A Gift of Tongues: Critical Challenges in Contemporary American Poetry - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0820309532 ISBN 13: 9780820309538

Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr, 1987

Synopsis

Essays discuss the works of twentieth-century American poets and how writers from minority backgrounds are included in--or excluded from--the canon of generally respected authors

About this title

About the Author:

KATHLEEN AGUERO is the author of two volumes of poetry, Thirsty Day and The Real Weather. She is coeditor, with Marie Harris, of A Gift of Tongues: Critical Challenges in Contemporary American Poetry (Georgia).

From Library Journal:

A collection of critical essays, A Gift of Tongues introduces to a wider audience poets who have been ignored even as it proposes a new literary canon that more fairly represents Chicano, Native American, black, gay, women, and Asian-American writers. A common theme is survival: Alice Walker and Sherley Anne Williams borrow from the slave narrative tradition to remind us that for a black woman the very act of putting pen to paper is not only precious but hard won. Similarly, Wendy Rose and Joy Harjo seek sources of female-based power in their Native American ancestry, Paul Lauter argues against academic elitism, and Joseph Bruchac sums up the spirit of resistance among prison poets: "If such a community of letters can spring to life in the blighted atmosphere behind high concrete walls and razor wire . . . there may be hope for us all." Though in The Psycho-political Muse Breslin argues that a radical poetics grew from the politics of the New Left in the Fifties and Sixties, he fails to prove his point. In fact, close readings of Ginsberg, Lowell, Plath, Merwin, and Wright reveal a stress on alienation from mass culture rather than social change. Moreover, Breslin's assumption that American culture is monolithic is disputed by the rich outpouring of minority voices in A Gift of Tongues. Lisa Mullenneaux, Iowa City, Iowa
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0820309532
• ISBN 13: 9780820309538
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 342
• Editor: Harris Marie, Aguero Kathleen