Introspection and Contemporary Poetry

by Williamson, Alan

• ISBN13: 9780674462762
• ISBN10: 0674462769
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1984-03-14
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

In this bold defense of so-called confessional poetry, Man Williamson shows us that much of the best writing of the past twenty-five years is about the sense of being or having a self, a knowable personal identity. The difficulties posed by this subject help explain the fertility of contemporary poetic experiment-from the jaggedness of the later work of Robert Lowell to the montage-like methods of John Ashbery, from the visual surrealism of James Wright and W. S. Merwin to the radical plainness of Frank Bidart. Williamson examines these and other poets from a psychological perspective, giving an especially striking reading of Sylvia Plath.Williamson discusses some problems involved in self-analytic poetry-the ambiguous question of universality, the difficulties of objectifying oners"s own personality, and the perhaps greater difficulties of attempting a poetry that is inward but not personal. He takes up the poets individually, characterizing their work and its development and offering balanced, considered judgments on particular poems. Displaying a remarkable grasp of American postwar culture, he places the poetry within the broad setting of contemporary events and dominant national sentiments.The problematic modern self is a much discussed topic. This is the first book to use it as a lens for examining contemporary poetry, and it proves a powerful lens indeed.

Table of Contents

Introduction

"I Am That I Am": The Ethics and Aesthetics of Personal Poetry

Real and Numinous Selves: A Reading of Plath

Language Against Itself: The Middle Generation of Contemporary Poets

"Surrealism" and the Absent Self

The Diffracting Diamond: Ashbery, Romanticism, and Anti-Art

The Future of Personal Poetry

Notes

Credits

Index

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