I turned back to Heaney, like an old trusted friend, to see what I could learn about lyric poetry, and found this excerpt compelling: … there is another kind of adequacy which is specific to lyric poetry. This has to do with the ‘temple inside our hearing’ which the passage of the poem calls into …
One of the most important elements of the stichic (i.e. single-stanza, free-verse) poem is development. One of the most important elements of personal narrative is the ability to touch upon the universal. Stanley Kunitz is an expert at delivering the kind of compact, essential revelations and strong finish to make the experience of reading his …
So much of contemporary poetry seems to be a reaction against sentimentality and self-aggrandizement. To this end, many poets seem to be attempting to remove themselves as a direct presence in their poems. Persona poetry is one device by which an interplay of consciousness can exist without the complications of the troublesome “I.” Yet without …
The following video (via Valerie, via Chris) seems like as good an answer as any to the question of why, in the middle of a high-tech career, I signed up for art school. While this particular piece deals with music, I find it equally applicable to the ongoing question: “why poetry?“ [youtube=http://youtube.com/v/ERbvKrH-GC4 width=”100%”] More Alan …
You Were Supposed to Sing Or Dance While the Music Was Being Played Read More »
There are many taboos in poetry. Some of them cycle in and out of fashion. For example, in the wake of so much confessional poetry of the last few decades, many contemporary poets now spurn an insecure, dramatic speaker in favor of the quiet power that comes from a more detached, objective presentation. In fact, …
“Go forth: amidst our chaffinch flock display Thy plumage of far wonder and heavenward flight!” -Robert Bridges Reading “Poems 1876-89” in The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Fourth Edition), it struck me how much of his verse was not necessarily much more technically interesting than other poets of the Nineteenth century. What remains remarkable are …
