The Cure of Poetry in an Age of Prose

The Cure of Poetry in an Age of Prose PDF Author: Mary Kinzie
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226437354
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
The role of the poet, Mary Kinzie writes, is to engage the most profound subjects with the utmost in expressive clarity. The role of the critic is to follow the poet, word for word, into the arena where the creative struggle occurs. How this mutual purpose is served, ideally and practically, is the subject of this bracingly polemical collection of essays. A distinguished poet and critic, Kinzie assesses poetry's situation during the past twenty-five years. Ours, she contends, is literally a prosaic age, not only in the popularity of prose genres but in the resultant compromises with truth and elegance in literature. In essays on "the rhapsodic fallacy," confessionalism, and the romance of perceptual response, Kinzie diagnoses some of the trends that diminish the poet's flexibility. Conversely, she also considers individual poets—Randall Jarrell, Elizabeth Bishop, Howard Nemerov, Seamus Heaney, and John Ashbery—who have found ingenious ways of averting the risks of prosaism and preserving the special character of poetry. Focusing on poet Louise Bogan and novelist J. M. Coetzee, Kinzie identifies a crucial and curative overlap between the practices of great prose-writing and great poetry. In conclusion, she suggests a new approach for teaching writers of poetry and fiction. Forcefully argued, these essays will be widely read and debated among critics and poets alike.

The Cure of Poetry in an Age of Prose

The Cure of Poetry in an Age of Prose PDF Author: Mary Kinzie
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226437354
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Get Book Here

Book Description
The role of the poet, Mary Kinzie writes, is to engage the most profound subjects with the utmost in expressive clarity. The role of the critic is to follow the poet, word for word, into the arena where the creative struggle occurs. How this mutual purpose is served, ideally and practically, is the subject of this bracingly polemical collection of essays. A distinguished poet and critic, Kinzie assesses poetry's situation during the past twenty-five years. Ours, she contends, is literally a prosaic age, not only in the popularity of prose genres but in the resultant compromises with truth and elegance in literature. In essays on "the rhapsodic fallacy," confessionalism, and the romance of perceptual response, Kinzie diagnoses some of the trends that diminish the poet's flexibility. Conversely, she also considers individual poets—Randall Jarrell, Elizabeth Bishop, Howard Nemerov, Seamus Heaney, and John Ashbery—who have found ingenious ways of averting the risks of prosaism and preserving the special character of poetry. Focusing on poet Louise Bogan and novelist J. M. Coetzee, Kinzie identifies a crucial and curative overlap between the practices of great prose-writing and great poetry. In conclusion, she suggests a new approach for teaching writers of poetry and fiction. Forcefully argued, these essays will be widely read and debated among critics and poets alike.

The cure of poetry in an age of prose

The cure of poetry in an age of prose PDF Author: Mary Kinzie
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics

The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics PDF Author: Roland Greene
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691154910
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1678

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Book Description
Rev. ed. of: The Princeton encyclopedia of poetry and poetics / Alex Preminger and T.V.F. Brogan, co-editors; Frank J. Warnke, O.B. Hardison, Jr., and Earl Miner, associate editors. 1993.

The Other Half of Happy

The Other Half of Happy PDF Author: Rebecca Balcárcel
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1452170002
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Quijana is a girl in pieces. One-half Guatemalan, one-half American: When Quijana's Guatemalan cousins move to town, her dad seems ashamed that she doesn't know more about her family's heritage. One-half crush, one-half buddy: When Quijana meets Zuri and Jayden, she knows she's found true friends. But she can't help the growing feelings she has for Jayden. One-half kid, one-half grown-up: Quijana spends her nights Skyping with her ailing grandma and trying to figure out what's going on with her increasingly hard-to-reach brother. In the course of this immersive and beautifully written novel, Quijana must figure out which parts of herself are most important, and which pieces come together to make her whole. This lyrical debut from Rebecca Balcárcel is a heartfelt poetic portrayal of a girl growing up, fitting in, and learning what it means to belong.

A Poet's Guide to Poetry

A Poet's Guide to Poetry PDF Author: Mary Kinzie
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780226923062
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In A Poet’s Guide to Poetry, Mary Kinzie brings her decades of expertise as poet, critic, and director of the creative writing program at Northwestern University to bear in a comprehensive reference work for any writer wishing to better understand poetry. Detailing the formal concepts of poetry and methods of poetic analysis, she shows how the craft of writing can guide the art of reading poems. Using examples from the major traditions of lyric and meditative poetry in English from the medieval period to the present, Kinzie considers the sounds and rhythms of poetry along with the ideas and thought-units within poems. Kinzie also shares her own successful classroom tactics that encourage readers to approach a poem as if it were provisional. The three parts of A Poet’s Guide to Poetry lead the reader through a carefully planned introduction to the ways we understand poetry. The first section provides careful, step-by-step instruction to familiarize students with the formal elements of poems, from the most obvious feature through the most subtle. The second part carefully examines meter and rhythm, as well as providing a theoretical and practical overview of free verse. The final section offers helpful chapters on writing in form. Rounding out the volume are writing exercises for beginning and advanced writers, a dictionary of poetic terms, and a bibliography of further reading. For this new edition, Kinzie has carefully reworked the introductory material and first chapter, as well as amended the annotated bibliography to include the most recent works of criticism. The updated guide also contains revised exercises and adjustments throughout the text to make the work as lucid and accessible as possible.

Textual Practice

Textual Practice PDF Author: Terence Hawkes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134834659
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
First published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Elizabeth Bishop's Prosaic

Elizabeth Bishop's Prosaic PDF Author: Vidyan Ravinthiran
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
ISBN: 1611486823
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
Elizabeth Bishop is now recognized as one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century—a uniquely cosmopolitan writer with connections to the US, Canada, Brazil, and also the UK, given her neglected borrowings from many English authors, and her strong influence on modern British verse. Yet the dominant biographical/psychoanalytical approach leaves her style relatively untouched—and it is vital that an increasing focus on archival material does not replace our attention to the writing itself. Bishop’s verse is often compared with prose (sometimes insultingly); writing fiction, she worried she was really writing poems. But what truly is the difference between poetry and prose—structurally, conceptually, historically speaking? Is prose simply formalized speech, or does it have rhythms of its own? Ravinthiran seeks an answer to this question through close analysis of Bishop’s prose-like verse, her literary prose, her prose poems, and her letter prose. This title is a provocation. It demands that we reconsider the pejorative quality of the word prosaic; playing on mosaic, Ravinthiran uses Bishop’s thinking about prose to approach—for the first time—her work in multiple genres as a stylistic whole. Elizabeth Bishop’s Prosaic is concerned not only with her inimitable style, but also larger questions to do with the Anglo-American shift from closed to open forms in the twentieth century. This study identifies not just borrowings from, but rich intertextual relationships with, writers as diverse as—among others—Gerard Manley Hopkins, W.H. Auden, Virginia Woolf, Flannery O’Connor, and Dorothy Richardson. (Though Bishop criticized Woolf, she in particular is treated as a central and thus far neglected precursor, crucial to our understanding of Bishop as a feminist poet.) Finally, the sustained discussion of how the history of prose frames effects of rhythm, syntax, and acoustic texture—in both Bishop’s prose proper and her prosaic verse—extends a body of research which seeks now to treat literature as a form of cognition. Technique and thought are finely wedded in Bishop’s work—her literary forms evince a historical intelligence attuned to questions of power, nationality, tradition (both literary and otherwise), race, and gender.

The Novel Cure

The Novel Cure PDF Author: Ella Berthoud
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143125931
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
"Delightful... elegant prose and discussions that span the history of 2,000 years of literature."—Publisher's Weekly A novel is a story transmitted from the novelist to the reader. It offers distraction, entertainment, and an opportunity to unwind or focus. But it can also be something more powerful—a way to learn about how to live. Read at the right moment in your life, a novel can—quite literally—change it. The Novel Cure is a reminder of that power. To create this apothecary, the authors have trawled two thousand years of literature for novels that effectively promote happiness, health, and sanity, written by brilliant minds who knew what it meant to be human and wrote their life lessons into their fiction. Structured like a reference book, readers simply look up their ailment, be it agoraphobia, boredom, or a midlife crisis, and are given a novel to read as the antidote. Bibliotherapy does not discriminate between pains of the body and pains of the head (or heart). Aware that you’ve been cowardly? Pick up To Kill a Mockingbird for an injection of courage. Experiencing a sudden, acute fear of death? Read One Hundred Years of Solitude for some perspective on the larger cycle of life. Nervous about throwing a dinner party? Ali Smith’s There but for The will convince you that yours could never go that wrong. Whatever your condition, the prescription is simple: a novel (or two), to be read at regular intervals and in nice long chunks until you finish. Some treatments will lead to a complete cure. Others will offer solace, showing that you’re not the first to experience these emotions. The Novel Cure is also peppered with useful lists and sidebars recommending the best novels to read when you’re stuck in traffic or can’t fall asleep, the most important novels to read during every decade of life, and many more. Brilliant in concept and deeply satisfying in execution, The Novel Cure belongs on everyone’s bookshelf and in every medicine cabinet. It will make even the most well-read fiction aficionado pick up a novel he’s never heard of, and see familiar ones with new eyes. Mostly, it will reaffirm literature’s ability to distract and transport, to resonate and reassure, to change the way we see the world and our place in it. "This appealing and helpful read is guaranteed to double the length of a to-read list and become a go-to reference for those unsure of their reading identities or who are overwhelmed by the sheer number of books in the world."—Library Journal

The Poem Is You

The Poem Is You PDF Author: Stephanie Burt
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674737873
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
The variety of contemporary American poetry leaves many readers overwhelmed. The critic, scholar, and poet Stephen Burt sets out to help. Beginning in the early 1980s, where critical consensus ends, he presents 60 poems, each with an original essay explaining how the poem works, why it matters, and how it speaks to other parts of art and culture.

Ambition and Survival

Ambition and Survival PDF Author: Christian Wiman
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
ISBN: 1556592604
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
"That calling, at once religious, ethical, and aesthetic, is one that only a genuine poet can hear—and very few poets can explain it as compellingly as Mr. Wiman does. That gift is what makes Ambition and Survival, not just one of the best books of poetry criticism in a generation, but a spiritual memoir of the first order." —New York Sun "This weighty first prose collection should inspire wide attention, partly because of Wiman's current job, partly because of his astute insights and partly because he mixes poetry criticism with sometimes shocking memoir ... The collection's greatest strength comes in general ruminations on the writing, reading and judging poetry." —Publishers Weekly "[Wiman is] a terrific personal essayist, as this new collection illustrates, with the command and instincts of the popular memoirist ... This is a brave and bracing book." —Booklist “Blazing high style” is how The New York Times describes the prose of Christian Wiman, the young editor transforming Poetry, the country's oldest literary magazine. Ambition and Survival is a collection of stirring personal essays and critical prose on a wide range of subjects: reading Milton in Guatemala, recalling violent episodes of his youth, and traveling in Africa with his eccentric father, as well as a series of penetrating essays on writers as diverse as Thomas Hardy and Janet Lewis. The book concludes with a portrait of Wiman's diagnosis of a rare form of incurable and lethal cancer, and how mortality reignited his religious passions. When I was twenty years old I set out to be a poet. That sounds like I was a sort of frigate raising anchor, and in a way I guess I was, though susceptible to the lightest of winds. . . . When I read Samuel Johnson's comment that any young man could compensate for his poor education by reading five hours a day for five years, that's exactly what I tried to do, practically setting a timer every afternoon to let me know when the little egg of my brain was boiled. It's a small miracle that I didn't take to wearing a cape. Christian Wiman is the editor of Poetry magazine. His poems and essays appear regularly in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, and The New York Times Book Review.