The Cure of Poetry in an Age of Prose: Moral Essays on the Poet's Calling - Softcover

Kinzie, Mary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226437361 ISBN 13: 9780226437361

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1993

Synopsis

The role of the poet, Mary Kinzie writes, is to engage the most profound subjects with the utmost in expressive clarity. The role of the critic is to follow the poet, word for word, into the arena where the creative struggle occurs. How this mutual purpose is served, ideally and practically, is the subject of this bracingly polemical collection of essays.

A distinguished poet and critic, Kinzie assesses poetry's situation during the past twenty-five years. Ours, she contends, is literally a prosaic age, not only in the popularity of prose genres but in the resultant compromises with truth and elegance in literature. In essays on "the rhapsodic fallacy," confessionalism, and the romance of perceptual response, Kinzie diagnoses some of the trends that diminish the poet's flexibility. Conversely, she also considers individual poets—Randall Jarrell, Elizabeth Bishop, Howard Nemerov, Seamus Heaney, and John Ashbery—who have found ingenious ways of averting the risks of prosaism and preserving the special character of poetry.

Focusing on poet Louise Bogan and novelist J. M. Coetzee, Kinzie identifies a crucial and curative overlap between the practices of great prose-writing and great poetry. In conclusion, she suggests a new approach for teaching writers of poetry and fiction. Forcefully argued, these essays will be widely read and debated among critics and poets alike.

About this title

About the Author:

Mary Kinzieis a poet and critic.  She is professor of English and director of creative writing at Northwestern University, where she teaches poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.  She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry and the Folger Shakespeare Library’s O. B. Hardison Poetry Award.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0226437361
• ISBN 13: 9780226437361
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 362