Poetry in Theory

Jon Cook is Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of East Anglia and a Senior Lecturer in the Department of American and English Literature. His published work includes Romanticism and Ideology (1981), William Hazlitt: Selected Writings (1998) and numerous essays on Romanticism, critical and cultural theory, and contemporary writing.

"Poetry has always provided the most severe test for theory, and this rich, wide-ranging anthology shows just how fruitful the encounter between the two has been. Jon Cook's excellent collection should prove a salutary lesson for all those who assume, utterly against the evidence, that literary theory has had nothing to say about the shape of the sentences and the texture of the verse."—Terry Eagleton, University of Manchester

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction 1Part I 1900–1920 271 W. B. YeatsThe Symbolism of Poetry (1900) 292 Rainer Maria RilkeThree Letters (1903, 1907, 1925) 353 Sigmund FreudCreative Writers and Day-dreaming (1908) 414 T. E. HulmeRomanticism and Classicism (1911) 475 Filippo MarinettiTechnical Manifesto of Futurist Literature (1912) 566 Rabindranath TagorePoet Yeats (1912) 617 Edward ThomasRobert Frost (1914) 658 Amy LowellPoetry as a Spoken Art (1917) 699 Guillaume ApollinaireThe New Spirit and the Poets (1917) 7510 Ezra PoundA Retrospect (1918) 8311 Tristan TzaraNote on Poetry (1919) 9112 Velimir KhlebnikovOn Poetry and On Contemporary Poetry (1919, 1920) 9413 T. S. EliotTradition and the Individual Talent and Reflections on Contemporary Poetry (1919) 9714 D. H. LawrencePreface to New Poems (1920) 10615 William Carlos WilliamsPrologue to Kora in Hell (1920) 11116 Ernest FenollosaThe Chinese Written Character as the Medium for Poetry (1920) 116Part II 1920–1940 12917 Mina LoyModern Poetry (1925) 13118 Hart CraneGeneral Aims and Theories (1925) 13519 Langston HughesThe Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain (1926) 13920 Vladimir MayakovskyHow Are Verses Made? (1926) 14421 I. A. RichardsScience and Poetry (1926) 15222 Robert Graves and Laura RidingA Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927) 16023 William EmpsonSeven Types of Ambiguity (1930) 16924 Kenneth BurkeThe Poetic Process (1931) 17525 Paul Éluard and André BretonPoetry’s Evidence and The Automatic Message (1932, 1933) 18226 F. R. LeavisNew Bearings in English Poetry (1932) 19227 Federico García LorcaPlay and Theory of the Duende (1933) 20128 Gertrude SteinPoetry and Grammar (1935) 20829 Marina TsvetaevaPoets with History and Poets without History (1935) 21530 Walter BenjaminModernism (1938) 22331 Robert FrostThe Figure a Poem Makes (1939) 23432 Paul ValéryPoetry and Abstract Thought (1939) 237Part III 1940–1960 24533 Martin HeideggerThree Lectures on Poetry (1941, 1944, 1946) 24734 Wallace StevensThe Noble Rider and the Sound of Words (1942) 25635 Randall JarrellThe End of the Line (1942) 26836 Aimé CésairePoetry and Knowledge (1945) 27537 Charles OlsonProjective Verse (1950) 28838 Louis ZukofskyA Statement for Poetry (1950) 29639 Roland BarthesIs There Any Poetic Writing? (1953) 30140 W. K. WimsattThe Concrete Universal (1954) 30741 Jacques LacanExcerpts from Seminars and Papers (1954, 1955, 1957) 31542 Donald DavieWhat is Modern Poetry and The Reek of the Human (1955)? 32343 Maurice BlanchotMallarmé’s Experience (1955) 33044 Philip LarkinThe Pleasure Principle and Writing Poems (1957, 1964) 33745 Theodor AdornoOn Lyric Poetry and Society (1957) 34246 Roman JakobsonClosing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics (1960) 350Part IV 1960–1980 35947 Edward DornWhat I See in The Maximus Poems (1961) 36148 Frank O’HaraPersonism: A Manifesto (1961) 36749 Allen GinsbergWhen the Mode of the Music Changes and Abstraction in Poetry (1961, 1962) 37050 W. H. AudenThe Poet and the City (1962) 37751 Imamu BarakaHunting Is Not Those Heads on the Wall and State/Meant (1964, 1965) 38552 Robert CreeleyA Sense of Measure (1964) 39053 John AshberyThe Invisible Avant-Garde (1968) 39354 Barbara Herrnstein SmithClosure and Anti-closure in Modern Poetry (1968) 39955 Gerard GenettePoetic Language, Poetics of Language (1969) 40856 Paul de ManIntentional Structure of the Romantic Image (1970) 41357 Derek WalcottThe Muse of History (1974) 42058 Julia KristevaThe Ethics of Linguistics (1974) 43759 Hans Magnus EnzensbergerA Modest Proposal (1976) 44760 Veronica Forrest-ThomsonContinuity in Language (1978) 45661 Geoffrey HillPoetry as ‘‘Menace’’ and ‘‘Atonement’’ (1978) 464Part V 1980–2000 47562 Shoshana FelmanThe Poe-etic Effect (1980) 47763 Charles BernsteinThe Dollar Value of Poetry (1983) 49164 Czeslaw MiloszOn Hope (1983) 49465 Adrienne RichBlood, Bread, and Poetry (1984) 50366 Richard PoirierPrologue: The Deed of Writing (1987) 51467 Jeremy Cronin‘‘Even under the Rine of Terror ’’ (1988) 52368 Jacques DerridaChe cos’è la poesia? (1988) 53369 Thomas YinglingThe Homosexual Lyric (1990) 53870 Marjorie PerloffAvant-Garde or Endgame? (1991) 54771 Eavan BolandThe Woman Poet: Her Dilemma (1995) 55972 Seamus HeaneyThe Redress of Poetry (1995) 56773 Helen VendlerIntroduction, Soul Says (1995) 574Chronology 581Select Bibliography 619Thematic Index 622Index 624