Wyatt Prunty
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195057867
- eISBN:
- 9780199855124
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195057867.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter explores the shift in Robert Lowell’s poetry. It argues that the shift was more dialectical than an act of abandonment, meaning that the significance of his later poetics was in ...
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This chapter explores the shift in Robert Lowell’s poetry. It argues that the shift was more dialectical than an act of abandonment, meaning that the significance of his later poetics was in reference to what had preceded it. It then discusses how, in its second phase, Lowell’s poetry coincides in certain important ways with some of the proposals made by the phenomenologist Husserl in his Cartesian Meditations. It shows that Lowell did not copy Husserl’s method. He simply arrived at a point in his life which presented him with many of the same problems Husserl had encountered in a less personal way earlier in this century; and in large part Lowell developed modes of thought in response to those problems that were similar to the modes that Husserl had already described.Less
This chapter explores the shift in Robert Lowell’s poetry. It argues that the shift was more dialectical than an act of abandonment, meaning that the significance of his later poetics was in reference to what had preceded it. It then discusses how, in its second phase, Lowell’s poetry coincides in certain important ways with some of the proposals made by the phenomenologist Husserl in his Cartesian Meditations. It shows that Lowell did not copy Husserl’s method. He simply arrived at a point in his life which presented him with many of the same problems Husserl had encountered in a less personal way earlier in this century; and in large part Lowell developed modes of thought in response to those problems that were similar to the modes that Husserl had already described.
Willard Spiegelman
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195368130
- eISBN:
- 9780199852192
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195368130.003.0018
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter looks at the achievement of Robert Lowell as a poet. It discusses Lowell's rebellions against proper Brahmin Boston and other representatives of authority and his popularization of the ...
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This chapter looks at the achievement of Robert Lowell as a poet. It discusses Lowell's rebellions against proper Brahmin Boston and other representatives of authority and his popularization of the term confessional poetry. It explains that during his career Lowell looked within and without, devising multiple designs for his articulations and that his style and subjects never stopped changing. Lowell's history and his participation in history received equivalent attention, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes sequentially.Less
This chapter looks at the achievement of Robert Lowell as a poet. It discusses Lowell's rebellions against proper Brahmin Boston and other representatives of authority and his popularization of the term confessional poetry. It explains that during his career Lowell looked within and without, devising multiple designs for his articulations and that his style and subjects never stopped changing. Lowell's history and his participation in history received equivalent attention, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes sequentially.
Wyatt Prunty
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195057867
- eISBN:
- 9780199855124
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195057867.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This book is a reading of contemporary American poets using the phenomenological approaches of Heidegger and Husserl. Its argument, begun with the reading of the work of Robert Lowell, is that ...
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This book is a reading of contemporary American poets using the phenomenological approaches of Heidegger and Husserl. Its argument, begun with the reading of the work of Robert Lowell, is that contemporary poets, unlike their modernist predecessors, have adopted a sceptical stance and expressed that stance through the use of literary tropes that liken (simile) rather than tropes that equate (symbol and allegory). The book provides close readings of the works of such poets as Ammons, Nemerov, Justice, Cunningham, Creeley, and others.Less
This book is a reading of contemporary American poets using the phenomenological approaches of Heidegger and Husserl. Its argument, begun with the reading of the work of Robert Lowell, is that contemporary poets, unlike their modernist predecessors, have adopted a sceptical stance and expressed that stance through the use of literary tropes that liken (simile) rather than tropes that equate (symbol and allegory). The book provides close readings of the works of such poets as Ammons, Nemerov, Justice, Cunningham, Creeley, and others.
Calista McRae
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781501750977
- eISBN:
- 9781501750991
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501750977.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter looks at the ways in which being alienated from and encumbered with one's self, of inevitably being caught in a role, can be funny. It discusses how Robert Lowell wants to shed the way ...
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This chapter looks at the ways in which being alienated from and encumbered with one's self, of inevitably being caught in a role, can be funny. It discusses how Robert Lowell wants to shed the way he sounds, the thoughts he gravitates toward, the reputation he has, and the physical brain he fears and depends on. It also mentions Lowell being at odds with his own style as he keeps changing style and undercuts the one he is working in. The chapter refers to Lord Weary's Castle and Day by Day, describing the act of writing about the self that is loaded with one's extreme instability, predictableness, and self-dramatization. It then talks about Lowell's frequent revolutions of form which question the tonalities of humor that change when poetry loses the guarantees and obligations of rhyme and meter.Less
This chapter looks at the ways in which being alienated from and encumbered with one's self, of inevitably being caught in a role, can be funny. It discusses how Robert Lowell wants to shed the way he sounds, the thoughts he gravitates toward, the reputation he has, and the physical brain he fears and depends on. It also mentions Lowell being at odds with his own style as he keeps changing style and undercuts the one he is working in. The chapter refers to Lord Weary's Castle and Day by Day, describing the act of writing about the self that is loaded with one's extreme instability, predictableness, and self-dramatization. It then talks about Lowell's frequent revolutions of form which question the tonalities of humor that change when poetry loses the guarantees and obligations of rhyme and meter.
Wyatt Prunty
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195057867
- eISBN:
- 9780199855124
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195057867.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the difference between contemporary and modern poetry. It then turns to Robert Lowell, arguing that because of his early success as a young ...
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This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the difference between contemporary and modern poetry. It then turns to Robert Lowell, arguing that because of his early success as a young modernist and later success with poetry that diverged from modernist norms, his career is representative of a substantial segment of a younger generation of poets who distanced themselves from the tenets of their modernist elders. It compares the systematic minimalism of Edmund Husserl’s method in his Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology with the factualism of Lowell’s method, which began with the second version of “The Mills of the Kavanaughs”. The chapter also considers the work of Heidegger.Less
This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the difference between contemporary and modern poetry. It then turns to Robert Lowell, arguing that because of his early success as a young modernist and later success with poetry that diverged from modernist norms, his career is representative of a substantial segment of a younger generation of poets who distanced themselves from the tenets of their modernist elders. It compares the systematic minimalism of Edmund Husserl’s method in his Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology with the factualism of Lowell’s method, which began with the second version of “The Mills of the Kavanaughs”. The chapter also considers the work of Heidegger.
Willard Spiegelman
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195368130
- eISBN:
- 9780199852192
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195368130.003.0017
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter examines the letters and correspondence of American poet Robert Lowell. It suggests that though Lowell was not very comfortable with the medium of letter writing, the tone of his letters ...
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This chapter examines the letters and correspondence of American poet Robert Lowell. It suggests that though Lowell was not very comfortable with the medium of letter writing, the tone of his letters was always at least assured and more often assertive with an undertone of competitiveness. The bulk of his letters reveal the heart of a man and the two things that occupied all of his energies: his sense of self and his work, separate but interchangeable.Less
This chapter examines the letters and correspondence of American poet Robert Lowell. It suggests that though Lowell was not very comfortable with the medium of letter writing, the tone of his letters was always at least assured and more often assertive with an undertone of competitiveness. The bulk of his letters reveal the heart of a man and the two things that occupied all of his energies: his sense of self and his work, separate but interchangeable.
John Bayley
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199289905
- eISBN:
- 9780191728471
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199289905.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
This chapter presents a short memoir of Iris Murdoch as lecturer and traveller—and her relations, among other things, to God, to power (and Elias Canetti), and to what Philippa Foot has called ...
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This chapter presents a short memoir of Iris Murdoch as lecturer and traveller—and her relations, among other things, to God, to power (and Elias Canetti), and to what Philippa Foot has called “Natural Goodness”.Less
This chapter presents a short memoir of Iris Murdoch as lecturer and traveller—and her relations, among other things, to God, to power (and Elias Canetti), and to what Philippa Foot has called “Natural Goodness”.
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846311178
- eISBN:
- 9781846314049
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846314049.004
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter explores the poetry of Robert Lowell, specifically his interest in tyrannical personality traits. It suggests that his imaginative engagement with the thoughts and deeds of tyrannical ...
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This chapter explores the poetry of Robert Lowell, specifically his interest in tyrannical personality traits. It suggests that his imaginative engagement with the thoughts and deeds of tyrannical personalities evinces a kind of appalled admiration, complicated at times by a degree of sympathy for their self-destructive tendencies. This is bound up with Lowell's attempts to make sense of the ‘tyrant delusions’ and megalomaniac fantasies to which he himself was susceptible at times of acute mental disturbance. The analysis includes works such as ‘Commander Lowell’, ‘My Last Afternoon with Uncle Devereux Winslow’, and ‘Stalin’.Less
This chapter explores the poetry of Robert Lowell, specifically his interest in tyrannical personality traits. It suggests that his imaginative engagement with the thoughts and deeds of tyrannical personalities evinces a kind of appalled admiration, complicated at times by a degree of sympathy for their self-destructive tendencies. This is bound up with Lowell's attempts to make sense of the ‘tyrant delusions’ and megalomaniac fantasies to which he himself was susceptible at times of acute mental disturbance. The analysis includes works such as ‘Commander Lowell’, ‘My Last Afternoon with Uncle Devereux Winslow’, and ‘Stalin’.
Peter Campion
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226663234
- eISBN:
- 9780226663401
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226663401.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter begins with a discussion of Robert Lowell's public and aesthetic vision as it relates to the use of the forms of biography in poetry. This is followed by sections that discuss four poets ...
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This chapter begins with a discussion of Robert Lowell's public and aesthetic vision as it relates to the use of the forms of biography in poetry. This is followed by sections that discuss four poets from the following generations (David Antin, John Koethe, James McMichael, and Louise Glück), under the aegis of the same concept of "biographical form."Less
This chapter begins with a discussion of Robert Lowell's public and aesthetic vision as it relates to the use of the forms of biography in poetry. This is followed by sections that discuss four poets from the following generations (David Antin, John Koethe, James McMichael, and Louise Glück), under the aegis of the same concept of "biographical form."
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846311178
- eISBN:
- 9781846314049
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846314049.011
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter explores the influence of other poets' works on Seamus Heaney's poetry. Heaney's engagement with the shades of others has enabled him to test and develop his own poetic authority. ...
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This chapter explores the influence of other poets' works on Seamus Heaney's poetry. Heaney's engagement with the shades of others has enabled him to test and develop his own poetic authority. However, he also recognizes that he must banish these shades, for the authority he seeks is ultimately to be achieved by securing creative freedom. The chapter examines Heaney's negotiations Robert Lowell and Geoffrey Hill, which have been revealingly complex and ambivalent, marked by both affirmation and wary circumspection. Envy, identification, alienation, unconscious absorption, and conscious emulation are all in evidence.Less
This chapter explores the influence of other poets' works on Seamus Heaney's poetry. Heaney's engagement with the shades of others has enabled him to test and develop his own poetic authority. However, he also recognizes that he must banish these shades, for the authority he seeks is ultimately to be achieved by securing creative freedom. The chapter examines Heaney's negotiations Robert Lowell and Geoffrey Hill, which have been revealingly complex and ambivalent, marked by both affirmation and wary circumspection. Envy, identification, alienation, unconscious absorption, and conscious emulation are all in evidence.
Matthew Reynolds
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199605712
- eISBN:
- 9780191731617
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199605712.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
‘Every translation is an interpretation’ is a cliché of modern criticism: I take it as the first of my metaphors of translation. Its meaning is uncertain because ‘interpretation’ is itself such a ...
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‘Every translation is an interpretation’ is a cliché of modern criticism: I take it as the first of my metaphors of translation. Its meaning is uncertain because ‘interpretation’ is itself such a hazy word. Nevertheless, for literary translators the idea creates a difficulty because an ‘interpretation’ is always assumed to be less complex than what it is an interpretation of: if translation is interpretation it will be hard for a translation to be as literary as its source. I explore this perplexity through the work of Robert Lowell, Peter Robinson, and Jamie McKendrick, showing how they all espouse the push to interpret (so as to be translating) and turn away from it (so as to be writing poetry). I distinguish between a kind of ‘turning away’ which does violence to the source, and a kind which justifies itself as continuing the source's own imaginative activity.Less
‘Every translation is an interpretation’ is a cliché of modern criticism: I take it as the first of my metaphors of translation. Its meaning is uncertain because ‘interpretation’ is itself such a hazy word. Nevertheless, for literary translators the idea creates a difficulty because an ‘interpretation’ is always assumed to be less complex than what it is an interpretation of: if translation is interpretation it will be hard for a translation to be as literary as its source. I explore this perplexity through the work of Robert Lowell, Peter Robinson, and Jamie McKendrick, showing how they all espouse the push to interpret (so as to be translating) and turn away from it (so as to be writing poetry). I distinguish between a kind of ‘turning away’ which does violence to the source, and a kind which justifies itself as continuing the source's own imaginative activity.
Dan Chiasson
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226103815
- eISBN:
- 9780226103846
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226103846.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
The work of Robert Lowell is marked by its pronounced use of autobiographical facts and by a profound, counterpointed skepticism about the poetic use of such facts. His career reads like an ...
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The work of Robert Lowell is marked by its pronounced use of autobiographical facts and by a profound, counterpointed skepticism about the poetic use of such facts. His career reads like an alternating conjuring, and subsequent repudiation, of the personal life. Lowell's use of autobiographical facts sparked an immediate scandal; among his contemporaries it was felt that excessive factuality violated the decorum of lyric poetry, a standard that modernism, with its emphasis on poetic impersonality, had reinforced. Later in Lowell's career, his critics' indictment of his excessive facticity seems to have been partly internalized—indeed his sublimely remorseful last poem, “Epilogue,” states the case against facticity most eloquently. This chapter examines how Lowell makes autobiography often literally hard to see. It focuses on three of his works: “Father's Bedroom,” “Blizzard in Cambridge,” and “For the Union Dead.”Less
The work of Robert Lowell is marked by its pronounced use of autobiographical facts and by a profound, counterpointed skepticism about the poetic use of such facts. His career reads like an alternating conjuring, and subsequent repudiation, of the personal life. Lowell's use of autobiographical facts sparked an immediate scandal; among his contemporaries it was felt that excessive factuality violated the decorum of lyric poetry, a standard that modernism, with its emphasis on poetic impersonality, had reinforced. Later in Lowell's career, his critics' indictment of his excessive facticity seems to have been partly internalized—indeed his sublimely remorseful last poem, “Epilogue,” states the case against facticity most eloquently. This chapter examines how Lowell makes autobiography often literally hard to see. It focuses on three of his works: “Father's Bedroom,” “Blizzard in Cambridge,” and “For the Union Dead.”
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846311178
- eISBN:
- 9781846314049
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846314049.003
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter explores the poetry of Robert Lowell. It argues that the praise heaped on Lowell's work presents him as a major poet of his own time but a minor figure of ours. Lowell's diminishing ...
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This chapter explores the poetry of Robert Lowell. It argues that the praise heaped on Lowell's work presents him as a major poet of his own time but a minor figure of ours. Lowell's diminishing stature among contemporary readers could be attributed to the shift in expectations and tastes of poetry readers away from the kind of poetry that Lowell is seen to represent, and the collapse of a belief in, or appetite for, the poet as cultural spokesperson — and this, for better or worse, is a salient aspect of Lowell's public image. The analysis includes the poems ‘The March’ and ‘Waking Early Sunday Morning’, his collections, and his many other works adapted from literary forebears.Less
This chapter explores the poetry of Robert Lowell. It argues that the praise heaped on Lowell's work presents him as a major poet of his own time but a minor figure of ours. Lowell's diminishing stature among contemporary readers could be attributed to the shift in expectations and tastes of poetry readers away from the kind of poetry that Lowell is seen to represent, and the collapse of a belief in, or appetite for, the poet as cultural spokesperson — and this, for better or worse, is a salient aspect of Lowell's public image. The analysis includes the poems ‘The March’ and ‘Waking Early Sunday Morning’, his collections, and his many other works adapted from literary forebears.
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846311178
- eISBN:
- 9781846314049
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846314049.005
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter explores the poetry of Robert Lowell. It discusses how his verse exposes family members, fellow writers, and historical and contemporary figures to unsparing and often unflattering ...
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This chapter explores the poetry of Robert Lowell. It discusses how his verse exposes family members, fellow writers, and historical and contemporary figures to unsparing and often unflattering scrutiny. However, Lowell himself bears the brunt of such harsh measures more frequently and more severely — the destructive impulse at work in the verse is always also a self-destructive one. His poetry's social or political vision also refuses any neat distinction between destructive and reparative potential. The analysis includes works such as ‘Leader of the Left’, ‘Marcus Cato 95–46 B.C.’, and ‘The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket’.Less
This chapter explores the poetry of Robert Lowell. It discusses how his verse exposes family members, fellow writers, and historical and contemporary figures to unsparing and often unflattering scrutiny. However, Lowell himself bears the brunt of such harsh measures more frequently and more severely — the destructive impulse at work in the verse is always also a self-destructive one. His poetry's social or political vision also refuses any neat distinction between destructive and reparative potential. The analysis includes works such as ‘Leader of the Left’, ‘Marcus Cato 95–46 B.C.’, and ‘The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket’.
Harris Feinsod
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190682002
- eISBN:
- 9780190682033
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190682002.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter reveals exchanges among Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Derek Walcott, and Heberto Padilla. Bishop’s relation to the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) inflects her Brazil poems, ...
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This chapter reveals exchanges among Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Derek Walcott, and Heberto Padilla. Bishop’s relation to the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) inflects her Brazil poems, described here not as self-conscious critiques of travel literature but as negotiations of liberal ideas about international class politics and poverty, revealed in elaborate sound patterns. Transfiguring middle-generation formalism, Walcott lyricized his increasingly vexed relation to the hemispheric tours he attended with support from the CCF. Actively influenced by Lowell’s psycho-political stance, Padilla’s critiques of revolutionary Cuba aggravated a crisis of cultural permissiveness in the state bureaucracy known as “the Padilla Affair” after the poet was imprisoned and forced to recite a coerced confession as a condition of his release. Lyric sequences by Bishop, Lowell, Walcott, and Padilla sought new strategies of hemispheric cultural diplomacy by enacting crises of confessional lyric formalism as an aesthetic ideology in service to anticommunist policy.Less
This chapter reveals exchanges among Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Derek Walcott, and Heberto Padilla. Bishop’s relation to the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) inflects her Brazil poems, described here not as self-conscious critiques of travel literature but as negotiations of liberal ideas about international class politics and poverty, revealed in elaborate sound patterns. Transfiguring middle-generation formalism, Walcott lyricized his increasingly vexed relation to the hemispheric tours he attended with support from the CCF. Actively influenced by Lowell’s psycho-political stance, Padilla’s critiques of revolutionary Cuba aggravated a crisis of cultural permissiveness in the state bureaucracy known as “the Padilla Affair” after the poet was imprisoned and forced to recite a coerced confession as a condition of his release. Lyric sequences by Bishop, Lowell, Walcott, and Padilla sought new strategies of hemispheric cultural diplomacy by enacting crises of confessional lyric formalism as an aesthetic ideology in service to anticommunist policy.
Christopher Grobe
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781479829170
- eISBN:
- 9781479839599
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479829170.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Television
Today, we may know confessional poetry as a set of texts that are printed in books, but in its time it was also a performance genre. This chapter demonstrates how the performance of poems—in the ...
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Today, we may know confessional poetry as a set of texts that are printed in books, but in its time it was also a performance genre. This chapter demonstrates how the performance of poems—in the privacy of the poet’s study, at public poetry readings, and in the studios of recorded literature companies—shaped this genre, determined its tactics, and influenced its style. An extended comparison of Robert Lowell and Allen Ginsberg shows that breath was a key medium for confessional poets, and a study of Anne Sexton’s career—both on the page and at the podium—shows how she “breathed back” dead poems in live performance. Throughout, this chapter focuses on the feelings of embarrassment confessional poetry raised, and the uses to which poets could put such feelings. It also highlights contemporary trends in “performance” and their impact on confessional poets—e.g., Anne Sexton’s debt to the acting theories of Konstantin Stanislavsky and to Method acting as theorized by American director Lee Strasberg.Less
Today, we may know confessional poetry as a set of texts that are printed in books, but in its time it was also a performance genre. This chapter demonstrates how the performance of poems—in the privacy of the poet’s study, at public poetry readings, and in the studios of recorded literature companies—shaped this genre, determined its tactics, and influenced its style. An extended comparison of Robert Lowell and Allen Ginsberg shows that breath was a key medium for confessional poets, and a study of Anne Sexton’s career—both on the page and at the podium—shows how she “breathed back” dead poems in live performance. Throughout, this chapter focuses on the feelings of embarrassment confessional poetry raised, and the uses to which poets could put such feelings. It also highlights contemporary trends in “performance” and their impact on confessional poets—e.g., Anne Sexton’s debt to the acting theories of Konstantin Stanislavsky and to Method acting as theorized by American director Lee Strasberg.
Richard Thomas
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195389579
- eISBN:
- 9780199866496
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195389579.003.0019
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter is concerned with intertextual aspects of civil war literature and with the way such intertexts complicate and intensify the aesthetic response to the suffering and loss associated with ...
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This chapter is concerned with intertextual aspects of civil war literature and with the way such intertexts complicate and intensify the aesthetic response to the suffering and loss associated with civil discord, examining a disparate group of songs and poems that share a universalizing strategy for representing contemporary civil wars: works reflecting civil war in seventeenth‐century England, nineteenth‐century America, and twentieth‐century Spain. Authors considered include John Denham, Bob Dylan, Abraham Cowley, Andrew Marvell, Herman Melville, William Cullen Bryant, Richard Henry Stoddard, Robert Lowell, Federico García Lorca, Geoffrey Parsons, and Miklós Radnóti. This strategy is particularly salutary given the need for a literary response to reach readers on (or sympathetic to) both sides; otherwise it risks being propaganda.Less
This chapter is concerned with intertextual aspects of civil war literature and with the way such intertexts complicate and intensify the aesthetic response to the suffering and loss associated with civil discord, examining a disparate group of songs and poems that share a universalizing strategy for representing contemporary civil wars: works reflecting civil war in seventeenth‐century England, nineteenth‐century America, and twentieth‐century Spain. Authors considered include John Denham, Bob Dylan, Abraham Cowley, Andrew Marvell, Herman Melville, William Cullen Bryant, Richard Henry Stoddard, Robert Lowell, Federico García Lorca, Geoffrey Parsons, and Miklós Radnóti. This strategy is particularly salutary given the need for a literary response to reach readers on (or sympathetic to) both sides; otherwise it risks being propaganda.
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846312182
- eISBN:
- 9781846315534
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846315534.003
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter examines the validity of American poet Robert Frost's aphorism that poetry is what gets lost or left out in poem translation. It discusses the view that the effects of form, structure ...
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This chapter examines the validity of American poet Robert Frost's aphorism that poetry is what gets lost or left out in poem translation. It discusses the view that the effects of form, structure and meaning in the original poem cannot reconstituted in the translated poem using the materials of another set of interrelations from a different culture and suggests that the poetic quality of the translation would be something created entirely in the terms of the translating poet's skills as a composer of verse in the receiver language. This chapter also considers the views of Robert Lowell on poetry translation and his critic Vladimir Nabokov who claims that poetry translation is morally wrong and a cruel disrespect for the readers.Less
This chapter examines the validity of American poet Robert Frost's aphorism that poetry is what gets lost or left out in poem translation. It discusses the view that the effects of form, structure and meaning in the original poem cannot reconstituted in the translated poem using the materials of another set of interrelations from a different culture and suggests that the poetic quality of the translation would be something created entirely in the terms of the translating poet's skills as a composer of verse in the receiver language. This chapter also considers the views of Robert Lowell on poetry translation and his critic Vladimir Nabokov who claims that poetry translation is morally wrong and a cruel disrespect for the readers.
Stephen James
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846311178
- eISBN:
- 9781846314049
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846314049
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
What is the relationship between poetry and power? Should poetry be considered a mode of authority or an impotent medium? And why is it that the modern poets most commonly regarded as authoritative ...
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What is the relationship between poetry and power? Should poetry be considered a mode of authority or an impotent medium? And why is it that the modern poets most commonly regarded as authoritative are precisely those whose works wrestle with a sense of artistic inadequacy? Such questions lie at the heart of this book, prompting fresh insights into three of the most important poets of recent decades: Robert Lowell, Geoffrey Hill, and Seamus Heaney. Through attentive close readings, the author shows how their responsiveness to matters of political and cultural import lends weight to the idea of poetry as authoritative utterance — but also how each is exercised by a sense of the limitations and liabilities of language itself.Less
What is the relationship between poetry and power? Should poetry be considered a mode of authority or an impotent medium? And why is it that the modern poets most commonly regarded as authoritative are precisely those whose works wrestle with a sense of artistic inadequacy? Such questions lie at the heart of this book, prompting fresh insights into three of the most important poets of recent decades: Robert Lowell, Geoffrey Hill, and Seamus Heaney. Through attentive close readings, the author shows how their responsiveness to matters of political and cultural import lends weight to the idea of poetry as authoritative utterance — but also how each is exercised by a sense of the limitations and liabilities of language itself.
Paul Muldoon
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748681327
- eISBN:
- 9781474422239
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748681327.003.0014
- Subject:
- Literature, Prose (inc. letters, diaries)
This chapter offers a close reading of Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘Armadillo’ and Robert Lowell’s ‘Skunk Hour’ in the light of the recently published letters between the two poets, as well as Bishop’s ...
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This chapter offers a close reading of Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘Armadillo’ and Robert Lowell’s ‘Skunk Hour’ in the light of the recently published letters between the two poets, as well as Bishop’s correspondence with The New Yorker. It looks at letters as ‘the other life that [a poem] might have had’ and a poem as ‘the other life that [letters’ might have had’, concluding that the relationship between Lowell and Bishop was often less benign than we’ve led ourselves to believe.Less
This chapter offers a close reading of Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘Armadillo’ and Robert Lowell’s ‘Skunk Hour’ in the light of the recently published letters between the two poets, as well as Bishop’s correspondence with The New Yorker. It looks at letters as ‘the other life that [a poem] might have had’ and a poem as ‘the other life that [letters’ might have had’, concluding that the relationship between Lowell and Bishop was often less benign than we’ve led ourselves to believe.