Our savage art : poetry and the civil tongue / William Logan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Logan, William, 1950 November 16-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

American poetry.

Criticism--United States--History--20th century.

Criticism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (363 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, c2009.

Language Note:

English

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Summary:

The most notorious poet-critic of his generation, William Logan has defined our view of poets good and bad, interesting and banal, for more than three decades. Featured in the New York Times Book Review, the Times Literary Supplement, and the New Criterion, among other journals, Logan's eloquent, passionate prose never fails to provoke readers and poets, reminding us of the value and vitality of the critic's savage art.Like The Undiscovered Country: Poetry in the Age of Tin, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, Our Savage Art features the corrosive wit and darkly discriminating critiques that have become the trademarks of Logan's style. Opening with a defense of the critical eye, this collection features essays on Robert Lowell's correspondence, Elizabeth Bishop's unfinished poems, the inflated reputation of Hart Crane, the loss of the New Critics, and a damning-and already highly controversial-indictment of an edition of Robert Frost's notebooks. Logan also includes essays on Derek Walcott and Geoffrey Hill, two crucial figures in the divided world of contemporary poetry, and an attempt to rescue the reputation of the nineteenth-century poet John Townsend Trowbridge. Short reviews consider John Ashbery, Anne Carson, Billy Collins, Rita Dove, Louise Glück, Jorie Graham, Robert Hass, Seamus Heaney, and dozens of others. Though he might be called a cobra with manners, Logan is a fervent advocate for poetry, and Our Savage Art continues to raise the standard of what the critic can do.

Contents:

The bowl of diogenes; or, The end of criticism

Verse chronicle : out on the lawn

Verse chronicle : stouthearted men

The most contemptible moth : Lowell in letters

Forward into the past : reading the new critics

Verse chronicle : one if by land

Verse chronicle : the great American desert

The state with the prettiest name

Elizabeth Bishop unfinished

Elizabeth Bishop's sullen art

Verse chronicle : jumping the shark

Verse chronicle : Victoria's secret

Attack of the anthologists

The lost world of Lawrence Durrell

Hart Crane overboard

On reviewing Hart Crane

The endless ocean of Derek Walcott

The civil power of Geoffrey Hill

Verse chronicle : God's chatter

Verse chronicle : let's do it, let's fall in luff

Pynchon in the poetic

Back to the future (Thomas Pynchon)

Verse chronicle : the world is too much with us

Verse chronicle : Valentine's Day massacre

The forgotten masterpiece of John Townsend Trowbridge

Frost at midnight.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780231519618

0231519613

OCLC:

794494049