Stephen Fredman asserts in his latest work that American poetry is groundless--that each generation of American poets faces the problem of identity anew and discovers for itself fresh meaning. His argument focuses on four pairs--Eliot-Williams, Thoreau-Olson, Emerson-Duncan and Whitman-Creeley--and illustrates how Williams, Olson, Duncan and Creeley are all influenced by these predecessors to some extent but that ultimately their poetry is paradoxically grounded in an essential groundlessness. In order to demonstrate how approaches to groundlessness have persisted over time, Fredman explores the measures taken by these American poets to provide a provisional ground upon which to build their poetry: inventing idiosyncratic traditions, forming poetic communities, engaging in polemical prose, assessing all the dimensions of particular places, and treating words as emblematic and mysterious objects. At the very center of the book stands Charles Olson, whose work so dramatically articulates the whole range of issues arising from the American poet's anxious search for, and resistance to, an authentic and unified tradition.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
ISBN-13
9780521443036
eBay Product ID (ePID)
95244988
Product Key Features
Book Title
The Grounding of American Poetry: Charles Olson and the Emersonian Tradition
Author
Stephen Fredman
Format
Hardcover
Language
English
Topic
Literature
Publication Year
1993
Number of Pages
186 Pages
Dimensions
Item Height
237mm
Item Width
160mm
Item Weight
399g
Additional Product Features
Title_Author
Stephen Fredman
Series Title
Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture