Shifting ground : reinventing landscape in modern American poetry / Bonnie Costello.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Costello, Bonnie.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American poetry--20th century--History and criticism.

American poetry.

Landscapes in literature.

Physical Description:

x, 225 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, [2003]

Summary:

Just as the look of the American landscape has changed since the nineteenth century, so has our idea of landscape, with a contemplation of wild nature giving way to an understanding of "Nature" as a human construction. Here Bonnie Costello reads six twentieth-century American poets who have reflected and shaped this transformation and in the process renovated landscape by drawing new images from the natural world and creating new forms for imagining the earth and our relation to it. Showing how these poets' landscapes respond to the sense of constant change, and to the disruption and acceleration of life characteristic of modern experience, Costello's work reveals the special role of poetry in teaching us to dwell on "shifting ground."

A comprehensive exploration of a powerful dynamic in American poetry, Shifting Ground ranges from the sly subversions of Robert Frost's "Directive" to the vertiginous "temporal space" of John Ashbery's "Haunted Landscape." Sustained readings of dozens of major poems by Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, and Marianne Moore open new perspectives on landscape as metaphor in these canonical moderns, while illuminating chapters on Amy Clampitt, A. R. Ammons, and John Ashbery map the fluctuating terrain of postmodern poetry with compelling clarity.

Contents:

1 Introduction: Frame and Flux 1

2 Frost's Crossings 19

3 Stevens' Eccentricity 53

4 Moore's America 86

5 Amy Clampitt: Nomad Exquisite 117

6 A. R. Ammons: Pilgrim, Sage, Ordinary Man 143

7 John Ashbery: Landscapeople 173

8 Epilogue: "The Machine in the Garden" 196.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [209]-216) and index.

ISBN:

0674008944

OCLC:

50645414