Poetry and Poetics
From the list below, please choose at least 75 texts from across the fields presented, exclusive of poetry. You should also choose approximately 50 poets from those listed. Aim for inclusive coverage from all categories. Five essays are roughly equivalent to one book. Students are expected to familiarize themselves with major works throughout this field, balancing their particular interests with the need to prepare themselves broadly in the topic and discipline. Avoid selecting books you have studied in seminars. Because of the nature of this list, less discretion with respect to self-chosen texts is recommended. Please consult with your director or directors for guidance on how best to proceed through this material.
Poetics 1. Plato, Republic Books 2, 10 2. Aristotle, Poetics 3. Horace, Ars Poetica (Epistola ad Pisones) 4. Longinus, On the Sublime 5. Dante, De vulgari eloquentia 6. George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie 7. Philip Sidney, The Defence of Poesy 8. Nicolas Boileau, Art of Poetry 9. Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism 10. Samuel Johnson, Preface to Shakespeare, Lives of the Poets 11. Frederich von Schiller, Naïve and Sentimental Poetry and On the Sublime (1795) 12. William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Essay Supplementary to the Preface 13. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria 14. Percy Shelley, A Defence of Poetry 15. Keats, Selected Letters 16. Thomas Love Peacock, “The Four Ages of Poetry” 17. Emerson, “The Poet” (1844) 18. John Stuart Mill, “What is Poetry?” and “Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties” 19. Arthur Henry Hallam, “On Some of the Characteristics of Modern Poetry” 20. Robert Browning, Essay on Shelley 21. Matthew Arnold, “On Translating Homer” and “The study of poetry” 22. J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words 23. Cleanth Brooks, The Well-Wrought Urn 24. Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era 25. Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence 26. Paul De Man, The Rhetoric of Romanticism 27. Sharon Cameron, Lyric Time 2
28. Anthony Easthope, Poetry as Discourse 29. Gerard Genette, Figures of Literary Discourse 30. Sheldon Sacks, ed. On Metaphor 31. Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics (1975)
Twentieth Century poetics [British] 1. W B Yeats, The Symbolism of Poetry (1900), Poetry and Tradition (1907) and early essays in Essays and Introductions (1961). 2. T.E. Hulme, Romanticism and Classicism (1912), in Speculations (1924); repr. Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry (eds. J. Ramazani et al), vol.1 (2003), 889-96. 3. F.S. Flint, Imagisme, Poetry [Chicago] 1.6 (March, 1913) 4. Wyndham Lewis (ed.) Blast: Review of the Great English Vortex, No. 1 (1914); excerpts repr. Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry (eds. J. Ramazani et al), vol.1 (2003), 897-920. 5. Mina Loy, Feminist Manifesto (1914); excerpt repr. Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry (eds. J. Ramazani et al), vol.1 (2003), 921-25. 6. T. S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919), The Metaphysical Poets (1921) and other essays in The Sacred Wood: essays on poetry and criticism (1920) and Selected Essays (1932). For an excellent selection, see Selected Prose, ed. Frank Kermode (1975) 7. D.H.Lawrence, The Poetry of the Present: Preface to New Poems (1919); repr. Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry (eds. J. Ramazani et al), vol.1 (2003), 960-63. 8. Wilfred Owen, Preface, Poems (1920); repr. Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry (eds. J. Ramazani et al), vol.1 (2003), 928. 9. I. A. Richards, Science and Poetry (1926); Practical Criticism (1929) 10. Owen Barfield, Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning (1928) 11. William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930); The Structure of Complex Words (1951); Milton’s God (1961) 12. F. R. Leavis, New Bearings in English Poetry (1932) 13. Herbert Read, Form in Modern Poetry (1932) 14. Virginia Woolf, A Letter to a Young Poet (1932) 15. Stephen Spender, The Destructive Element (1935) 16. W.B.Yeats, Introduction to Oxford Book of Modern Verse (1936) 17. ---. Modern Poetry (1936), A General Introduction for My Work (1937) and later essays in Essays and Introductions (1961) 18. Christopher Caudwell, Illusion and Reality: a study of the sources of poetry (1937) 19. Louis MacNeice, Modern Poetry: A Personal Essay (1938) and Varieties of Parable (1965) 20. Cecil Day-Lewis, A Hope for Poetry (1945) and The Poetic Image (1947) 21. Robert Graves, The White Goddess (1948) 22. Donald Davie, Purity of Diction in English Verse (1953), and Articulate energy; an inquiry into the syntax of English poetry (1955) 3
23. Robert Conquest, Introduction, New Lines Anthology (1954). [Manifesto of the Movement poets] 24. Philip Larkin, The Pleasure Principle (1957) and other essays in Required writing: miscellaneous pieces, 1955-1982 (1983) 25. Dylan Thomas, Poetic Manifesto, Texas Quarterly 4.4. (Winter) (1961); repr. Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry (eds. J. Ramazani et al), vol.2 (2003), 1061-66. 26. Al Alvarez, Introduction: The New Poetry, or Beyond the Gentility Principle, The New Poetry (1962, 1966) 27. W.H. Auden, The Dyer’s Hand (1963) 28. Hugh MacDiarmid, The Scottish Renaissance: the next step (1950), and The Quality of Scots Internationalism (1950) in Selected Essays (ed. D. Glen) (1969). 29. Michael Hamburger, The Truth of Poetry: Tensions in Modern Poetry from Baudelaire to the 1960s (1969) 30. Seamus Heaney, Feeling into Words (1974), The Government of the Tongue (1986), The Redress of Poetry (1989) and other essays, in Finders Keepers: Selected Prose, 1971-2001 (2002) 31. Geoffrey Hill, Poetry as ‘Menace’ and ‘Atonement’, and Our Word is Our Bond, in The Lords of Limit (1984), and other essays in Collected Critical Writings of Geoffrey Hill, ed. K. Haynes (2008) 32. Donald Davie, Under Briggflatts: A History of Poetry in Great Britain 1960-1988 (1989) 33. Peter Levi, The Art of Poetry: the Oxford lectures, 1984-1989 (1991) 34. Ted Hughes, Winter Pollen: Occasional Prose (1994) 35. Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Why I choose to write in Irish: The corpse that sits up and talks back, New York Times Book Review (January, 1995); repr. Longman Anthology of English Literature, vol.2 (1999), 2864-72. 36. Thomas Kinsella, The Dual Tradition : an essay on poetry and politics in Ireland (1995) 37. Paul Muldoon, To Ireland, I (2000), and The End of the Poem: Oxford Lectures (2006) 38. James Fenton, The Strength of Poetry: Oxford lectures (2001)
Twentieth Century poetics [American] 1. Amy Lowell, Preface to Some Imagist Poets (1915); repr. Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry (eds. J. Ramazani et al), vol.1 (2003). 2. Ezra Pound, A Retrospect (1918), How to Read, and other essays in Literary Essays, introduced by T.S. Eliot (New Directions, 1968). 3. T. S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919), The Metaphysical Poets (1921) and other essays in The Sacred Wood: essays on poetry and criticism (1920) and Selected Essays (1932). For an excellent selection, see Selected Prose, ed. Frank Kermode (1975) 4. William Carlos Williams, Prologue to Kora in Hell (1919); repr. in Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry (eds. J. Ramazani et al), vol.1 (2003). 4
5. Langston Hughes, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain (1926); repr. Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry (eds. J. Ramazani et al), vol.1 (2003). 6. Hart Crane, A Letter to Harriet Munro (1926); repr. Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry (eds. J. Ramazani et al), vol.1 (2003). 7. Robert Frost, The Figure a Poem Makes (Preface to Collected Poems, 1929) and other essays. 8. Wallace Stevens, The necessary angel: essays on reality and the imagination (1951). 9. Gertrude Stein, from A Transatlantic Interview (1946); repr. in Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry (eds. J. Ramazani et al), vol.1 (2003). 10. H.D., Notes on Thought and Vision & the Wise Sappho 11. Marianne Moore, selected prose and selected letters. 12. Robert Penn Warren, Selected excerpts from: I’ll Take My Stand: the South and the Agrarian tradition (1930); Understanding Poetry (1938). 13. John Crowe Ransom, Selected excerpts from the following: Beating the Bushes: Selected Essays, 1941-1970 (1997); The World's Body (1938). 14. Yvor Winters, Selected prose from: In Defence of Reason (1947); The Function of Criticism: Problems and Exercises (1957); Forms of Discovery (1967). 15. W.K.Wimsatt (& Beardsley), The Verbal Icon (1954) 16. Allen Tate, Tension in Poetry, Understanding Modern Poetry and Three Types of Poetry in On the Limits of Reading: Selected Essays 1928-1948 (1948) 17. Archibald MacLeish, excerpts from Riders on the Earth: Essays & Recollections (1978). 18. Muriel Rukeyser, excerpts from: The Life of Poetry (1949); One Life (1957); The Orgy (1967); Poetry, and Unverifiable Facts (1968). 19. Randall Jarrell, selections from Poetry and the Age (1953); A Sad Heart at the Supermarket (1962); A Third Book of Criticism (1971). For a good selection, see No Other Book: Selected Essays (ed. Brad Leithauser), 2000. 20. Charles Olson, Projective Verse (1950); Selected Writings (1966) 21. John Berryman, Selected prose from The Arts of Reading (1960); The Freedom of the Poet (1976) 22. Theodore Roethke, Selected writings from On the Poet and His Craft: Selected Prose (1966) 23. Louis Zukofsky, Propositions: Collected Critical Essays (1967) 24. Stanley Kunitz, excerpts, Next-to-Last Things: New Poems and Essays (1985). 25. Robert Lowell, Selections from Collected Prose. 26. Elizabeth Bishop, Selections from Collected Prose. 27. Gary Snyder, selected prose, The Gary Snyder Reader (1952-1998) (Counterpoint Press, 1999). 28. W.D. Snodgrass, To Sound Like Yourself: Essays on Poetry (2003) 29. Amiri Baraka / LeRoi Jones, selected writings from: Raise, Race, Rays, Raze: Essays Since 1965 (1971); Daggers and Javelins: Essays, 1974-1979 (1984). 30. Donald Allen and Warren Tallman (eds.) Poetics of the New American Poetry (1973). Selected writings from. 5
31. Anne Waldman and Marilyn Weber (eds.), Talking Poetics for Naropa Institute (1978). Selected essays. 32. Louis Simpson, Selected writings from Ships Going Into the Blue: Essays and Notes on Poetry (1994). 33. Robert Creeley, Was that a real poem and other essays (1979). 34. Joseph Brodsky, Selected essays from Less than One (1986) 35. Ron Silliman, excerpts, The New Sentence (1987) and Under Albany (2004) 36. Adrienne Rich, When we dead awaken, and other essays from Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations (2001), and What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (1993). 37. Robert Pinsky, selected prose, The Sounds of Poetry (1998); Poetry and the World (1988); The Situation of Poetry (1977). 38. Jorie Graham, Introduction to Best American Poetry 1990 39. Donald Hall, Selected essays from: The Weather for Poetry (1982), Poetry and Ambition (1988), and Death to the Death of Poetry (1989) 40. J.D.McClatchy, Selected criticism, White Paper (1989) and Twenty Questions (1998). 41. Sharon Olds, Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry (1994). 42. Wendell Berry, selected essays 43. Dana Gioia, Disappearing Ink: Poetry at the end of Print Culture (2004)
Poetic Form: prosody, meter, rhyme, rhythm 1. Harvey Gross, Sound and Form in Modern Poetry: A Study of Prosody from Thomas Hardy to Robert Lowell (1964) 2. Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End (1968) 3. John Fuller, The Sonnet (London: Methuen, 1972) 4. W.K. Wimsatt (ed.), Versification: Major Language Types (1972) 5. John Ciardi and Miller Williams, How does a poem mean? (1975) 6. John Hollander, Vision and Resonance: two senses of poetic form (1975) and Rhyme’s Reason: a guide to English verse (1980) 7. Jurij Lotman, The Structure of the Artistic Text (1977) 8. Paul Fussell, Poetic Meter and Poetic Form (1979) 9. Donald Wesling, The Chances of Rhyme: Device and Modernity (1980) 10. Derek Attridge, The Rhythms of English Poetry (1982) 11. Timothy Steele, Missing Measures: Modern Poetry and the Revolt Against Meter (1990) 12. Cureton, Richard, Rhythmic Phrasing in English Verse (1992) 13. Anne Finch, Ghost of Meter (1993) 14. Charles Hartman, Free Verse: an essay on prosody (1996) 15. H.T. Kirby-Smith, Origins of Free Verse (1996) 16. Philip Hobsbaum, Metre, Rhythm and Verse Form (1996) 17. Jane Hirshfield, Nine Gates: entering the mind of poetry (1997) 18. Matthew Campbell, Rhythm and Will in Victorian Poetry (1999) 19. Edward Hirsch, How to read a poem (1999) 20. Thomas Carper and Derek Attridge, Meter and Meaning: An Introduction to Rhythm in Poetry (2003) 6
Selected Twentieth Century Poetry Criticism, 1960-2001 1. C.K.Stead, The New Poetic (1964) and Pound, Yeats, Eliot and the Modernist Movement (1986) 2. F.R. Leavis (ed.) A Selection from Scrutiny (1968) 3. Graham Martin; P.N. Furbank (eds), Twentieth-Century Poetry: Critical Essays and Documents (1975) 4. George Bornstein, Transformations of Romanticism in Yeats, Eliot and Stevens (1976) 5. Cairns Craig, Yeats, Eliot, Pound and the Politics of Poetry (1982) 6. Stan Smith, Inviolable Voice: History and Twentieth-Century Poetry (1982) 7. Christopher Ricks, The Force of Poetry (1984) 8. Carol Christ, Victorian and Modern Poetics (1984) 9. Alan Robinson, Poetry, Painting and Ideas, 1885-1914 (1985) 10. Maud Ellmann, The Poetics of Impersonality: T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound (1987) 11. Edna Longley, Poetry in the Wars (1987) 12. Anthony Easthope; J. Thompson (eds.), Contemporary Poetry Meets Modern Theory (1991) 13. Michael North, Political Aesthetic of Yeats, Eliot, and Pound (1991) 14. Hugh Underhill, Problem of Consciousness in Modern Poetry (1992) 15. Leon Surette, The Birth of Modernism: Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, and the Occult (1993) 16. Stan Smith, Origins of Modernism: Eliot, Pound, Yeats and the Rhetoric of Renewal (1994) 17. Gary Day; B. Docherty (eds), British Poetry 1900-50: Aspects of Tradition (1995) 18. Daniel Albright, Quantum Poetics: Yeats, Pound, Eliot, and the Science of Modernism (1997)
Poetry in Translation 1. Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days 2. Homer, Iliad and Odyssey 3. Sappho, lyrics 4. Virgil, Aeneid 5. Ovid, Metamorphosis 6. Catullus, selected poems 7. Petrarch 8. Dante, Inferno 9. Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal 10. Stephane Mallarme 11. Paul Valery 12. Rainer Maria Rilke
British Poetry Through the Restoration 13. Seamus Heaney, trans., Beowulf 14. Langland, Piers Plowman 15. Geoffrey Chaucer, "General Prologue" to The Canterbury Tales, "The Wife of 7
Bath's Prologue and Tale" 16. William Shakespeare, Sonnets 17. Edmund Spenser, "Epithalamion," The Faerie Queene, I, II 18. John Donne, selected Songs and Sonnets 19. Ben Jonson, "To Penshurst" and other poems 20. George Herbert, selected poems 21. Andrew Marvell, "Upon Appleton House," selected poems 22. John Milton, "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," "Lycidas," Paradise Lost, I, VII 23. John Dryden, "Mac Flecknoe", "To Mistress Anne Killegrew," "A Song for St. Cecilia's Day"
British Poetry from the Eighteenth Century to the Present 24. Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock, Essay on Man 25. Jonathan Swift 26. William Blake 27. Samuel Taylor Coleridge 28. William Wordsworth 29. George Gordon, Lord Byron 30. Robert Burns 31. John Keats 32. Percy Bysshe Shelly 33. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King 34. Robert Browning, The Ring and the Book 35. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese 36. Matthew Arnold 37. Christina Rossetti 38. Algernon Charles Swinburne 39. Gerard Manley Hopkins 40. Thomas Hardy 41. William Butler Yeats 42. D.H.Lawrence 43. Hugh MacDiarmid 44. Basil Bunting 45. Stevie Smith 46. W.H. Auden 47. Dylan Thomas 48. Hugh MacDiarmid 49. Philip Larkin 50. Ted Hughes 51. Geoffrey Hill 52. Derek Walcott, Omeros 53. Seamus Heaney 54. Eavan Boland 55. Paul Muldoon 56. Carol Ann Duffy
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Nineteenth and Twentieth Century American Poetry 57. Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass 58. Emily Dickinson, The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition ed. Ralph Franklin 59. John Hollander (ed.), Nineteenth Century American Poetry (Library of America College Ed.) 60. Edna St Vincent de Millay, selected poems 61. Robert Frost, North of Boston and A Boy’s Will and selected later poems 62. Ezra Pound, selected Cantos and prose 63. Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons (1914) 64. Amy Lowell, selected poems 65. Wallace Stevens, The Palm at the End of the Mind 66. T.S. Eliot, Collected Poems 67. William Carlos Williams, Spring and All 68. Hart Crane, The Bridge 69. Marianne Moore, Collected Poems 70. H.D. Trilogy 71. Langston Hughes, Selected Poems 72. Gwendolyn Brooks, In the Mecca 73. Carl Sandburg, selected poems 74. e.e. cummings, selected poems 75. Allen Ginsberg, Howl and other Poems 76. Elizabeth Bishop, Collected Poems 77. Charles Olson, Maximus 78. Robert Lowell, Life Studies 79. Sylvia Plath, Ariel 80. Frank O’Hara, Lunch Poems 81. Le Roi Jones / Amiri Baraka, selected poetry 82. James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover 83. Adrienne Rich, Diving into the Wreck 84. John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror 85. Jorie Graham, Materialism
Strongly Recommended: Dana Gioia’s edited Anthology of Twentieth Century American Poetry