Never in doubt: Critical essays on American books, 1972-1985 - Hardcover

Prescott, Peter S

9780877958031: Never in doubt: Critical essays on American books, 1972-1985

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0877958033 ISBN 13: 9780877958031

Publisher: Arbor House, 1986

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Book by Prescott, Peter S

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From Publishers Weekly:

Women's poetry is often disparaged for its presumed "privacy" and "escapism," and unfairly judged in terms of male-imposed categories (forceful, masterly, large, powerful are terms in the male critic's lexicon). In a thought-provoking book, Ostriker, poet, critic and professor at Rutgers, redefines the nature and meaning of poetry by American women. "The true nature of poetry is the drive to connect," wrote Adrienne Rich. Ostrikerconfirm spelling/sp ok focuses on how women poets of the past 20 years have fulfilled this drive in poems that challenge gender stereotypes, link the personal to the communal, further self-integration and explore experiences basic to being a woman. She identifies a body of "satiric and retaliatory" verses by such poets as May Swenson, Muriel Rukeyser, Anne Sexton, Diane Wakoski and Margaret Atwood; these poems overturn the ideal of the male as lover, hero, father, God. As mythmakers, women poets, unlike Yeats, Pound or Eliot, show little concern for the past as a repository of truth, goodness or desirable social organization. Instead, women poets seek to "steal the language," using familiar figures to their own subversive ends in uncoverng woman's potentiality as artist, healer and force for social change.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

Working under the constraints of time, space, and special audience, the journalistic critic is all but doomed to superficiality. Prescott, book critic for Newsweek , does not escape this pitfall. But his assessments of the last 14 years of American writing are steadily zesty, penetrating, and insightful. Candidly evaluative, he flexes the muscle of disparagement, making clear not only what works but also what doesn't. The delight of the collection, apart from the shrewd good sense of its judgments, is Prescott's personal tone. Here is a real person responding to major texts of the time, unpretentiously finding in them the drift of our culture. Anyone wanting to see again what American writers have seen in the last decade or so should have no doubts about starting with this book. Leland Krauth, English Dept., Univ. of Colorado, Boulder
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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