Essays on Poetic Theory
This section collects famous historical essays about poetry that have greatly influenced the art. Written by poets and critics from a wide range of historical, cultural, and aesthetic perspectives, the essays address the purpose of poetry, the possibilities of language, and the role of the poet in the world. They are arranged in chronological order.
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Sargent is reported to have said to Renoir that he painted “cads in the park.” And Sargent was of course quite right.(1) The passion of the Impressionists to see, and...
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By Brenda Hillman 2006
I’m thrilled to be presenting a lecture honoring Judith Stronach to many colleagues and friends, and I’m grateful to Ray for publishing this series of lectures by poets—I feel fortunate...
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By Nathaniel Mackey 2005
Performance is a bothersome word for writerly poets. Performance art, poetry slams, and the like have made the term synonymous with theatricality, a recourse to dramatic, declamatory, and other tactics...
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By Annie Finch 2005
Even at this late-postmodernist moment, when self-defined innovative poetry needs to build on a long tradition of previous self-defined innovative poetry, such poetry still defines itself in opposition to tradition....
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By Barbara Guest 2000
There is an invisible architecture often supporting the surface of the poem, interrupting the progress of the poem. It reaches into the poem in search for an identity with the...
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By Alice Notley 1998
For a long time I've seen my job as bound up with the necessity of noncompliance with pressures, dictates, atmospheres of, variously, poetic factions, society at large, my own past...
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By Ann Lauterbach 1998
In May 1998, the critic Michael Brenson organized a symposium at the Rockefeller Foundation in New York at which a number of people in the arts were asked to consider...
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By Adrienne Rich 1993
The society whose modernization has reached the stage of integrated spectacle is characterized by the combined effect of five principal factors: incessant technological renewal, integration of state and economy, generalized...
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By Lyn Hejinian 1985
“The Rejection of Closure” was originally written as a talk and given at 544 Natoma Street, San Francisco, on April 17, 1983.(1) The “Who Is Speaking?” panel discussion had taken...
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By Richard Hugo 1982
You hear me make extreme statements like “don’t communicate” and “there is no reader.” While these statements are meant as said, I presume when I make them that you can...
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By Michael Palmer 1979
(sermon faux – vraie historie) . . . and the old dogmatism will no longer be able to end it. ADOLFO SÁNCHEZ VÁZQUEZ The flower of capital is small and...
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By Robin Blaser 1967
especially for Ebbe Borregaard (1) I am writing here about my poetry in relation to poetry. The writing had an occasion: for a few in San Francisco, where I read it...
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By Denise Levertov 1965
For me, back of the idea of organic form is the concept that there is a form in all things (and in our experience) which the poet can discover and...
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By Langston Hughes 1965
Poets and versifiers of African descent have been publishing poetry on American shores since the year 1746 when a slave woman named Lucy Terry penned a rhymed description of an...
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By Jack Spicer 1965
THOMAS PARKINSON:(1) I think we can start the lecture now. This seems to be old home week. We have Jack Spicer with us, as we have off and on now...
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By Jack Spicer 1965
JACK SPICER: Well, I really ought to explain the structure of the three lecture/readings, more than is on the flyer that some of you saw. Essentially what’s going to happen...
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By George Oppen 1963
Sargent is reported to have said to Renoir that he painted “cads in the park.” And Sargent was of course quite right.(1) The passion of the Impressionists to see, and...
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By Amiri Baraka 1963
Speech is the effective form of a culture. Any shape or cluster of human history still apparent in the conscious and unconscious habit of groups of people is what I...
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By Langston Hughes 1956
You can start anywhere—Jazz as Communication—since it’s a circle, and you yourself are the dot in the middle. You, me. For example, I’ll start with the Blues. I’m not a...
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By William Carlos Williams 1948
Talk given at the University of Washington, 1948 Let’s begin by quoting Mr. Auden—(from The Orators): “Need I remind you that you’re no longer living in ancient Egypt?” I’m going to say...
