Buch, Englisch, 216 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 145 mm x 222 mm, Gewicht: 385 g
Poetry and the Clichés of Public Speech
Buch, Englisch, 216 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 145 mm x 222 mm, Gewicht: 385 g
ISBN: 978-0-8071-7935-2
Verlag: Louisiana State University Press
Instead of ridding their writing of such language, many poets parroted these tropes as a means of exploring the implications of such expressions, weighing their effects, and identifying the realities they distort and suppress. With its attentiveness to linguistic particulars, poetry proved especially well-suited to this innovative mode of close listening and intertextual commentary. At the same time, postwar poets recognized their own susceptibility to dead language, so that co-opting political clichés obliged them to scrutinize their writing and accept the inevitability of cant while simultaneously pushing against it.
This innovative study blends close readings with historical context as it traces the development of echo and critique in the work of seven poets who expertly deployed the method throughout their careers: W. H. Auden, Randall Jarrell, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Robert Lowell, Josephine Miles, and Seamus Heaney. Gargaillo's analysis reveals that poetry can encourage us to listen diligently and critically to the insincerity ubiquitous in public discourse.