How Poets See the World : The Art of Description in Contemporary Poetry

Although readers of prose fiction sometimes find descriptive passages superfluous or boring, description itself is often the most important aspect of a poem. This book examines how a variety of contemporary poets use description in their work. Description has been the great burden of poetry. How do poets see the world? How do they look at it? What do they look for? Is description an end in itself, or a means of expressing desire? Ezra Pound demanded that a poem should represent the external world as objectively and directly as possible, and William Butler Yeats, in his introduction to The Oxford Book of Modern Verse (1936), said that he and his generation were rebelling against, inter alia, ''irrelevant descriptions of nature'' in the work of their predecessors. The poets in this book, however, who are distinct in many ways from one another, all observe the external world of nature or the reflected world of art, and make relevant poems out of their observations. This study deals with the crisp, elegant work of Charles Tomlinson, the swirling baroque poetry of Amy Clampitt, the metaphysical meditations of Charles Wright from a position in his backyard, the weather reports and landscapes of John Ashbery, and the ''new way of looking'' that Jorie Graham proposes to explore in her increasingly fragmented poems. All of these poets, plus others (Gary Snyder, Theodore Weiss, Irving Feldman, Richard Howard) who are dealt with more briefly, attend to what Wallace Stevens, in a memorable phrase, calls ''the way things look each day.'' The ordinariness of daily reality is the beginning of the poets' own idiosyncratic, indeed unique, visions and styles. Contents......Page 14 ONE: “The Way Things Look Each Day”: Poetry, Description, Nature......Page 18 TWO: “Just Looking”: Charles Tomlinson and the “Labour of Observation”......Page 41 THREE: What to Make of an Augmented Thing: Amy Clampitt's Syntactic Dramas......Page 72 FOUR: Charles Wright and “The Metaphysics of the Quotidian”......Page 97 FIVE: “A Space for Boundless Revery”: Varieties of Ekphrastic Experience......Page 127 SIX: John Ashbery’s Haunted Landscapes......Page 152 SEVEN: Jorie Graham’s “New Way of Looking”......Page 188 Notes......Page 216 A......Page 234 B......Page 235 C......Page 236 D......Page 238 F......Page 239 G......Page 240 I......Page 241 L......Page 242 M......Page 243 N......Page 244 O......Page 245 P......Page 246 Q......Page 247 S......Page 248 V......Page 251 W......Page 252 Z......Page 253 Contents 14 ONE: “The Way Things Look Each Day”: Poetry, Description, Nature 18 TWO: “Just Looking”: Charles Tomlinson and the “Labour of Observation” 41 THREE: What to Make of an Augmented Thing: Amy Clampitt's Syntactic Dramas 72 FOUR: Charles Wright and “The Metaphysics of the Quotidian” 97 FIVE: “A Space for Boundless Revery”: Varieties of Ekphrastic Experience 127 SIX: John Ashbery’s Haunted Landscapes 152 SEVEN: Jorie Graham’s “New Way of Looking” 188 Notes 216 Index 234 A 234 B 235 C 236 D 238 E 239 F 239 G 240 H 241 I 241 J 242 K 242 L 242 M 243 N 244 O 245 P 246 Q 247 R 248 S 248 T 251 U 251 V 251 W 252 Y 253 Z 253 The Way Things Look Each Day : Poetry, Description, Nature -- Just Looking : Charles Tomlinson And The Labour Of Observation -- What To Make Of An Augmented Thing : Amy Clampitt's Syntactic Dramas -- Charles Wright And The Metaphysics Of The Quotidian -- A Space For Boundless Revery : Varieties Of Ekphrastic Experience -- John Ashbery's Haunted Landscapes -- Jorie Graham's New Way Of Looking. Willard Spiegelman. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 201-217) And Index. The way things look each day : how poets see the world Just looking : Charles Tomlinson and the "labour of observation" What to make of an augmented thing : Amy Clampitt's syntactic dramas Charles Wright and "the metaphysics of the quotidian" A space for boundless revery : varieties of ekphrastic experience John Ashbery's haunted landscapes Jorie Graham's "new way of looking". "Although readers of prose fiction sometimes find descriptive passages superfluous or boring, description itself is often the most important aspect of a poem. This book examines how a variety of contemporary poets use description in their work."--Résumé de l'éditeur