The Unacknowledged Legislators (poets and Politics)

The Unacknowledged Legislators (poets and Politics) PDF Author: Christopher Montague Woodhouse
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Politics in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 74

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Book Description

The Unacknowledged Legislators (poets and Politics)

The Unacknowledged Legislators (poets and Politics) PDF Author: Christopher Montague Woodhouse
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Politics in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 74

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Book Description


Unacknowledged Legislators

Unacknowledged Legislators PDF Author: Roger Pearson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191069418
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 624

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Book Description
What is the public value of poetry? How do poets envisage their own role and function within society? How do we? Do poets seek to shape public opinion and behaviour? Should they? Or do they offer alternatives—perhaps sacred alternatives—to political and religious ideologies? Are they what Shelley in 1821 called 'the unacknowledged legislators of the World'? And what might that mean? During the decades immediately preceding the Revolution of 1789 the status of contemporary poetry in France was at its lowest ebb. At the same time the perceived power of the writer to influence public events reached a high-water mark with Voltaire's triumphant return to Paris in 1778. In the course of the next century French poetry enjoyed an extraordinary renaissance and flowering, perhaps its greatest. But what of the poet's public influence? In 1881 the people of Paris processed for six hours past the home of Victor Hugo on the occasion of his 79th birthday, and in 1885 an estimated two million people witnessed his state funeral. But who or what were they acknowledging? Poetry or republicanism? Or perhaps their own power? For with each Revolution that passed—1789, 1830, 1848—French poets themselves felt increasingly marginalised. This study addresses the first part of this story and focuses on the role and function of the poet during the so-called Romantic Period. Beginning with an account of the literary climate in pre-revolutionary France it then maps the changes in that climate wrought by the events of the 1789 Revolution. It describes the new politico-literary agendas set by Chateaubriand and others on the monarchist Right, and by Staël and others on the liberal Left. Against this background it then analyses in detail the poetic output and public exploits of the three major French poets of the period: Lamartine, Hugo, and Vigny. The Romantic figure of the poet as prophet and magus is habitually dismissed as a cliché. But by focusing on the role of the poet as lawgiver this book reveals the rich and complex terms in which the public function of poetry was debated in post-revolutionary France - and how amidst the centenary celebrations of 1889, as Romanticism gave way to Symbolism, the poet as lawgiver continued to play a central part in that debate.

The Freedom of the Ignored

The Freedom of the Ignored PDF Author: Bill O'Neill
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780997310276
Category : New Mexico
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Poetry. THE FREEDOM OF THE IGNORED, the author's debut poetry book, asks the reader to move beyond the stereotype of a politician and invites the sharing of Senator O'Neill's most intimate details of his life as an elected official. In his poems the author conveys an ongoing journey informed by the complexity of his relationships with other legislators as well as his personal struggle in caring for his lifelong partner who has multiple sclerosis. This book offers a fascinating window into the lives of citizen legislators and the intensity of the decisions they often face as they fulfill their civic responsibility to us as elected officials. "'Here lies a great poet and a great politician.' Coming across a tombstone with such engraved words, most of us might say, 'They buried two people in that grave.' But not if it was Senator Bill O'Neill interred there—an insightful politician with the soul of a poet, as this terrific book shows. We're lucky that Bill's still kicking, and writing, and a long way from needing a tombstone."—Senator Fred Harris "New Mexico State Senator Bill O'Neill is a poet who happens to be a politician and a man with a long history of doing good works for others. He's a poet with a political conscience who doesn't necessarily write political poems. In his fascinating first book, THE FREEDOM OF THE IGNORED, O'Neill writes as a master appreciator about the world of legislative give and take, the culture of temporary hierarchy, the personalities that make a democracy work, and the nobility of those who consider the political arena to be a place as much for integrity to flourish as for movidas to be schemed. He is also a poet who can be honest about both love's survival though suffering and the humor that carries love along. Surely one of the most moving and powerfully made poems I've read in years is 'Disabled, II,' a brilliantly dry and overwhelmingly loving poem about O'Neill's life with his partner who struggles with MS and how they cope and endure. The poem ends 'We have nothing but our strategies, / nothing but each other.'—V.B. Price "Bill uses the pen and touches words the way Ruth homered and Neil Diamond sang and James Brown swayed his hips and spit some of the sweetest BLUES around—carry on brother Bill!"—Jimmy Santiago Baca "When Percy Shelley wrote, in 1821, that poets were the unacknowledged legislators of the world, he hadn't met Bill O'Neill, three term New Mexico State Senator and highly accomplished poet with his first book of poems, THE FREEDOM OF THE IGNORED. "Mr. O'Neill presents an insider's experience of modern day politics and legislation: the exhaustion of all night sessions, the humanity or not of his fellow senators, the necessity for understanding the opposition without demonizing, the difficulty of reaching the Holy Grail of compromise when compassion is pitted against the exercise of raw power, where winning is all that matters, and, of course, the constant fear and hope of will he be a senator after the next election, and then it ends '—one day remaining in the session, / on the Floor, 3 a.m.—he bares his teeth // and is ready to bite you in a split second.' "Yet, Mr. O'Neill finds himself an outsider, a maverick, his not quite acceptable dress, in need of haircut, and always concerned about speaking the truth and wondering if it is not enough of the truth when he faces 'the red meat of their eyes.' With this book of poems, THE FREEDOM OF THE IGNORED, as a fellow legislator says, Senator O'Neill is 'a rock star' in both his public life and his poetry."—Walter Bargen

A Defence of Poetry

A Defence of Poetry PDF Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley
Publisher: MacMillan Publishing Company
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description


Shelley and the Chaos of History

Shelley and the Chaos of History PDF Author: Hugh Roberts
Publisher: Penn State University Press
ISBN:
Category : Political poetry, English
Languages : en
Pages : 552

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Book Description
What is the role of poetry in bringing about change? This book explores that question in the writings of Percy Bysshe Shelley, examining his fascination with the role of contingency in physical and historical processes. In considering the long-standing debate over Shelley's philosophical stance, Hugh Roberts turns to the poet's reading of Lucretius to show how Shelley developed an alternative approach to the issues of history, change, time, and process--one that incorporates the most compelling features of skepticism and idealism. He sheds new light on the importance of De rerum natura to Shelley's thought, and through extended readings of The Revolt of Islam and The Triumph of Life he shows the poet struggling with the intellectual limitations of Romanticism and the Enlightenment and moving beyond them. Roberts then deploys some of the key concepts from the new science of chaos theory to illuminate the wider implications of Shelley's approach. He shows how with the help of this new paradigm much that has seemed baffling about the poet falls into place--most notably a new understanding of political process that allows us to better comprehend Shelley's claim that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." Readings of a number of Shelley's poems and prose works demonstrate the wide-ranging implications of this approach for our understanding of his entire oeuvre. Shelley and the Chaos of History presents a Shelley whose investigations into the nature of history and the role of poetry lead us beyond contemporary deconstructionist-historicist debates. It shows that the complexity of Shelley's engagement with the major philosophical issues of his time has been greatly underestimated.

Unacknowledged Legislation

Unacknowledged Legislation PDF Author: Christopher Hitchens
Publisher: Verso
ISBN: 9781859843833
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
Hitchens provides rich evidence that his own sallies as a political journalist are nourished by a close engagement with a broad sweep of novelists.

A Philosophical View of Reform

A Philosophical View of Reform PDF Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description


A Defence of Poetry

A Defence of Poetry PDF Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 108

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Book Description


Poetry and Commitment

Poetry and Commitment PDF Author: Adrienne Rich
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393079724
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 63

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Book Description
In the traditional of great literary manifestos, Norton is proud to present this powerful work by Adrienne Rich. With passion, critical questioning, and humor, Adrienne Rich suggests how poetry has actually been lived in the world, past and present. In this essay, which was the basis for her speech upon accepting the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, she ranges among themes including poetry's disparagement as "either immoral or unprofitable," the politics of translation, how poetry enters into extreme situations, different poetries as conversations across place and time. In its openness to many voices, Poetry and Commitment offers a perspective on poetry in an ever more divided and violent world. "I hope never to idealize poetry—it has suffered enough from that. Poetry is not a healing lotion, an emotional massage, a kind of linguistic aromatherapy. Neither is it a blueprint, nor an instruction manual, nor a billboard."

The Unacknowledged Legislator

The Unacknowledged Legislator PDF Author: Anna M Evans
Publisher: Independently Published
ISBN: 9781795338516
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 36

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Book Description
A powerful book of poems about that most nonpoetic of topics: politics. In bold, skillful verse, poet and politician Anna M. Evans brings home all of hopes and fears for a nation--and makes those hopes and fears a lyric reality.