Cover Image

Politics and form in postmodern poetry : O'Hara, Bishop, Ashbery, and Merrill / Mutlu Konuk Blasing.

Show other versions (2)

Approaching post-World War II poetry from a postmodern critical perspective, this study challenges the prevailing assumption that experimental forms signify political opposition while traditional forms are politically conservative. Such essentialist alignments of forms with extra-formal values, and...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Online Access: Full Text (via Cambridge)
Main Author: Blasing, Mutlu Konuk, 1944-
Format: Electronic eBook
Language:English
Published: Cambridge [England] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Series:Cambridge studies in American literature and culture.
Subjects:
Bishop, Elizabeth, > 1911-1979 > Political and social views.
Merrill, James, > 1926-1995 > Political and social views.
O'Hara, Frank, > 1926-1966 > Political and social views.
Ashbery, John, > 1927-2017 > Political and social views.
Ashbery, John, > 1927-2017
Bishop, Elizabeth, > 1911-1979.
Merrill, James, > 1926-1995.
O'Hara, Frank, > 1926-1966.
American poetry > 20th century > History and criticism.
Politics and literature > United States > History > 20th century.
Political poetry, American > History and criticism.
Postmodernism (Literature) > United States.
Literary form > History > 20th century.
American poetry.
Literary form.
Political and social views.
Political poetry, American.
Politics and literature.
Postmodernism (Literature)
United States.
1900-1999
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History.
Description
Summary:Approaching post-World War II poetry from a postmodern critical perspective, this study challenges the prevailing assumption that experimental forms signify political opposition while traditional forms are politically conservative. Such essentialist alignments of forms with extra-formal values, and the oppositional framework of innovation versus conservation that they yield, reflect modernist biases inappropriate for reading postwar poetry. Biasing defines postmodern poetry as a break with modernism's valorization of technique and its implicit collusion with technological progress. She shows that four major postwar poets - Frank O'Hara, Elizabeth Bishop, John Ashbery and James Merrill (two traditional and two experimental) - cannot be read as politically conservative because formally traditional or as culturally oppositional because formally experimental. All of these poets acknowledge that no one form is more natural than another, and no given form grants them a superior position for judging cultural and political arrangements. Their work plays an important cultural role precisely by revealing that meanings and values do not inhere in forms but are always and irreducibly rhetorical.
Physical Description:1 online resource (x, 219 pages)
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:9780511570360
0511570368
DOI:10.1017/CBO9780511570360
Language:English.
Source of Description, Etc. Note:Source of description: Print version record.

Similar Items