Democracy, Culture and the Voice of Poetry (The University Center for Human Values Series Book 33)

The place of poetry in modern democracy is no place, according to conventional wisdom. The poet, we hear, is a casualty of mass entertainment and prosaic public culture, banished to the artistic sidelines to compose variations on insipid themes for a dwindling audience. Robert Pinsky, however, argues that this gloomy diagnosis is as wrongheaded as it is familiar. Pinsky, whose remarkable career as a poet itself undermines the view, writes that to portray poetry and democracy as enemies is to radically misconstrue both. The voice of poetry, he shows, resonates with profound themes at the very heart of democratic culture. There is no one in America better to write on this topic. One of the country's most accomplished poets, Robert Pinsky served an unprecedented two terms as America's Poet Laureate (1997-2000) and led the immensely popular multimedia Favorite Poem Project, which invited Americans to submit and read aloud their favorite poems. Pinsky draws on his experiences and on characteristically sharp and elegant observations of individual poems to argue that expecting poetry to compete with show business is to mistake its greatest democratic strength--its intimate, human scale--as a weakness. As an expression of individual voice, a poem implicitly allies itself with ideas about individual dignity that are democracy's bedrock, far more than is mass participation. Yet poems also summon up communal life.. Even the most inward-looking work imagines a reader. And in their rhythms and cadences poems carry in their very bones the illusion and dynamic of call and response. Poetry, Pinsky writes, cannot help but mediate between the inner consciousness of the individual reader and the outer world of other people. As part of the entertainment industry, he concludes, poetry will always be small and overlooked. As an art--and one that is inescapably democratic--it is massive and fundamental.

pinsky's Conception Of The Poet As Citizen--not Legislator, But Something Between Town Crier, Parson, And Fool On The Hill--gives Us Hope That The Cultivation Of A Shared Memory Will, In Time, Make Us A People--jonathan Galassi

pinsky's Startlingly Original Thesis--that Democracy's Contradictory Drive Toward Monadic Individualism And Mass Conformity Is Echoed, And Resolved, In The Parallel Tension Between The Solitary Practice Of Poetry And The Collective Invocation Of Its Voice--is Itself A Cultural Event Of Major Significance. In Showing How Poetry, By Its Mimetic Embodiment, Artfully Resists And Engages Our Demotic Cultural Dilemma, He Sharply Defines The Moral And Social Place Of Poetry For Our Times. His Model Of Internal Cultural Analysis Will Inform And Delight Both Poet And Reader, Humanists As Well As Social Scientists. This Is Perhaps The Most Important Discourse On Cultural Analysis By A Major Poet Since Eliot's notes Towards The Definition Of Culture.--orlando Patterson, Harvard University

robert Pinsky Has Produced A Fine, Lean Book On A Very Large Topic. With Fresh And Compelling Arguments, Pinsky Writes That Poetry Has A Significant Role To Play In A Mass-democracy, That American Poetry Has Produced Extraordinary Art, And That This Genre Has Truly Engaged With The Challenge To Traditional Art Forms Raised By Democratic Revolutions.--robert Von Hallberg, University Of Chicago

an Important Contribution To Our Thinking About The Place Of Poetry In American Life. No One Could Be More Qualified To Speak On This Subject Than Robert Pinsky, Who Combines Extraordinary Gifts As A Poet, Critic, And Public Ambassador For The Art. The Book Is Full Of Provocative Thought And Sharp Observations About Poems And Responses To Poetry.--paul Breslin, Northwestern University

pittsburgh Post-gazette - Jim Schley

the Most Exhilarating Sections Of Pinsky's New Book Again Display His Gifts As A Guide To Close Reading And Listening. These Are The Means -- Sound In Movement, Experienced Aloud -- By Which The Greatest Poems Rise Clear Above The Ordinary Clatter And Din.

"The place of poetry in modern democracy is no place, according to conventional wisdom. The poet, we hear, is a casualty of mass entertainment and prosaic public culture, banished to the artistic sidelines to compose variations on insipid themes for a dwindling audience. Robert Pinsky, however, argues that this gloomy diagnosis is as wrong-headed as it is familiar. Pinsky, whose remarkable career as a poet itself undermines the view, writes that to portray poetry and democracy as enemies is to radically misconstrue both. The voice of poetry, he shows, resonates with profound significance at the very heart of democratic culture.". "There is no one in America better to write on this topic. One of the country's most accomplished poets, Robert Pinsky served an unprecedented two terms as America's Poet Laureate (1997-2000) and led the immensely popular multimedia Favorite Poem Project, which invited Americans to submit and read aloud their favorite poems. Pinsky draws on his experiences and on characteristically sharp and elegant observations of individual poems to argue that expecting poetry to compete with show business is to mistake its greatest democratic strength - its intimate, human scale - as a weakness."--BOOK JACKET. Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 10 I: Culture......Page 14 II: Vocality......Page 32 III: Self-Consciousness......Page 43 IV: Performance......Page 56 V: Social Presence......Page 59 VI: Readers......Page 68 VII: The Narcissistic and the Personal......Page 77 VIII: Models of Culture......Page 86 IX: Conclusion......Page 92 N......Page 108 Z......Page 109 A two-time Poet Laureate argues that the voice of poetry, in its reflection of the individual and communal life, is at the heart of American culture and should not be mistaken as a casualty of modern mass entertainment and urges readers to reassess poetry as a significant and fundamental art form. (Literature)