Dilemma (1995) 559
72 Seamus Heaney
The Redress of Poetry (1995) 567
73 Helen Vendler
Introduction, Soul Says (1995) 574
Chronology 581
Select Bibliography 619
Thematic Index 622
Index 624
