Strong Words

Modern poets on modern poetry

W.N. Herbert, Matthew Hollis, W.N. Herbert, Matthew Hollis

• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781852245153
• eBook ISBN: 9781780375564
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Poetry has never been so rigorous and diverse, nor has its audience been so numerous and engaged. Strong words? Not if the poets are right. As Ezra Pound wrote: 'You would think that anyone wanting to know about poetry would go to someone who knew something about it.' That's exactly what Bloodaxe has done with this judicious and comprehensive selection of British, Irish and American manifestos by some of modern poetry's finest practitioners.

Opening the 20th century account with Ezra Pound, W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot, the book moves through key later figures including W.H. Auden, Ted Hughes, Stevie Smith and Dylan Thomas. America is richly represented too, from Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams to the influential New England poets Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop and Sylvia Plath.Strong Words then brings the issues fully up to date with over 30 specially commissioned statements from contemporary writers including Seamus Heaney, Andrew Motion, Simon Armitage, Selima Hill, Paul Muldoon and Douglas Dunn, amounting to a new overview of the poetry being written at the start of the 21st century.For poets and readers, for critics, teachers and students of creative writing and contemporary poetry, this is essential reading. As well as representing many of the most important poets of the last hundred years, Strong Words also charts many different stances and movements, from Modernism to Postmodernism and beyond. This landmark book champions the continuing dialogue of these voices, past and present, exploring the strongest form that words can take: the poem.

Table of contents

• Description
• Title Page
• Contents
• A Note on the Text
• Introduction: Writing into the Dark
• EZRA POUND (1885-1972) from A Retrospect
• W.B. YEATS (1865-1939) from A General Introduction for my Work
• T.S. ELIOT (1888-1965) Tradition and the Individual Talent
• ROBERT GRAVES (1895-1985) from Observations on Poetry 1922-1925
• ROBERT FROST (1874-1963) The Figure a Poem Makes
• HART CRANE (1899-1932) General Aims and Theories
• E.E. CUMMINGS (1894-1962) Foreword from is 5
• GERTRUDE STEIN (1874-1946) Explaining ‘A Rose is a Rose is a Rose’
• WALLACE STEVENS (1879-1955) from Adagia
• W.H. AUDEN (1907-73) from The Virgin and the Dynamo
• LOUIS MACNEICE (1907-63) A Statement
• HUGH MACDIARMID (1892-1978) from A Theory of Scots Letters
• BASIL BUNTING (1900-85) The Poet’s Point of View
• WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS (1883-1963) On Measure – Statement For Cid Corman
• LOUIS ZUKOFSKY (1904-78) A Statement For Poetry
• CHARLES OLSON (1910-70) from Projective Verse
• ROBERT CREELEY (1926-2005) To Define
• DENISE LEVERTOV (1923-97) ‘I believe poets are instruments’
• MARIANNE MOORE (1887-1972) ‘I tend to write in a patterned arrangement’
• ELIZABETH BISHOP (1911-79) Letter to Miss Pierson
• ROBERT LOWELL (1917-77) On ‘Skunk Hour ’
• RANDALL JARRELL (1914-65) Answers to Questions
• KEITH DOUGLAS (1920-44) ‘Poetry is like a man’
• DYLAN THOMAS (1914-53) from Notes on the Art of Poetry
• W.S. GRAHAM (1918-86) Notes on a Poetry of Release
• PATRICK KAVANAGH (1905-67) from Self Portrait
• LANGSTON HUGHES (1902-67) How to be a Bad Writer
• ALLEN GINSBERG (1926-98) from ‘When the Mode of the Music Changes the Walls of the City Shake’
• FRANK O’HARA (1926-66) Personism: A Manifesto
• AMIRI BARAKA (LEROI JONES) (1934-2014) ‘How You Sound??’
• AUDRE LORDE (1934-92) Poetry is Not a Luxury
• ADRIENNE RICH (1929-2012) Poetry and Experience: Statement at a Poetry Reading
• THOM GUNN (1929-2004) Writing a Poem
• SYLVIA PLATH (1932-63) A Comparison
• STEVIE SMITH (1902-71) My Muse
• PHILIP LARKIN (1922-85) Statement
• TED HUGHES (1930-98) Words and Experience
• SEAMUS HEANEY (1939-2013) Craft and Technique
• TONY HARRISON (b. 1937) ‘Poetry is all I write’
• DOUGLAS DUNN (b. 1942) A Difficult Simple Art
• DEREK WALCOTT (1930-2017) In Conversation
• PAUL MULDOON (b. 1951) Go Figure
• TOM PAULIN (b. 1949) Tracking The Wind Dog
• CRAIG RAINE (b. 1944) Babylonish Dialects
• ANNE STEVENSON (b. 1933) A Few Words for the New Century
• C.K. WILLIAMS (1936-2015) Contexts: An Essay on Intentions
• ELAINE FEINSTEIN (1930-2019) A Question of Voice
• EDWIN MORGAN (1920-2010) Roof of Fireflies
• TOM LEONARD (1944-2018) From the Introduction to Radical Renfrew
• FLEUR ADCOCK (b. 1934) Not Quite a Statement
• LES MURRAY (1938-2019)) The Instrument
• JOHN KINSELLA (b. 1963) Almost a Dialogue with Lyn Hejinian: Quotations and Phantom Limbs…
• U.A. FANTHORPE (1929-2009) War, Poetry, the Child
• GRACE NICHOLS (b. 1950) ‘The poetry I feel closest to’
• BRENDAN KENNELLY (b. 1936) Voices
• EAVAN BOLAND (1944-2020) The Wrong Way
• MEDBH MCGUCKIAN (b. 1950) And Cry Jesus to the Mice
• BERNARD O’DONOGHUE (b. 1945) Poetry’s Concern
• DAVID CONSTANTINE (b. 1944) Common and Peculiar
• HUGO WILLIAMS (b. 1942) Leaping Versus Blabbing
• ANDREW MOTION (b. 1952) Yes and No
• CIARAN CARSON (1948-2019) The Other
• SEAN O’BRIEN (b. 1952) Proceedings in Palmersville
• MICHAEL HOFMANN (b. 1957) ‘I happen to believe’
• MICHAEL DONAGHY (1954-2004) My Report Card
• SELIMA HILL (b. 1945) Racoons – or, Can Art Be Evil?
• SARAH MAGUIRE (1957-2017) Poetry Makes Nothing Happen
• SIMON ARMITAGE (b. 1963) Re-Writing the Good Book
• GLYN MAXWELL (b. 1962) Strictures
• JOHN BURNSIDE (b. 1955) Strong Words
• ROBERT CRAWFORD (b. 1959) Cosmopolibackofbeyondism
• GWYNETH LEWIS (b. 1959) Whose Coat is that Jacket? Whose Hat is that Cap?
• FRED D’AGUIAR (b. 1960) Further Adventures in the Skin Trade
• LAVINIA GREENLAW (b. 1962) Interior with Extension Cord
• KATHLEEN JAMIE (b. 1962) Holding Fast – Truth and Change in Poetry
• DON PATERSON (b. 1963) Aphorisms
• JOHN HARTLEY WILLIAMS (1944-2014) A Manifesto
• Acknowledgements and Further Reading
• Index
• About the Authors
• Copyright