Book Cover
E-book
Author Pinsky, Robert.

Title Democracy, culture, and the voice of poetry / Robert Pinsky
Published Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, ©2002

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Description 1 online resource (x, 96 pages)
Series University Center for Human Values series
University Center for Human Values series.
Contents Acknowledgments; I: Culture; II: Vocality; III: Self-Consciousness; IV: Performance; V: Social Presence; VI: Readers; VII: The Narcissistic and the Personal; VIII: Models of Culture; IX: Conclusion; Index of Names
Summary The place of poetry in modern democracy is no place, according to conventional wisdom. The poet is a casualty of mass entertainment and prosaic public culture, banished to the artistic sidelines to compose variations on insipid themes for a dwindling audience. Robert Pinsky argues that this gloomy diagnosis is wrongheaded and writes that to portray poetry and democracy as enemies is to radically misconstrue both. The voice of poetry, he shows, resonates with profound themes at the very heart of democratic culture. One of the country's most accomplished poets, Robert Pinsky served two terms as America's Poet Laureate (1997-2000) and led the immensely popular multimedia Favorite Poem Project, which invited Americans to submit and read aloud their favorite poems. Pinsky draws on his experiences and on characteristically sharp and elegant observations of individual poems to argue that expecting poetry to compete with show business is to mistake its greatest democratic strength--its intimate, human scale--as a weakness. He states that as part of the entertainment industry poetry will always be small and overlooked. As an art--and one that is inescapably democratic--it is massive and fundamental
Notes Includes index
Print version record
Subject American poetry -- 20th century -- History and criticism
Democracy in literature.
Culture in literature.
Poetry
Poetry as Topic
poetry.
LITERARY CRITICISM -- Poetry.
American poetry
Culture in literature
Democracy in literature
Intellectual life
Poetry
Gedichten.
Democratie.
SUBJECT United States -- Intellectual life -- 20th century. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85140367
Subject United States
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781400825158
1400825156
9780691096179
0691096171