Description
Book SynopsisPoetry is an ancient verbal art, which has its roots in the oral epics and fragments that survive from classical times. Dictionaries of English, by contrast, are a comparatively recent phenomenon, beginning with the ‘hard words’ that Robert Cawdrey gathered in
A Table Alphabeticall in 1604 and extending to the present edition of the
Oxford English Dictionary, with its ongoing revisions. This innovative collection of essays is the first volume to explore the ways in which dictionaries have stimulated the imaginations of modern and contemporary poets from Britain, Ireland, and America, while also considering how poetry has itself been a rich source of material for lexicographers.
As well as gauging the influence of major dictionaries like the OED, the essays single out encounters with more specialised works and broach uses of words that are not typically included in dictionaries. In doing so, the contributors not only cast familiar questions of ambiguity and etymology in a fresh light, but they also reveal a number of surprising and energising points of contact, from Hugh MacDiarmid’s rediscovery of Scots to Tina Darragh’s visual appropriations of dictionary pages. As such, Poetry & the Dictionary will prove an indispensable volume for all readers – academic or not – who find themselves fascinated by the language’s many involutions.
Trade ReviewReviews ‘This fascinating collection of essays offers a set of new perspectives on experimental poetics as a tradition and as a current practice. This will be a book of substantial interest to scholars, critics, students and readers of contemporary poetry.’
Professor Andrew Roberts, University of Dundee
'This collection affords the poet, the lexicographer, and the literary scholar a fruitful and rich cross-disciplinary dive into the mechanics of both language and lyricism... a worthy collection of essays.'
D. A. Lockhart,
Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America'Readers who want to know about W.H. Auden's "love affair with the OED" (p. 83) will find enlightenment here, while the poems and essays of T.S. Eliot are individually indexed in a highly professional index at the back of the book. [...] Equally rewarding for the curious reader is Tara Stubbs's essay on Marianne Moore, an American poet of the early 20th-century.'
Patrick Hanks,
International Journal of Lexicography'For readers willing to engage with this more academic text,
Poetry & the Dictionary will provide a degree of poetic and intellectual investigation that may ultimately lead to polyvocal poetry.’
Renée M. Sgroi,
Carousel Magazine'Looking through a … broader scope, Piers Pennington and Andrew Blades's
Poetry & the Dictionary tracks the centuries-long relationship between the terms of their book's title … remind[ing] us that the dictionary itself cannot be "depersonalized," that no "picture" it presents is necessarily clear.'
Chelsie Malyszek,
LA Review of BooksTable of ContentsPart 1: Poetry and the Dictionary
1. Introduction
Andrew Blades and Piers Pennington2. ‘When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my Dictionary’: Poets and Dictionaries, Dictionaries and Poets
Charlotte Brewer3. Poetry in the
Oxford English Dictionary: A Quantitative Profile
David-Antoine Williams4. Lexicography in Modern Poetry
Matthew Sperling
Part 2: British and Irish Poetry and the Dictionary
5. Jamieson, Jargons, Jangles, and Jokes: Hugh MacDiarmid and Dictionaries
Michael Whitworth6. Not even invented
Deborah Bowman7. Proper Names, the Dictionary, and the Poetry of Experiment
Piers Pennington8. Etymology and Elegy: Paul Muldoon’s ‘Yarrow’ and ‘Cuthbert and the Otters’
Mia Gaudern
Part 3: American Poetry and the Dictionary
9. Briefer Mentions and Lyrical Lexicons: Marianne Moore’s Responses to Dictionaries in
The Dial and
ObservationsTara Stubbs
10. A Collected Unconscious: James Merrill’s Dictionaries
Andrew Blades11. ‘All Things are Words of Some Strange Tongue’: Dictionary Definition Form in Contemporary American Poetry
Kate Potts12. Long Poems about Everything: Dictionary as Subject and Model for Poem, 1974–2016
Giles Goodland
