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Author Ahearn, Barry, author.

Title Pound, Frost, Moore, and poetic precision : science in modernist American poetry / Barry Ahearn
Published [Cham] : Palgrave Macmillan, [2020]
©2020

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Description 1 online resource (xii, 332 pages)
Contents Intro -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Chapter 1 Introduction -- Chapter 2 To Be Precise -- 1 In the Gloom -- 2 From the Lighthouse -- 3 The Light of Science -- 4 Babbage and Tennyson -- 5 Quantification -- 6 A Brief History of "Precision" -- Chapter 3 Ezra Pound and Error -- 1 The Dance Floor and the Laboratory -- 2 Agassiz and Objectivity -- 3 Great Men -- 4 "Wrong from the Start-" (P, 185) -- 5 Quo Vadis? -- 6 The Unerring Body -- 7 Doubt -- 8 The Imprecise Language of the Gods -- 9 Errata -- 10 Confucius -- 11 Serendipity
Chapter 4 Robert Frost and "Something" -- 1 Something -- 2 A Somewhat Phenomenological Approach to "Something" -- 3 "Something" and Science -- 4 "Something" and Others -- 5 "Something" and Narrative -- 6 Articulating Something -- Chapter 5 Marianne Moore and Ac-/cident -- 1 Precision à la Moore -- 2 The Conservation of Mystery -- 3 Estimation -- 4 Footprints of the Creator -- 5 The Precise Paradoxes of "Marriage" -- 6 Substance, Accident, Paradox -- Chapter 6 Afterword -- Works Cited -- Index
Summary Pound, Frost, Moore and Poetic Precision: Science in American Modernist Poetry examines three major poets in light of the demand that poetry aspire to scientific precision. The critical insistence that poetry be precise affected every one of these poets, and looking at how they responded to this insistence offers a new perspective on their achievements and, by extension, twentieth-century poetry in general. Ezra Pound sought to associate poetry with the precision of modern science, technology and mathematics as a way to eliminate or reduce error. Robert Frost, however, welcomed imprecision as a fundamental aspect of existence that the poet could use. Marianne Moore appreciated the value of both precision and imprecision, especially with respect to her religious perspective on human and natural phenomena. By analyzing these particular poets' reaction to the value placed on precision, Barry Ahearn explores how that emphasis influenced the broader culture, literary culture and twentieth-century Modernist American poetry
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Subject American poetry -- 19th century -- History and criticism
Literature: history & criticism.
Literary studies: from c 1900.
History of science.
Literary studies: poetry & poets.
Literary Criticism -- American -- General.
Science -- History.
Literary Criticism -- Poetry.
American poetry
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9783030365448
3030365441