Holding Patterns: Temporary Poetics in Contemporary Poetry FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Holding Patterns provides a sympathetic criticism of poems, one that avoids the appliance of criticism and that self-consciously persists in close readings of texts as the directing force of its argument. Presently, contemporary literary criticism and contemporary poetry in America seem at cross-purposes. Indeed, current literary critics seldom address the poems of their contemporaries. While structuralists and other schools of critics seek terms, generalizations, and whole systems to account for and to understand poems, poets themselves repeatedly assert that each poem has its own poetic and that no system applies to their writing. This book reads poems by contemporary poets, such as Jorie Graham, Charles Wright, Denis Johnson, and Amy Clampitt, not to illuminate a theory but to shed light on the poem."--BOOK JACKET.
FROM THE CRITICS
Booknews
Arguing that contemporary literary criticism does a disservice to poetry by imposing critical frameworks that many authors of poetry patently reject, McGuiness (writing, Loyola College) attempts to provide a criticism sympathetic to each poem's individual poetic. He discusses works in terms of their "pulse" and finds commonality between the prose statements and the poetic practices of both new and established contemporary poets, including Jorie Graham, Charles Wright, Denis Johnson, and Amy Clampitt. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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