Description

Book Synopsis
Christopher Ricks is one of the best-known living critics of English, and was described by W. H. Auden as `the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding''. Though published indepenently over many years, each of the essays in this collection of his writings asks how a poets words reveal the `force of poetry'', that force - in Dr Johnson''s words - `which calls new power into being, which embodies sentiment, and animates matter''. The poets covered range from John Gower, Marvell, and Milton to Wordsworth, Empson, Stevie Smith, Lowell, and Larkin, and the book contains four wider essays on clichés, lies, misquotations, and American English.

Trade Review
Christopher Ricks is our most distinctive critic...the natural heir to Empson, exciting and fertile. * Blake Morrison, Observer *
The richness and variety of these essays is truly remarkable * John Bayley, Listener *

The Force of Poetry

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    A Paperback by Christopher Ricks

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      Publisher: Oxford University Press
      Publication Date: 2/9/1995 12:00:00 AM
      ISBN13: 9780198183266, 978-0198183266
      ISBN10: 0198183267
      Also in:
      Essays ELT & Literary Studies Literary studies: poetry and poets

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      Christopher Ricks is one of the best-known living critics of English, and was described by W. H. Auden as `the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding''. Though published indepenently over many years, each of the essays in this collection of his writings asks how a poets words reveal the `force of poetry'', that force - in Dr Johnson''s words - `which calls new power into being, which embodies sentiment, and animates matter''. The poets covered range from John Gower, Marvell, and Milton to Wordsworth, Empson, Stevie Smith, Lowell, and Larkin, and the book contains four wider essays on clichés, lies, misquotations, and American English.

      Trade Review
      Christopher Ricks is our most distinctive critic...the natural heir to Empson, exciting and fertile. * Blake Morrison, Observer *
      The richness and variety of these essays is truly remarkable * John Bayley, Listener *

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