The Virtues of Poetry

The Virtues of Poetry
Author :
Publisher : Graywolf Press
Total Pages : 179
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781555970673
ISBN-13 : 1555970672
Rating : 4/5 (73 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Virtues of Poetry by : James Longenbach

Download or read book The Virtues of Poetry written by James Longenbach and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illuminating look at the many forms of poetry's essential excellence by James Longenbach, a writer with "an ear as subtle and assured as any American poet now writing" (John Koethe) "This book proposes some of the virtues to which the next poem might aspire: boldness, change, compression, dilation, doubt, excess, inevitability, intimacy, otherness, particularity, restraint, shyness, surprise, and worldliness. The word ‘virtue' came to English from Latin, via Old French, and while it has acquired a moral valence, the word in its earliest uses gestured toward a magical or transcendental power, a power that might be embodied by any particular substance or act. With vices I am not concerned. Unlike the short-term history of taste, which is fueled by reprimand or correction, the history of art moves from achievement to achievement. Contemporary embodiments of poetry's virtues abound, and only our devotion to a long history of excellence allows us to recognize them." –from James Longenbach's preface The Virtues of Poetry is a resplendent and ultimately moving work of twelve interconnected essays, each of which describes the way in which a particular excellence is enacted in poetry. Longenbach closely reads poems by Shakespeare, Donne, Blake, Keats, Dickinson, Yeats, Pound, Bishop, and Ashbery (among others), sometimes exploring the ways in which these writers transmuted the material of their lives into art, and always emphasizing that the notions of excellence we derive from art are fluid, never fixed. Provocative, funny, and astute, The Virtues of Poetry is indispensable for readers, teachers, and writers. Longenbach reminds us that poetry delivers meaning in exacting ways, and that it is through its precision that we experience this art's lasting virtues.


The Virtues of Poetry Related Books

The Virtues of Poetry
Language: en
Pages: 179
Authors: James Longenbach
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2013-03-05 - Publisher: Graywolf Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

An illuminating look at the many forms of poetry's essential excellence by James Longenbach, a writer with "an ear as subtle and assured as any American poet no
The Resistance to Poetry
Language: en
Pages: 139
Authors: James Longenbach
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2009-08-07 - Publisher: University of Chicago Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Poems inspire our trust, argues James Longenbach in this bracing work, because they don't necessarily ask to be trusted. Theirs is the language of self-question
Verses of Virtue
Language: en
Pages: 126
Authors: Elizabeth Beall Phillips
Categories:
Type: BOOK - Published: 2012-10-01 - Publisher: Vision Forum

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Without a vision for femininity and virtue, Christian womanhood will not survive the twenty-first century. The time has come to sing the praises of motherhood,
The Republic of Virtue
Language: en
Pages: 88
Authors: Paul Lake
Categories: Literary Collections
Type: BOOK - Published: 2013 - Publisher:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

An original collection of poetry by Paul Lake.
The Art of the Poetic Line
Language: en
Pages: 148
Authors: James Longenbach
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2008 - Publisher: Art Of

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Poetry is the sound of language organized in lines." James Longenbach opens The Art of the Poetic Line with that essential statement. Through a range of exampl