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E-book
Author Gilbert, Roger, 1960- author.

Title Walks in the world : representation and experience in modern American poetry / Roger Gilbert
Published Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [1991]
©1991

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Description 1 online resource (301 pages)
Contents Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION A Walk Is a Poem, A Poem Is a Walk -- ONE. Robert Frost The Walk as Parable -- TWO. Wallace Stevens: The Walk as Occasion -- THREE. William Carlos Williams: The Walk as Music -- FOUR. Theodore Roethke and Elizabeth Bishop: The Walk as Revelation -- FIVE. Frank O'Hara and Gary Snyder: The Walk as Sample -- SIX. A.R. Ammons and John Ashbery: The Walk as Thinking -- CONCLUSION The Walk and the World -- EPILOGUE. Some Further Walks -- INDEX
Summary In the twentieth century no form of experience has been more frequently taken up by poets eager to capture both the openness and fluidity of life and the aesthetic closure of an artwork than that of a walk. Examining the walk poem, Roger Gilbert contends that at its heart is the "desire to keep what we have lived." What is the appeal of the walk poem for modern American poets? According to Gilbert, it provides a ready-made frame within which to explore the full range of individual consciousness as it responds to and reflects on the world immediately at hand. The unstructured, plotless character of the walk allows poets to move freely from place to place, image to image, thought to thought. Suggesting that the walk poem strikes a compromise between the American obsession with process or movement and more traditionally mimetic concerns, Gilbert shows how it enables the poet to apprehend the world as horizon rather than landscape. Through perceptive and extended analyses of walk poems by Frost, Stevens, Williams, Roethke, Bishop, O'Hara, Snyder, Ammons, and Ashbery, he uncovers a spectrum of representational strategies for transforming passing experiences into the more lasting substance of poetry. Walks in the World addresses anyone who takes poetry seriously. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-286) and index
Notes In English
Print version record
Subject American poetry -- 20th century -- History and criticism
Walking in literature.
LITERARY CRITICISM -- Poetry.
LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General.
American poetry
Walking in literature
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781400861699
1400861691
9780691068589
0691068585
0691602492
9780691602493