A Field Guide to Contemporary Poetry and Poetics

by Friebert, Stuart; Walker, David; Young, David

• ISBN13: 9780932440778
• ISBN10: 0932440770
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-06-01
• Publisher: Oberlin College Pr

Summary

An anthology of essays by a scintillating company of poets, exploring the terrain of contemporary poetics, the writing process, and the necessity of poetry in the modern world.

Table of Contents

Preface
A Way of Writing	p. 1
Work and Inspiration: Inviting the Muse	p. 7
Poetic Process?	p. 21
Goatfoot, Milktongue, Twinbird: The Psychic Origins of Poetic Form	p. 22
Reflections on the Origins of Poetic Form	p. 32
Portrait of the Writer as a Fat Man: Some Subjective Ideas or Notions on the Care and Feeding of Prose Poems	p. 35
Poetry and Science: The Science of Poetry/The Poetry of Science	p. 44
Gorky Street: Syntax and Context	p. 58
The Two-Tone Line, Blues Ideology, and the Scrap Quilt	p. 65
The Working Line	p. 75
A Response to "The Working Line"	p. 81
Further Reflections on Line and the Poetic Voice	p. 84
The Line	p. 88
Some Thoughts about Lines	p. 91
A Note on Prose, Verse and the Line	p. 92
Some Thoughts about the Line	p. 93
Images and "Images"	p. 95
Notes on the Image: Body and Soul	p. 98
Recognizing the Image as a Form of Intelligence	p. 101
Image and Language	p. 110
Noun/Object/Image	p. 111
Some Remarks on "Literature and Reality"	p. 115
Meanings of Poetry	p. 117
Poetry, Community and Climax	p. 120
Some Notes on the Gazer Within	p. 133
The Bite of the Muskrat: Judging Contemporary Poetry	p. 152
Not Your Flat Tire, My Flat Tire: Transcending the Self in Contemporary Poetry	p. 161
Stone Soup: Contemporary Poetry and the Obsessive Image	p. 171
Language: The Poet as Master and Servant	p. 179
Second Honeymoon: Some Thoughts on Translation	p. 198
Here and There: The Use of Place in Contemporary Poetry	p. 206
Eden and My Generation	p. 223
A Taxable Matter	p. 240
Urgent Masks: An Introduction to John Ashbery's Poetry	p. 243
Poetry, Personality and Death	p. 255
Poetry, Personality and Wholeness: A Response to Galway Kinnell	p. 272
Charles Wright at Oberlin	p. 279
Secrets: Beginning to Write Them Out	p. 306
Lessons in Form	p. 320
Body and Soul: Three Poets on Their Maladies	p. 327
My Insomnia and I	p. 327
Backache, Poemache, and Botz	p. 329
The Closest Work	p. 331
Notes on Contributors	p. 337
Acknowledgments	p. 340
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