The Sighted Singer: Two Works on Poetry for Readers and Writers

by Allen R. Grossman, Mark Halliday (Primary Contributor)

During a week in January 1981, poets Allen Grossman and Mark Halliday met for a series of conversations exploring "the meanings for us as poets arising from the differences between us—differences of generation and education as well as of temperament and poetic styles." The result was Against Our Vanishing , which Charles Altieri called "the best in contemporary poetic thinking." The Sighted Two Works on Poetry for Readers and Writers makes available a revised and significantlyexpanded version of Against Our Vanishing and includes Grossman's recent treatise " Summa A Primer of the Commonplaces in Speculative Poetry." This combined edition provides a sophisticated yet accessible discussion—across generations—of "the fundamental discourse of poetic structure." For students and teachers, for writers and readers, The Sighted Singer is a splendid introduction to both the tradition of poetry and its contemporary practice.

Genres: Poetry, Textbooks

400 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1991

Reviews

[Sarah Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm kind of a poetry nerd. (You are not shocked.) Accordingly, I love reading prose by poets on poetry, interviews, book reviews, whatever. It's something about the way a poet can use a sentence that always gets me, and also (of course) something about the way a particularly insightful poet can illuminate all of the invisible (but moving) gears inside the poem machine.

The Sighted Singer takes two approaches to the aforementioned: the first half contains conversations between Grossman and Halliday, while the second part encompasses Grossman's take on (and I'm totally not kidding here) every major technique of lyrical poetry. Hey, he doesn't call it the Summa Lyrica for no damn reason. Kind of like reading a Taoist Heidegger on the work of the line as it applies to eternity. And the conversations, of course, read like really meaty interviews (or interviews in which both participants are interviewing each other, which it occurs to me is a kind of silly thing to say given that conversations are like that usually, unless you're talking with an Interruptor and then it all goes to hell).

[Steel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a theoretical text, so it's not really fun reading for the most part, but it's brilliant and highly perceptive work from two men who have thought carefully and systematically about the art of poetry. Grossman's Summa Lyrica is the second of the two works contained in the book, and I consider it a really important text because it seeks to undertake an examination and justification for the project of lyric poetry, with consideration of historical antecedent and contemporary concerns. A really valuable and highly learned work if you are studying poetry or want to write lyric poetry.

[Jamey · Rating 5 out of 5]

No book quite like it.

[Wong Yang · Rating 5 out of 5]

Because the library here is too small the staff had to put in a loan request for this book to travel about 400 miles from Warwick to our tiny coastal town...only for me to not find the time to finish reading it in its entirety before it had to be returned. And I just imagine this book full of banger lines being stacked in the back of a truck that would make the trip down South - lines like "Poetry is the least solitary of enterprises. It pitches persons toward one another full of news. Its purpose is to realize the self; and its law is that this can only be done by bringing the other to light." This book brings together two works on the theory and practice of poetry - a series of conversations between Grossman and Halliday and Summa Lyrica, a treatise on poetry by Grossman. They deal with the function of poetry, the poetic process, poetic address, and the relationship between poetry and philosophy. We write poems "against our vanishing", Grossman says, but also to "meet one another, affirm one another, remember, see, and foresee one another." The language is clear and unpretentious while meditative. Some day I might make a 400 mile trip to pick this book up again.

[Alma B · Rating 5 out of 5]

I selected “The Poet of Poets” A. Grossman as my poet for the semester in my Advanced Poetry Workshop class. To say I learned about poetry, poetics ... and my own voice, is truly not enough. A lot of what he did with his work, is reflected in some of my own pieces. Paying homage with some repetition ... muse and purpose driven poetry. . .

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fundamental

[Craig Morgan Teicher · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is crazytown.