Description
Book SynopsisThe Lyric Touch gathers John Wilkinson’s essays on British and American poetry of the late twentieth century and on poetics, several of them referenced in standard works despite being hard to obtain. It includes his important essays on J.H. Prynne, John James, Tom Raworth, Barry MacSweeney and Denise Riley together with a lucid account of the formation of the ‘Cambridge School’, and a substantial introduction to the American lyric poet John Wieners. The book also discusses major writers such as Mina Loy, Lynette Roberts, Robert Creeley, Frank O’Hara, Ted Berrigan, Marjorie Welish and Andrea Brady. Finally it includes Wilkinson’s most significant theoretical statements, ‘Cadence’, ‘The Metastases of Poetry’, ‘Mouthing Off’ and ‘Following the Poem’, the last including detailed readings of P.B. Shelley and Paul Celan.
John Wilkinson’s prose entices the reader into engaging with some of the most demanding and rewarding poetry of the past fifty years, and connects it persuasively with a radically excessive strain in Romantic English lyric. For this book, the vectors of excess are marked as information (as in Prynne), language (as in Raworth), self-consciousness (as in Riley) and feeling (as in Wieners). All distinguish lyric poetry as an art from other linguistic transactions while it remains humanly recognisable. This separation and recognition are understood throughout as the basis for a politics.
The Lyric Touch will be invaluable for anyone interested in recent British and American poetry, as well as enthusiasts for John Wilkinson’s own poetry.
Table of Contents
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1: British Poetry
- Counterfactual Prynne: An Approach to Not-You
- Tenter Ground (J.H. Prynne)
- Into the Day (J.H. Prynne)
- The Line to Take: An appreciation of the seventies poetry of John James
- Unexpected Excellent Sausage (John James, Frank O’Hara, Ted Berrigan)
- Illyrian Places (Denise Riley)
- A Single Striking Soviet: The Poetry of Barry MacSweeney
- The Value of Penniless Politics (Douglas Oliver)
- Tripping the Light Fantastic: Tom Raworth’s Ace
- Off the Grid: Lyric and Politics in Andrea Brady’s Embrace
- 2: Poetics
- Cadence
- The Metastases of Poetry
- Too-close Reading
- Mouthing Off
- Frostwork and The Mud Vision
- The Water-Rail of Tides (Lynette Roberts)
- Following the Poem
- 3: American Poetry
- Chamber Attitudes (John Wieners)
- A Poem for Liars (John Wieners)
- Stumbling, Balking, Tacking: Robert Creeley’s For Love and Mina Loy’s Love Songs to Joannes
- Faktura: The Work of Marjorie Welish
