Last looks, last books : Stevens, Plath, Lowell, Bishop, Merrill / Helen Vendler.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Vendler, Helen, 1933-2024.

Series:

A.W. Mellon lectures in the fine arts ; 2003.

Bollingen series ; XXXV, 56.

The A.W. Mellon lectures in the fine arts ; 2003

Bollingen series ; XXXV, 56

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

American poetry.

Death in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (165 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2010.

Language Note:

English

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Summary:

In Last Looks, Last Books, the eminent critic Helen Vendler examines the ways in which five great modern American poets, writing their final books, try to find a style that does justice to life and death alike. With traditional religious consolations no longer available to them, these poets must invent new ways to express the crisis of death, as well as the paradoxical coexistence of a declining body and an undiminished consciousness. In The Rock, Wallace Stevens writes simultaneous narratives of winter and spring; in Ariel, Sylvia Plath sustains melodrama in cool formality; and in Day by Day, Robert Lowell subtracts from plenitude. In Geography III, Elizabeth Bishop is both caught and freed, while James Merrill, in A Scattering of Salts, creates a series of self-portraits as he dies, representing himself by such things as a Christmas tree, human tissue on a laboratory slide, and the evening/morning star. The solution for one poet will not serve for another; each must invent a bridge from an old style to a new one. Casting a last look at life as they contemplate death, these modern writers enrich the resources of lyric poetry.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction: Last Looks, Last Books

2. Looking at the Worst: Wallace Stevens's The Rock

3. The Contest of Melodrama and Restraint: Sylvia Plath's Ariel

4. Images of Subtraction: Robert Lowell's Day by Day

5. Caught and Freed: Elizabeth Bishop and Geography III

6. Self-Portraits While Dying: James Merrill and A Scattering of Salts

Notes

The Andrew W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, 1952-2007

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612531491

9781282531499

1282531492

9781400834327

1400834325

OCLC:

609856436