Poetry in Theory: An Anthology 1900-2000 / Edition 1

by Jon Cook

Overview

Poetry in Theory: An Anthology 1900-2000 brings together key critical and theoretical texts from the twentieth century which have animated debates about modern poetry.

• Helps readers to think critically about the nature of modern poetry, and to engage with broader questions about aesthetics, language, culture and imagination.
• Includes texts by poets, critics, theorists and philosophers, ranging from Ezra Pound to Jacques Derrida.
• Texts in translation from French, German, Spanish, Italian and Russian are presented alongside the work of writers from Britain, Ireland, the United States, Africa, India and the Caribbean.
• Each text is accompanied by a brief biographical and thematic introduction.
• A system of cross-referencing points up significant connections and disagreements between the texts.
• Includes a thematic index and chronology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780631225546
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	08/06/2004
Series:	Blackwell Anthologies
Pages:	672
Product dimensions:	6.84(w) x 9.72(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Jon Cook is Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of East Anglia and a Senior Lecturer in the Department of American and English Literature. His published work includes Romanticism and Ideology (1981), William Hazlitt: Selected Writings (1998) and numerous essays on Romanticism, critical and cultural theory, and contemporary writing.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction 1

Part I 1900–1920 27

1 W. B. Yeats

The Symbolism of Poetry (1900) 29

2 Rainer Maria Rilke

Three Letters (1903, 1907, 1925) 35

3 Sigmund Freud

Creative Writers and Day-dreaming (1908) 41

4 T. E. Hulme

Romanticism and Classicism (1911) 47

5 Filippo Marinetti

Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature (1912) 56

6 Rabindranath Tagore

Poet Yeats (1912) 61

7 Edward Thomas

Robert Frost (1914) 65

8 Amy Lowell

Poetry as a Spoken Art (1917) 69

9 Guillaume Apollinaire

The New Spirit and the Poets (1917) 75

10 Ezra Pound

A Retrospect (1918) 83

11 Tristan Tzara

Note on Poetry (1919) 91

12 Velimir Khlebnikov

On Poetry and On Contemporary Poetry (1919, 1920) 94

13 T. S. Eliot

Tradition and the Individual Talent and Reflections on Contemporary Poetry (1919) 97

14 D. H. Lawrence

Preface to New Poems (1920) 106

15 William Carlos Williams

Prologue to Kora in Hell (1920) 111

16 Ernest Fenollosa

The Chinese Written Character as the Medium for Poetry (1920) 116

Part II 1920–1940 129

17 Mina Loy

Modern Poetry (1925) 131

18 Hart Crane

General Aims and Theories (1925) 135

19 Langston Hughes

The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain (1926) 139

20 Vladimir Mayakovsky

How Are Verses Made? (1926) 144

21 I. A. Richards

Science and Poetry (1926) 152

22 Robert Graves and Laura Riding

A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927) 160

23 William Empson

Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930) 169

24 Kenneth Burke

The Poetic Process (1931) 175

25 Paul Éluard and André Breton

Poetry’s Evidence and The Automatic Message (1932, 1933) 182

26 F. R. Leavis

New Bearings in English Poetry (1932) 192

27 Federico García Lorca

Play and Theory of the Duende (1933) 201

28 Gertrude Stein

Poetry and Grammar (1935) 208

29 Marina Tsvetaeva

Poets with History and Poets without History (1935) 215

30 Walter Benjamin

Modernism (1938) 223

31 Robert Frost

The Figure a Poem Makes (1939) 234

32 Paul Valéry

Poetry and Abstract Thought (1939) 237

Part III 1940–1960 245

33 Martin Heidegger

Three Lectures on Poetry (1941, 1944, 1946) 247

34 Wallace Stevens

The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words (1942) 256

35 Randall Jarrell

The End of the Line (1942) 268

36 Aimé Césaire

Poetry and Knowledge (1945) 275

37 Charles Olson

Projective Verse (1950) 288

38 Louis Zukofsky

A Statement for Poetry (1950) 296

39 Roland Barthes

Is There Any Poetic Writing? (1953) 301

40 W. K. Wimsatt

The Concrete Universal (1954) 307

41 Jacques Lacan

Excerpts from Seminars and Papers (1954, 1955, 1957) 315

42 Donald Davie

What is Modern Poetry and The Reek of the Human (1955)? 323

43 Maurice Blanchot

Mallarmé’s Experience (1955) 330

44 Philip Larkin

The Pleasure Principle and Writing Poems (1957, 1964) 337

45 Theodor Adorno

On Lyric Poetry and Society (1957) 342

46 Roman Jakobson

Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics (1960) 350

Part IV 1960–1980 359

47 Edward Dorn

What I See in The Maximus Poems (1961) 361

48 Frank O’Hara

Personism: A Manifesto (1961) 367

49 Allen Ginsberg

When the Mode of the Music Changes and Abstraction in Poetry (1961, 1962) 370

50 W. H. Auden

The Poet and the City (1962) 377

51 Imamu Baraka

Hunting Is Not Those Heads on the Wall and State/Meant (1964, 1965) 385

52 Robert Creeley

A Sense of Measure (1964) 390

53 John Ashbery

The Invisible Avant-Garde (1968) 393

54 Barbara Herrnstein Smith

Closure and Anti-closure in Modern Poetry (1968) 399

55 Gerard Genette

Poetic Language, Poetics of Language (1969) 408

56 Paul de Man

Intentional Structure of the Romantic Image (1970) 413

57 Derek Walcott

The Muse of History (1974) 420

58 Julia Kristeva

The Ethics of Linguistics (1974) 437

59 Hans Magnus Enzensberger

A Modest Proposal (1976) 447

60 Veronica Forrest-Thomson

Continuity in Language (1978) 456

61 Geoffrey Hill

Poetry as ‘‘Menace’’ and ‘‘Atonement’’ (1978) 464

Part V 1980–2000 475

62 Shoshana Felman

The Poe-etic Effect (1980) 477

63 Charles Bernstein

The Dollar Value of Poetry (1983) 491

64 Czeslaw Milosz

On Hope (1983) 494

65 Adrienne Rich

Blood, Bread, and Poetry (1984) 503

66 Richard Poirier

Prologue: The Deed of Writing (1987) 514

67 Jeremy Cronin

‘‘Even under the Rine of Terror ’’ (1988) 523

68 Jacques Derrida

Che cos’è la poesia? (1988) 533

69 Thomas Yingling

The Homosexual Lyric (1990) 538

70 Marjorie Perloff

Avant-Garde or Endgame? (1991) 547

71 Eavan Boland

The Woman Poet: Her Dilemma (1995) 559

72 Seamus Heaney

The Redress of Poetry (1995) 567

73 Helen Vendler

Introduction, Soul Says (1995) 574

Chronology 581

Select Bibliography 619

Thematic Index 622

Index 624

Editorial Reviews

"Poetry has always provided the most severe test for theory, and this rich, wide-ranging anthology shows just how fruitful the encounter between the two has been. Jon Cook's excellent collection should prove a salutary lesson for all those who assume, utterly against the evidence, that literary theory has had nothing to say about the shape of the sentences and the texture of the verse."
—Terry Eagleton, University of Manchester

From the Publisher