Synopses & Reviews
What is poetry? Often it is understood as a largely self-enclosed verbal systemandmdash;andldquo;suspended from any mutual interaction with alien discourse,andrdquo; in the words of Mikhail Bakhtin. But in Poetry and Its Others, Jahan Ramazani reveals modern and contemporary poetryandrsquo;s animated dialogue with other genres and discourses. Poetry generates rich new possibilities, he argues, by absorbing and contending with its near verbal relatives.and#160;Exploring poetryandrsquo;s vibrant exchanges with other forms of writing, Ramazani shows how poetry assimilates features of prose fiction but differentiates itself from novelistic realism; metabolizes aspects of theory and philosophy but refuses their abstract procedures; and recognizes itself in the verbal precision of the law even as it separates itself from the lawandrsquo;s rationalism. But poetryandrsquo;s most frequent interlocutors, he demonstrates, are news, prayer, and song. Poets such as William Carlos Williams and W. H. Auden refashioned poetry to absorb the news while expanding its contexts; T. S. Eliot and Charles Wright drew on the intimacy of prayer though resisting its limits; and Paul Muldoon, Rae Armantrout, and Patience Agbabi have played with and against song lyrics and techniques. Encompassing a cultural and stylistic range of writing unsurpassed by other studies of poetry, Poetry and Its Others shows that we understand what poetry is by examining its interplay with what it is not.
Review
"Von Hallberg's style is rich and voluble. . . . This is a book for literati equipped to tackle a series of interrelated, dense, meditative, erudite essays that span an entire genre."
Review
and#8220;Illuminating analyses of a diverse set of poems. . . . Recommended.and#8221;
Review
"Ramazani casts much light on the question of what poetry isand#8212;or perhaps what it does. . . . [H]is approach opens new possibilities for reconsidering how poems. . . are in dialogue with philosophy or with contemporary writing about the visual arts."
Review
andldquo;After considering the historical contexts and thematic ties between works of different genres, [Ramazani] swoops in on passages of rich complexity and allusiveness, seizing the kernel of poetic distinctiveness. . . . Against a background of nonandshy;poetry, the specific features that make poetry recognizable suddenly stand out.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;It is delightful to watch Jahan Ramazani do what he does best: delve into poets such as Hopkins, Yeats, Heaney, and Muldoon and show us the nitty-gritty of how their verse works. Anyone who loves poetry is going to come away from this book revitalized, prepared to think complexly about the modes of address that poets employ, as well as the kinds of writing that they habitually echo, distort, take apart, and reassemble.andrdquo;
Review
and#8220;Jahan Ramazani is that rare critic who has read and understood a wide range of contemporary theory but is also a strong close reader, bringing his arguments alive through example. Poetry and Its Others is a capstone of the work he has done so far, combining his interests in genre, hybridity, and dialogism; his remarkably wide, global knowledge of modern poetry in English; and his commitment to poetry as a distinctive lens and language by which to encounter the world. This impressive and richly suggestive book moves through so many large areas of poetic dialogue and reciprocity with other forms that it will be important to poetry lovers both in and outside academia.and#8221;
Review
andldquo;A wide-ranging affair that travels throughout the English-speaking world and is as engaged with the contemporary as it is with the established canon. . . . Marrying methodology and content,
Poetry and Its Others becomes the rich and varied thing it sets out to consider.andrdquo;
Synopsis
The authority of poetry varies from one period to another, from one culture to another. For Robert von Hallberg, the authority of lyric poetry has three sources: religious affirmation, the social institutions of those who speak the idioms from which particular poems are made, and the extraordinary cognition generated by the formal and musical resources of poems.
Lyric Powers helps students, poets, and general readers to recognize the pleasures and understand the ambitions of lyric poetry.
To explain why a reader might prefer one kind of poem to another, von Hallberg analyzes—beyond the political and intellectual significance of poems—the musicality of both lyric poetry and popular song, including that of Tin Pan Alley and doo-wop. He shows that poets have distinctive intellectual resources—not just rhetorical resources—for examining their subjects, and that the power of poetic language to generalize, not particularize, is what justly deserves a critics attention.
The first book in more than a decade from this respected critic, Lyric Powers will be celebrated as a genuine event by readers of poetry and literary criticism.
About the Author
Jahan Ramazani is the Edgar F. Shannon Professor of English at the University of Virginia. His anthologies and books include A Transnational Poetics, winner of the Harry Levin Prize of the American Comparative Literature Association and also published by the University of Chicago Press.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Authority
2 Praise
3 Civility
4 Thought
5 Music
6 Universality
Conclusion
Notes
Index