The Secret of Poetry: Essays

by JARMAN MARK

• ISBN13: 9781586540050
• ISBN10: 158654005X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-06-01
• Publisher: Consortium Book Sales & Dist

Summary

First collection of literary essays by a founder and leading poet-critic of the New Narrative/New Formalist revival. Essays explore the relationship between poetry and religion, the legacies of Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, E. A. Robinson, Robinson Jeffers, and poetry by contemporaries such as Donald Justice and Jorie Graham. Mark Jarman's honors for poetry include the Lenore Marshall Prize, the Poets' Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Joseph Henry Jackson Award, and three NEA fellowships. Co-author of The Reaper Essays and co-editor of Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism, Jarman lives in Nashville and teaches at Vanderbilt University.

Table of Contents

Part I Essays
``Poetry and Religion''	13	(33)
``Br'er Rabbit and Br'er Possum: The Americanness of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot''	46	(20)
``John & Randall, Randall & John''	66	(17)
``In Memory of Orpheus: Three Elegies by Donald Justice''	83	(10)
``Robinson, Frost, and Jeffers, and the New Narrative Poetry''	93	(12)
``Aspects of Robinson''	105	(9)
``Sheathed in Reality: The Fact of Clare Walker in Robinson Jeffers' `The Loving Shepherdess'''	114	(6)
``Letter from Leeds''	120	(11)
Part II Reviews
``Singers and Storytellers''	131	(15)
``A Scale of Engagement, from Self to Form Itself''	146	(10)
``The Pragmatic Imagination and the Secret of Poetry''	156	(16)
``Narrative Beauty''	172	(13)
``The Grammar of Glamour''	185	(13)
``The Curse of Discursiveness''	198	(10)
``Shifting Sands: The Columbia History of American Poetry''	208	(8)
``Solving for X: The Collected Poetry and Prose of Wallace Stevens''	216