Coin of the realm : essays on the life and art of poetry / Carl Phillips.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Phillips, Carl, 1959-

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Poetry--History and criticism.

Poetry.

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

American poetry.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

246 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Saint Paul, Minn. : Graywolf Press, [2004]

Summary:

The "coin of the realm" is, classically, the currency that for any culture most holds value. For art, as in life, poet Carl Phillips argues, that currency includes beauty, risk, and authority -- values of meaning and complexity that all too often go disregarded. In these impassioned and critical essays, Phillips attends to the life and art of poetry by examining traditions across literary and cultural histories, from the restiveness of the Psalms, the pleas and persuasions of George Herbert, and the identity politics of the Black Arts Movement, to the Classically inflected restraint and release of his own poetry. Together, these essays become an invaluable statement for the necessary, and necessarily difficult, work of the imagination and the will, even when, as Phillips begins his title essay, "The last thing that most human beings seem capable of trusting naturally -- instinctively -- is themselves, their own judgment." In its elegantly wrought prose, Coin of the Realm, along with seven critically acclaimed volumes of poetry, affirms Carl Phillips as one of our most important contemporary writers and now one of our most persuasive contemporary critics.

Contents:

The Case for Beauty 3

Myth and Fable: Their Place in Poetry 7

No Rapture: The Psalms and Restiveness 33

Anomaly, Conundrum, Thy-Will-Be-Done: On the Poetry of George Herbert 47

Poetry, Consciousness, Gift: The Model of T. S. Eliot 75

Association in Poetry 93

A Brief Stop on the Trail of the Prose Poem 113

Interview / Conducted by Nick Flynn 131

Sea Level 143

Boon and Burden: Identity in Contemporary American Poetry 159

Another and Another Before That: Some Thoughts on Reading 181

The Book as Bridge? 191

Abstraction on Parnassus: American Poetry of the 1950s 201

On George Oppen's "Psalm" 215

Twist, Tact, and Metaphysics: Gwendolyn Brooks's "A light and diplomatic bird" 219

Vision in Control: Sylvia Plath's "Winter Trees" 227

Coin of the Realm 233.

ISBN:

1555974015

OCLC:

55140217