Poetry in Theory: An Anthology 1900-2000
August 2004, ©2004, Wiley-Blackwell
- Helps readers to think critically about the nature of modern poetry, and to engage with broader questions about aesthetics, language, culture and imagination.
- Includes texts by poets, critics, theorists and philosophers, ranging from Ezra Pound to Jacques Derrida.
- Texts in translation from French, German, Spanish, Italian and Russian are presented alongside the work of writers from Britain, Ireland, the United States, Africa, India and the Caribbean.
- Each text is accompanied by a brief biographical and thematic introduction.
- A system of cross-referencing points up significant connections and disagreements between the texts.
- Includes a thematic index and chronology.
Part I: 1900-20.
The Symbolism of Poetry: W.B. Yeats (1900).
Three Letters: Rainer Maria Rilke (1903, 1907, 1925).
Creative Writers and Daydreaming: Sigmund Freud (1908).
Romanticism and Classicism: T. E. Hulme (1911).
The Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature: Filippo Marinetti (1912).
Poet Yeats: Rabindrantah Tagore (1912).
Robert Frost: Edward Thomas (1914).
Poetry as Spoken Art: Amy Lowell (1917).
The New Spirit and the Poets: Guillaume Apollinaire (1917).
A Retrospect: Ezra Pound (1918).
Note on Poetry: Tristan Tzara (1919).
On Poetry and On Contemporary Poetry: Velimir Khlebnikov (1919/20).
Tradition and the Individual Talent: T. S. Eliot (1919).
D. H. Lawrence Preface to New Poems (1920).
Prologue to Kora in Hell: William Carlos Williams (1920).
Part II: 1921-40.
General Aims and Theories: Hart Crane (1925).
The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain: Langston Hughes (1926).
How are Verses Made: Vladimir Mayakovsky (1926).
Science and Poetry: I. A. Richards (1926).
A Survey of Modernist Poetry: Robert Graves and Laura Riding (1928).
Seven Types of Ambiguity: William Empson (1930).
The Poetic Process: Kenneth Burke (1931).
Poetry’s Evidence and Automatic Writing: Paul Eluard and Andre Breton (1932/33).
New Bearings in English Poetry: F. R. Leavis (1932).
Lorca Play and the Theory of Duende: Frederico Garcia (1933).
Poetry and Grammar: Gertrude Stein (1935).
Poets with History and Poets Without History: Marina Tsvetaeva (1935).
Modernism: Walter Benjamin (1938).
The Figure a Poem Makes: Robert Frost (1939).
Poetry and Abstract Thought: Paul Valery (1939).
Part III: 1941-60.
Three Lectures on Poetry: Martin Heidegger (1941/44/46).
The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words: Wallace Stevens (1942).
Feeling and Precision: Marianne Moore (1944).
Poetry and Knowledge: Aime Cesaire (1945).
Projective Verse: Charles Olson (1950).
A Statement for Poetry: Louis Zukofsky (1950).
Is There Any Poetic Writing: Roland Barthes (1953).
The Concrete Universal: W. C. Wimsatt (1954).
Excerpts from Seminars and Papers: Jacques Lacan (1954/55/57).
What is Modern Poetry: Donald Davie (1955).
Mallarme’s Experience: Maurice Blanchot (1955).
The Pleasure Principle/Writing Poems: Philip Larkin (1957/64).
On Lyric Poetry and Society: Theodor Adorno (1957).
Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics: Roman Jakobson (1960).
Part IV: 1961-80.
What I See in the Maximus Poems: Edward Dorn (1961).
Personism: A Manifesto: Frank O’Hara (1961).
When the Mode of the Music Changes/Abstraction in Poetry: Allan Ginsberg (1961/62).
The Poet and the City: W. H. Auden (1962).
Hunting Is Not Those Heads on the Wall/State/Meant: Imamu Baraka (1964/65).
A Sense of Measure: Robert Creeley (1964).
The Invisible Avant-Garde: John Ashbery (1968).
Closure and Anti-Closure in Modern Poetry: Barbara Herrnstein Smith (1968).
Poetic Language, Poetics of Language: Gerard Genette (1969).
Intentional Structure of the Romantic Image: Paul de Man (1970).
The Muse of History: Derek Walcott (1974).
The Ethics of Linguistics: Julia Kristeva (1974).
A Modest Proposal: Hans Magnus Enzensberger (1976).
Continuity in Language: Veronica Forrest-Thomson (1978).
Part V: 1980-2000.
The Poe-etic Effect: Soshana Felman (1980).
The Dollar Value of Poetry: Charles Bernstein (1983).
On Hope: Czeslaw Milosz (1983).
Blood, Bread and Poetry: Adrienne Rich (1984).
Prologue: The Deed of Writing: Richard Poirier (1987).
Even Under the Rine of Terror: Jeremy Cronin (1988).
Che cos’e la poesia: Jacques Derrida (1988).
The Homosexual Lyric: Thomas Yingling (1990).
Avant-Garde or Endgame: Marjorie Perloff (1991).
The Woman Poet: Her Dilemma: Evan Boland (1994).
The Redress of Poetry: Seamus Heaney (1995).
Soul Says: Helen Vendler (1995).
- A major new anthology bringing together key critical and
theoretical texts from the twentieth century which have animated
debates about modern poetry.
- Helps readers to think critically about the nature of modern
poetry, and to engage with broader questions about aesthetics,
language, culture and imagination.
- Includes texts by poets, critics, theorists and philosophers,
ranging from Ezra Pound to Jacques Derrida.
- Texts in translation from French, German, Spanish, Italian and
Russian are presented alongside the work of writers from Britain,
Ireland, the United States, Africa, India and the Caribbean.
- Each text is accompanied by a brief biographical and thematic
- A system of cross-referencing points up significant connections
and disagreements between the texts.
- Includes a thematic index and a chronology.
—Terry Eagleton, University of Manchester