Author: John A.F. Hopkins Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing ISBN: 1527549100 Category : Poetry Languages : en Pages : 255
Book Description
With something of a poetry renaissance currently under way worldwide, there is now, more than ever, a need for a solidly-based methodology for interpreting poems: something more empirical than traditional âlit-critâ approaches, and something more linguistically-informed than the version of âpostmodernismâ rampant in certain Anglophone universities. The latter approach, which tends to allow the individual reader to do what he/she likes with a poetic text, is inadequate to interpret modernist poetry, whose English-language precursors may be found in the late Romantics; its pioneers were already writing (in France) as early as 1840. What is so different about the modernists? Most importantly, their works are monumental, in that they are strongly resistant to deconstruction. Contributing to this resistance is the fact that they are built around two deep-level propositions, each of which generates a set of indirectly-signifying images, sharing the same internal structure, but having a different vocabulary. Thus, they do not signify according to linear narrative, but according to these propositionsâand the relation between themâwhich may be reconstructed by a careful comparison of images on the textual surface. Every textâas subject-signârefers to an intertextual object-sign, which is usually another poem, but may also be a film or other form of art. Mediating between these two signs is their reader-constructed interpretant, which completes the semiotic triad. As this book shows, the novelty of this sign is thrown into relief by the contrast it makes with a lexical counterpart from the readerâs experience, which differs from the interpretant in structure. The bookâs inclusion of French and Japanese, as well as English poems, shows that deep-level signifying mechanisms may well be universal, with considerable research and pedagogical implications.
Author: Theo Hermans Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317637860 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 216
Book Description
First published in 1982, this book provides a descriptive and comparative study of some of the fundamental structural aspects of modernist poetic writing in English, French and German in the first decades of the twentieth century. The work concerns itself primarily with basic structural elements and techniques and the assumptions that underlie and determine the modernist mode of poetic writing. Particular attention is paid to the theories developed by authors and to the essential ‘principles of construction’ that shape the structure of their poetry. Considering the work of a number of modernist poets, Theo Hermans argues that the various widely divergent forms and manifestations of modernistic poetry writing can only be properly understood as part of one general trend.
Author: JOHN A. F. HOPKINS Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing ISBN: 9781527546257 Category : Languages : en Pages : 245
Book Description
With something of a poetry renaissance currently under way worldwide, there is now, more than ever, a need for a solidly-based methodology for interpreting poems: something more empirical than traditional â ~lit-critâ (TM) approaches, and something more linguistically-informed than the version of â ~postmodernismâ (TM) rampant in Anglophone universities. The latter approach, which tends to allow the individual reader to do what he/she likes with a poetic text, is inadequate to interpret modernist poetry, whose English-language precursors may be found in the late Romantics; its pioneers were already writing (in France) as early as 1840. What is so different about the modernists? Most importantly, their works are monumental, in that they are strongly resistant to deconstruction. Contributing to this resistance is the fact that they are built around two deep-level propositions, each of which generates a set of indirectly-signifying images, sharing the same internal structure, but having a different vocabulary. Thus, they do not signify according to linear narrative, but according to these propositionsâ "and the relation between themâ "which may be reconstructed by a careful comparison of images on the textual surface. Every textâ "as subject-signâ "refers to an intertextual object-sign, which is usually another poem, but may also be a film or other form of art. Mediating between these two signs is their reader-constructed interpretant, which completes the semiotic triad. As this book shows, the novelty of this sign is thrown into relief by the contrast it makes with a counterpart from the readerâ (TM)s experience, which differs from the interpretant in structure. The bookâ (TM)s inclusion of French and Japanese, as well as English poems, shows that deep-level signifying mechanisms may well be universal, with considerable research and pedagogical implications.
Author: Pierre Lagayette Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press ISBN: 9780838636985 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 196
Book Description
This volume consists of a collection of essays, mostly by European scholars, on the ways modern poets have dealt with the crucial concept of "difference" in their practice of poetic composition. What is examined here through the works of Stevens, Roethke, Yeats, Pound, Ammons, Graham, Laviera, Reznikoff, and Kinsella is the range of strategies used in poetry to convey a sense of disruption, estrangement, disturbance, indeterminacy. The aim is to track down the many kinds of "difference" that these poets' works illustrate and the challenges they pose to the critic.
Author: Willard Spiegelman Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0190291834 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 256
Book Description
Although readers of prose fiction sometimes find descriptive passages superfluous or boring, description itself is often the most important aspect of a poem. This book examines how a variety of contemporary poets use description in their work. Description has been the great burden of poetry. How do poets see the world? How do they look at it? What do they look for? Is description an end in itself, or a means of expressing desire? Ezra Pound demanded that a poem should represent the external world as objectively and directly as possible, and William Butler Yeats, in his introduction to The Oxford Book of Modern Verse (1936), said that he and his generation were rebelling against, inter alia, "irrelevant descriptions of nature" in the work of their predecessors. The poets in this book, however, who are distinct in many ways from one another, all observe the external world of nature or the reflected world of art, and make relevant poems out of their observations. This study deals with the crisp, elegant work of Charles Tomlinson, the swirling baroque poetry of Amy Clampitt, the metaphysical meditations of Charles Wright from a position in his backyard, the weather reports and landscapes of John Ashbery, and the "new way of looking" that Jorie Graham proposes to explore in her increasingly fragmented poems. All of these poets, plus others (Gary Snyder, Theodore Weiss, Irving Feldman, Richard Howard) who are dealt with more briefly, attend to what Wallace Stevens, in a memorable phrase, calls "the way things look each day." The ordinariness of daily reality is the beginning of the poets' own idiosyncratic, indeed unique, visions and styles.
Author: Richard Wolff Publisher: AuthorHouse ISBN: 1420854445 Category : Poetry Languages : en Pages : 99
Book Description
Everyone's Poetry Book A book that shows every poetry lover that modern poetry can be understandable Why should the lover of the beauty of language put up with unintelligibility in his own native tongue? Why should the reader of poetry face exile in searching for the best words in their best order? In reading Richard Wolff, you will see that "only the lover of language, someone on intimate terms with her impervious ways, can begin to know what 'the best words' and the 'best order' may be." -John McCabe. You'll thus note that Richard Wolff prides himself on his clarity, concreteness, and adherence to the discipline of poetic structure-virtues much ignored in current literary circles. At their best moments, the results of the poems of this collection "create impressions of a voice of startling spontaneity." In Richard Wolff's pages, "Though we cannot always decipher why or how it happens, we rely on poetry to increase our knowledge of ourselves and to confirm us in the truth of our experience." "...there courses through these poems one primary passion that serves to bind together and direct all the others: the poet's passion for Beauty." If therefore you can reach for only one book of modern poetry from your bookshelf, reach for Everyone's Poetry Book. In it you will find reward and fulfillment. Mr. Wolff spent most of his adult working life serving our nation in federal publishing, managing four Department of Defense printing plants in a 14 state Midwestern area. He and his wife, Nancy, live in northeast Illinois in Lindenhurst, close to the Illinois/Wisconsin border and have 17 natural born children: 12 girls and 5 boys.
Author: Cleanth Brooks Publisher: UNC Press Books ISBN: 1469639386 Category : Poetry Languages : en Pages : 224
Book Description
This study presents the revolutionary thesis that English poetry and poetic theory were deflected from their richest line of development by the scientific rationalism that came with Hobbes and has continued its restrictive influence to the present day, when such poets as Yeats and Eliot have begun the reestablishment of the earlier line of development. Originally published in 1939. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.