The poetics of the everyday : creative repetition in modern American verse / Siobhan Phillips.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Phillips, Siobhan, 1978-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Frost, Robert, 1874-1963--Technique.

Frost, Robert.

Stevens, Wallace, 1879-1955--Technique.

Stevens, Wallace.

Bishop, Elizabeth, 1911-1979--Technique.

Bishop, Elizabeth.

Merrill, James, 1926-1995--Technique.

Merrill, James.

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

American poetry.

Repetition in literature.

Repetition (Rhetoric).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (335 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, c2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Wallace Stevens once described the "malady of the "idian," lamenting the dull weight of everyday regimen. Yet he would later hail "that which is always beginning, over and over" recognizing, if not celebrating, the possibility of fresh invention. Focusing on the poems of Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and James Merrill, Siobhan Phillips positions everyday time as a vital category in modernist aesthetics, American literature, and poetic theory. She eloquently reveals how, through particular but related means, each of these poets converts the necessity of "idian experience into an aesthetic and experiential opportunity. In Stevens, Phillips analyzes the implications of cyclic dualism. In Frost, she explains the theoretical depth of a habitual "middle way." In Bishop's work, she identifies the attempt to turn recurrent mornings into a "ceremony" rather than a sentence, and in Merrill, she shows how cosmic theories rely on daily habits. Phillips ultimately demonstrates that a poetics of everyday time contributes not only to a richer understanding of these four writers but also to descriptions of their era, estimations of their genre, and ongoing reconfigurations of the issues that literature reflects and illuminates.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Poetics of Everyday Time

1. The Middle Living of Robert Frost

2. The Faithful Mode of Wallace Stevens

3. The Everyday Elegies of Elizabeth Bishop

4. The Cosmic Dawnings of James Merrill

Conclusion: Everyday Pasts and Everyday Futures

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [275]-297) and index.

ISBN:

9786613629012

9781280599187

1280599189

9780231520294

0231520298

OCLC:

787845134