Twenty poems that could save America : and other essays

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Title:

Twenty poems that could save America : and other essays

Author:

Hoagland, Tony author.

ISBN:

9781555976941

Physical Description:

226 pages ; 23 cm

Contents:

Je suis ein Americano : the genius of American diction -- Idiom, our funny valentine -- Litany, game, and representation : charting the course from the old to the new poetry -- Poetic housing : shifting parts and changing wholes -- Facts and feelings : information, layering, and the composite poem -- Vertigo, recognition, and passionate worldliness -- "Regard the twists of the bugle/that yield one clear clarion" : the Dean Young effect -- "I do this, I do that" : the strange legacy of New York school poetics -- Unarrestable : the poetic development of Sharon Olds -- Soul radio : Maria Howe, Jane Hirshfield, and Linda Gregg -- The village troublemaker : Robert Bly and American poetry -- Twenty poems that could save America.

Subject Term:

American poetry -- 21st century -- History and criticism.

American poetry -- 20th century -- History and criticism.

Poetics.

Summary:

A fearless, wide-ranging book on the state of poetry and American literary culture by Tony Hoagland, the author of What Narcissism Means to Me. Twenty Poems That Could Save America presents insightful essays on the craft of poetry and a bold conversation about the role of poetry in contemporary culture. Essays on the "vertigo" effects of new poetry give way to appraisals of Robert Bly, Sharon Olds, and Dean Young. At the heart of this book is an honesty and curiosity about the ways poetry can influence America at both the private and public levels.

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Park Grove Library (Cottage Grove)	808.1 HOA	Searching... Unknown
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury)	808.1 HOA	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Stillwater Public Library	808.1 HOA	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

A fearless, wide-ranging book on the state of poetry and American literary culture by Tony Hoagland, the author of What Narcissism Means to Me

Live American poetry is absent from our public schools. The teaching of poetry languishes, and that region of youthful neurological terrain capable of being ignited only by poetry is largely dark, unpopulated, and silent, like a classroom whose shades are drawn. This is more than a shame, for poetry is our common treasure-house, and we need its vitality, its respect for the subconscious, its willingness to entertain ambiguity, its plaintive truth-telling, and its imaginative exhibitions of linguistic freedom, which confront the general culture's more grotesque manipulations. We need the emotional training sessions poetry conducts us through. We need its previews of coming attractions: heartbreak, survival, failure, endurance, understanding, more heartbreak.
--from "Twenty Poems That Could Save America"

Twenty Poems That Could Save America presents insightful essays on the craft of poetry and a bold conversation about the role of poetry in contemporary culture. Essays on the "vertigo" effects of new poetry give way to appraisals of Robert Bly, Sharon Olds, and Dean Young. At the heart of this book is an honesty and curiosity about the ways poetry can influence America at both the private and public levels. Tony Hoagland is already one of this country's most provocative poets, and this book confirms his role as a restless andperceptive literary and cultural critic.

Author Notes

Anthony Dey Hoagland was born at Fort Bragg, North Carolina on November 19, 1953. He received a bachelor's degree in general studies from the University of Iowa and a master of fine arts degree from the University of Arizona. His first poetry collection, Sweet Ruin, was published in 1992. His other collections of poetry included What Narcissism Means to Me, Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty, Real Sofistikashun, Twenty Poems That Could Save America and Other Essays, and Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God. He taught at the University of Houston. He died from pancreatic cancer on October 23, 2018 at the age of 64.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (1)

Booklist Review

Nearly every year, a new primer on American poetics attempts to diagnose the state of contemporary verse, each time with a different agenda and purpose. In this iteration, accomplished poet Hoagland articulates his concern that poetry in the U.S. has failed to transfigure the culture because it exhibits a conspicuous lack of adulthood. It may sound like an avuncular complaint, but Hoagland makes clear his affinity for subversion and irreverence in smart passages on idiom and diction that are packed with excerpts and explication of a wide range of poets, from Rainer Maria Rilke and Wallace Stevens to Lucie Brock-Broido and Marianne Moore. Hoagland insists the best poetry can play with language, sound, and subject matter, but it must always emphasize sustained thought, emotional intensity, and ethical agency, traits that can save poetry from utter irrelevance. Hoagland defends this thesis most convincingly in longer chapters he devotes to the lasting influence of poets Dean Young, Sharon Olds, and Robert Bly. A great read for poets and poetry lovers and a rejuvenating call to reimagine literary priorities.--Báez, Diego Copyright 2014 Booklist

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Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (1)

Booklist Review

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