Poetry in Our Time: The Poet, Publisher, Reader, and ReviewerA very timely and apt critical review of the poetry 'scene', delightful and informative demythologising of the present 'corporate poetry culture'. Wainwright's equivalent of Joyce's 'cultic twalette' critique brought up to date. |
From inside the book
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Page 12
... volumes , or editions of magazines , frequency of publication , etc. ) , how many new poems were actually being published annually , and the figure came to a frightening ( or should that be impressive ) 250,000 to 500,000 . There is no ...
... volumes , or editions of magazines , frequency of publication , etc. ) , how many new poems were actually being published annually , and the figure came to a frightening ( or should that be impressive ) 250,000 to 500,000 . There is no ...
Page 13
... volume . Reader , how many poems could you read with due care and attention in a single day , and make sensible ... volumes with work by poets at least somewhat " recognised " , and shoppers - around soon find out which is which ...
... volume . Reader , how many poems could you read with due care and attention in a single day , and make sensible ... volumes with work by poets at least somewhat " recognised " , and shoppers - around soon find out which is which ...
Page 14
... volumes and pamphlets by individual poets : Arc , Anvil , Bloodaxe , Peterloo , Headland , Stride , Flambard , Lapwing , I suppose Carcanet still ( I am less concerned with trying to define “ uncommercial " than with trying to define a ...
... volumes and pamphlets by individual poets : Arc , Anvil , Bloodaxe , Peterloo , Headland , Stride , Flambard , Lapwing , I suppose Carcanet still ( I am less concerned with trying to define “ uncommercial " than with trying to define a ...
Page 15
... volumes by their regulars, who might be numbered on the fingers of one hand. If the situation regarding publication in little magazines is increasingly difficult, that regarding publication in small poetry presses is increasingly ...
... volumes by their regulars, who might be numbered on the fingers of one hand. If the situation regarding publication in little magazines is increasingly difficult, that regarding publication in small poetry presses is increasingly ...
Page 22
... trying to inform readers about volumes I review and they may not have read is not incompatible with entertaining them , that if my own prose is deadly boring it deserves to be slept over rather than read. 22 22 Poetry in Our Time : v 7.
... trying to inform readers about volumes I review and they may not have read is not incompatible with entertaining them , that if my own prose is deadly boring it deserves to be slept over rather than read. 22 22 Poetry in Our Time : v 7.
Common terms and phrases
actually Astrud Gilberto Auden autobiographical aware better biography Birthday Letters certainly claim complex concerned conscious course creative writing critical current poetry difficult editors Eliot Envoi experience extent extract fact feel human Independent on Sunday inevitably insights instance John Ashbery John Burnside kind language Larkin least listening literary literature look mean merely mind never notion nowadays obscure obviously offer performance poetry perhaps Peter Redgrove Philip Larkin piece poem poet poet's poetry magazine poetry matters poetry writing poetry's possible problem prose publication published question reader realise reasons rhyme Robert Graves s/he seems self-evident sense Simon Armitage sometimes sonnet sort stuff subconscious suggest surely surreal T.S. Eliot things thought Thumbscrew Tintern Abbey truth trying unintelligible value judgements verse volumes W.B. Yeats W.H. Auden wish words Wordsworth worse write poetry written
Popular passages
Page 63 - For I have learned To look on Nature not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man...
Page 101 - Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
Page 100 - And playing, lovely and watery And fire green as grass. And nightly under the simple stars As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away...
Page 7 - Then, Sir, what is poetry?" JOHNSON: "Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is.
Page 56 - We can only say that it appears likely that poets in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be difficult. Our civilization comprehends great variety and complexity, and this variety and complexity, playing upon a refined sensibility, must produce various and 275 complex results. The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into his meaning.
Page 40 - The same that oft-times hath Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Page 99 - I saw eternity the other night Like a great ring of pure and endless light, All calm as it was bright; And round beneath it, time in hours, days, years, Driv'n by the spheres, Like a vast shadow moved, in which the world And all her train were hurled...
Page 99 - Then, reascending the bare common, saw A naked pool that lay beneath the hills, The beacon on the summit, and, more near, A girl, who bore a pitcher on her head, And seemed with difficult steps to force her way Against the blowing wind. It was, in truth, An ordinary sight ; but I should need Colours and words that are unknown to man, To paint the visionary dreariness Which, while I looked all round for my lost guide, Invested moorland waste, and naked pool.