Jahan Ramazani
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226083735
- eISBN:
- 9780226083421
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226083421.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
In homage to the long fellowship between poetry and song, modern and contemporary writers often title their poems “songs.” This book examines how they make use of song lyrics and song forms, quote ...
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In homage to the long fellowship between poetry and song, modern and contemporary writers often title their poems “songs.” This book examines how they make use of song lyrics and song forms, quote songs extensively, and even envy song’s collective performance and what Roland Barthes called the singer’s vocal grain. Poetry infuses itself with rock and roll, opera, the blues, jazz, rap, reggae, African praise song, and funeral dirges, among other forms. At the same time, it also distinguishes itself as literary verse— by virtue of its visual layout, self-critique, self-interruption, and semantic complexity. After exploring poetry and song in the work of postcolonial and black British poets such as Jean Binta Breeze and Patience Agbabi, the chapter turns to twenty-first-century American experimental poets such as Rae Armantrout, Michael Palmer, and Tracie Morris, and lyric poets such as Frank Bidart, Kevin Young, Terrance Hayes, and Paul Muldoon.Less
In homage to the long fellowship between poetry and song, modern and contemporary writers often title their poems “songs.” This book examines how they make use of song lyrics and song forms, quote songs extensively, and even envy song’s collective performance and what Roland Barthes called the singer’s vocal grain. Poetry infuses itself with rock and roll, opera, the blues, jazz, rap, reggae, African praise song, and funeral dirges, among other forms. At the same time, it also distinguishes itself as literary verse— by virtue of its visual layout, self-critique, self-interruption, and semantic complexity. After exploring poetry and song in the work of postcolonial and black British poets such as Jean Binta Breeze and Patience Agbabi, the chapter turns to twenty-first-century American experimental poets such as Rae Armantrout, Michael Palmer, and Tracie Morris, and lyric poets such as Frank Bidart, Kevin Young, Terrance Hayes, and Paul Muldoon.
Jahan Ramazani
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226083735
- eISBN:
- 9780226083421
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226083421.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
What is poetry? Often it is understood as a largely self-enclosed verbal system— “suspended from any mutual interaction with alien discourse,” in the words of Mikhail Bakhtin. But this book reveals ...
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What is poetry? Often it is understood as a largely self-enclosed verbal system— “suspended from any mutual interaction with alien discourse,” in the words of Mikhail Bakhtin. But this book reveals modern and contemporary poetry’s dialogue with other genres and discourses, especially the novel, theory, the law, news, prayer, and song. Poetry generates rich new possibilities, it argues, by absorbing and contending with its near verbal relatives. Exploring a heterogeneous array of English-language poets— from Gerard Manley Hopkins, W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, and William Carlos Williams to Frank O’Hara, Paul Muldoon, Rae Armantrout, Lorna Goodison, M. NourbeSe Philip, and many others— this book shows that poetry both blends with other genres and distinguishes itself from them: the realism of the novel and the news’s empiricism, the abstractions of theory and the law’s social ordering, the ritualism of prayer and the voice-engrained melodies of song. In close readings of famous and little-known poems, the book demonstrates an interpretive practice that combines dialogic analysis, in this case of poetry’s absorption of closely related discursive forms, with genre-specific analysis of poetry’s persisting awareness of its difference. Even as poetry stretches to incorporate various genres, it puts on display the compression, dense figuration, self-reflexivity, and sonic and visual form by which it differentiates itself from the others it metabolizes. In this book, the first to trace poetry’s interactions with its discursive cousins, we understand what poetry is by closely examining its interplay with what it is not.Less
What is poetry? Often it is understood as a largely self-enclosed verbal system— “suspended from any mutual interaction with alien discourse,” in the words of Mikhail Bakhtin. But this book reveals modern and contemporary poetry’s dialogue with other genres and discourses, especially the novel, theory, the law, news, prayer, and song. Poetry generates rich new possibilities, it argues, by absorbing and contending with its near verbal relatives. Exploring a heterogeneous array of English-language poets— from Gerard Manley Hopkins, W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, and William Carlos Williams to Frank O’Hara, Paul Muldoon, Rae Armantrout, Lorna Goodison, M. NourbeSe Philip, and many others— this book shows that poetry both blends with other genres and distinguishes itself from them: the realism of the novel and the news’s empiricism, the abstractions of theory and the law’s social ordering, the ritualism of prayer and the voice-engrained melodies of song. In close readings of famous and little-known poems, the book demonstrates an interpretive practice that combines dialogic analysis, in this case of poetry’s absorption of closely related discursive forms, with genre-specific analysis of poetry’s persisting awareness of its difference. Even as poetry stretches to incorporate various genres, it puts on display the compression, dense figuration, self-reflexivity, and sonic and visual form by which it differentiates itself from the others it metabolizes. In this book, the first to trace poetry’s interactions with its discursive cousins, we understand what poetry is by closely examining its interplay with what it is not.
David Fearn
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199546510
- eISBN:
- 9780191594922
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199546510.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This introductory chapter outlines the rationale and scope of the book, whose aim is to open out appreciation of the significance of Aeginetan poetry, culture, and society as widely as possible, both ...
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This introductory chapter outlines the rationale and scope of the book, whose aim is to open out appreciation of the significance of Aeginetan poetry, culture, and society as widely as possible, both within the immediate contexts and concerns of Aeginetan aristocrats, and through the history of fifth-century Greece. Main subjects for discussion are poetic articulations of local myth, economics, politics and administration, ritual and cult, art, and historiography. A detailed discussion of methodology and approaches is presented together with an overview of subsequent chapters.Less
This introductory chapter outlines the rationale and scope of the book, whose aim is to open out appreciation of the significance of Aeginetan poetry, culture, and society as widely as possible, both within the immediate contexts and concerns of Aeginetan aristocrats, and through the history of fifth-century Greece. Main subjects for discussion are poetic articulations of local myth, economics, politics and administration, ritual and cult, art, and historiography. A detailed discussion of methodology and approaches is presented together with an overview of subsequent chapters.
Daniel Karlin
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199213986
- eISBN:
- 9780191803314
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199213986.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, Criticism/Theory
This introduction focuses on two representations of the poet as ‘singer’: one in material form and the other in a book. More specifically, it looks at Homer, an emblematic figure of the greatest of ...
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This introduction focuses on two representations of the poet as ‘singer’: one in material form and the other in a book. More specifically, it looks at Homer, an emblematic figure of the greatest of all ‘singers’, playing his lyre at the centre of the frieze of poets on the Albert Memorial in London. Found at the Albert Memorial is the seated statue of the Prince, which has two ornamental features: the mosaic in the gable of the canopy and the frieze of sculpture on the podium. The significance of these two ornamental features is examined. To better understand how song became simply a metaphor for poetry, the discussion turns to the forgotten American poet, James Gowdy Clark, whose portrait is etched in the 1886 book Poetry and Song.Less
This introduction focuses on two representations of the poet as ‘singer’: one in material form and the other in a book. More specifically, it looks at Homer, an emblematic figure of the greatest of all ‘singers’, playing his lyre at the centre of the frieze of poets on the Albert Memorial in London. Found at the Albert Memorial is the seated statue of the Prince, which has two ornamental features: the mosaic in the gable of the canopy and the frieze of sculpture on the podium. The significance of these two ornamental features is examined. To better understand how song became simply a metaphor for poetry, the discussion turns to the forgotten American poet, James Gowdy Clark, whose portrait is etched in the 1886 book Poetry and Song.
