Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.19 (894 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0674026950 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 448 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-05-16 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Superlative, Enlightening, Non-Pedantic, Jargon-Free Criticism Seoigheach Vendler's book is an extended application of close-reading scholarship to the poems of Yeats, with particular emphasis on the metrical structures of the poems. Lest that summary leave the impression that it is an arid technical exercise, I should stress that this fine book offers immense benefits to a potentially large readership, including: (1) any. Science meets art The fact that Helen Vendler majored in chemistry in college and got a Fulbright Fellowship for mathematics is evident in this book.Dense? Yes. Intimidating? That, too. But comprehensive, based on evidence, insightful, and ultimately illuminating? Very much so. Vendler is scientific and logical -- one might even say, endowed with a good dollop of com. Ralph Metheny said A wonderful explainer. I thank Helen Vendler for explaining the meaning of many familiar lines, such as these (from different poems): "That is no country for old men", "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?", and "The silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun".
Yeats's prose and plays (Yeats's Vision and the Later Plays). A preliminary chapter looks at form, proportion and meter in three famous poems; later installments consider the progress of the series of technical investigations in his sometimes airy, incantatory early verse; the efforts to combine high and low speech that marked his ballads; his anxious, and finally majestic, Irish transformations of the originally English-and-Italian sonnet; and his metamorphosis of the eight-line stanza (ottava rima) into a
This book is a space-clearing gesture, an attempt to write about lyric forms in Yeats in unprecedented and comprehensive ways. Yeats explores the potential of such forms to give shape and local habitation to volatile thoughts and feelings. This is where Helen Vendler's Our Secret Discipline begins. Through exquisite attention to outer and inner forms, Vendler explores the most inventive reaches of the poet's mind. Listen to a short interview with Helen VendlerHost: Chris Gondek Producer: Heron & CraneThe fundamental difference between rhetoric and poetry, according to Yeats, is that rhetoric is the expression of one's quarrels with others while poetry is the expression (and sometimes the resolution) of one's quarrel with oneself. Helen Vendler remains focused on questions of singular importance: Why did Yeats cast his poems into the widely differing forms they ultimately took? Can we understand Yeats's poetry better if we pay attention to inner and outer lyric form? Chapters of the book take up many Yeatsian ventures, such as the sonnet, the lyric sequence, paired poems, blank verse, and others. With elegance and precision, Vendler offers brilliant insights into the creative process and speculates on Yeats's aims as he writes and rewrites some of t
. Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard University. Helen Vendler is A