Modern Poetic Practice: Structure and Genesis

by Peter Baker

This book attempts to develop a generative criticism of poetic practice. The order of presentation follows a certain model for how the poem comes into being. Poetic practice as it is actualized in the work of the creative imagination stems memory as the place where the poem arises among the conflicts of the imagination; absence or the loss which weighs on the utterance and gives it urgency; desire as the force structuring the poem according to the subject's need; knowing or how the subject's experience of the world and other people finds expression; and style or how the poem exemplifies a compassionate understanding. Poets whose work is examined include Hardy, Mallarmé, Williams, Ungaretti, Apollinaire, Saint-John Perse, John Ashbery, and Frank O'Hara.

222 pages, Hardcover

First published December 31, 1986

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