The Force of Poetry - Softcover

Ricks, Christopher

Softcover

ISBN 10: 019282046X ISBN 13: 9780192820464

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1987

Synopsis

"As critic and scholar he calls tremendously on his knowledge of literature past and present to provide new insights, aspects and illuminations....Ricks looks at poetry over a considerable range, a lively critic who assures us through clarifying analysis of its power and force in our lives."--The New York Times Book Review. "A work of enormous brilliance."--Encounter. "The richness and variety of these essays is truly remarkable."--Listener. Though published independently over many years, each of these penetrating essays asks how a poet's words reveal "the force of poetry"--that force, in Dr. Johnson's words, "which calls new powers into being, which embodies sentiment, and animates matter." The poets treated here range from John Gower to Robert Lowell, and include Marvell, Milton, Johnson, Wordsworth, Philip Larkin, and Geoffrey Hill. Ricks has also added four essays on general topics: on cliches, on lies, on misquotations, and on American literature in its relation to the transitory. The Force of Poetry reveals the quality of Ricks's criticism that W.H. Auden responded to when he described him as "exactly the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding."

About this title

About the Author

Christopher Ricks is one of the best-known living critics of English, and was described by W. H. Auden as `the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding'. He is author of Beckett's Dying Words (OUP, 1993), Keats and Embarrassment (OUP, 1974), and editor of The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse (Oxford, 1987).

Review

"Indispensable for those who wish to become better readers of poetry....Eighteen varied essays on poets from Gower to Larkin by one of the liveliest minds in contemporary criticism: truly a feast in a famished land."--Walter E. Anderson, UCLA

"Christopher Ricks is our most distinctive critic...the natural heir to Empson, exciting and fertile."--The Observer

"Christopher Ricks's great strength as a critic has always been his superbly zestful sense of the life in poetry's words....No one writing today has a wider range of verbal reference in English poetry, or a greater gusto in its deployment....The richness and variety of these essays is truly remarkable....They form a coherent as well as a combative gathering, each making a point as sharp as a needle as well as illuminating a general outlook."--The Listener

"The poets discussed in these eighteen essays, ranging from John Gower to Geoffrey Hill, call forth "new powers" from Ricks; his lively mind reanimates the poets he deals with. From his pen, the force of criticism is considerable....Ricks invariably invites us back to the poetry itself, refreshing our sense of what the words really "say" and thus refreshing our lives as well.' --Sewanee Review

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 019282046X
• ISBN 13: 9780192820464
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464