Selected Essays of R.P. Blackmur

by R.P. Blackmur, Denis Donoghue

Examines the nature of literary criticism and analyzes the works of writers including E. E. Cummings, Henry James, Thomas Mann, and Emily Dickinson

Genres: Literary Criticism, Essays

Hardcover

First published April 1, 1988

Reviews

[Eric Byrd]

Midcentury in American poetry is commonly called 'The Age Criticism,' because, as they say, the daunting works of the first wave of erudite poet-critics (Eliot, Pound, Stevens) required explication from a second wave of erudite poet-critics (Warren, Ransom, Blackmur, Brooks, Tate, Berryman kinda). In this second wave Blackmur is something of an outsider, at least socially: Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom and Cleanth Brooks were southerners, and institutionalized pedagogues with textbooks to their names and famous proteges; Blackmur was an uncredentialed autodidact who worked (and held forth before student customers) in a Cambridge, Mass bookstore. He got his start working on Hound & Horn, the heavy-lifting modernist journal that Lincoln Kirtsein - a whirlwind of cultural promotion even as a teenager - founded while a Harvard undergraduate. Blackmur isn't an anomaly, however, when it comes to his sensitivity and depth as a critic. He was grappling intelligently with Eliot, Moore and Stevens as their works were coming off the press; his readings are among the first and among the best.