The Cure of Poetry in an Age of Prose: Moral Essays on the Poet's Calling

The Cure of Poetry in an Age of Prose: Moral Essays on the Poet's Calling Mary Kinzie Pages: 362 Publish date: July 15, 1993 ISBN: 0226437361 Type: Paperback *May have some wear from reading. Pages are intact and may come with some notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged but may have spine creases from reading. Description: “The role of the poet, Mary Kinzie writes, is to engage the most profound subjects with the utmost in expressive clarity. The role of the critic is to follow the poet, word for word, into the arena where the creative struggle occurs. How this mutual purpose is served, ideally and practically, is the subject of this bracingly polemical collection of essays. A distinguished poet and critic, Kinzie assesses poetry's situation during the past twenty-five years. Ours, she contends, is literally a prosaic age, not only in the popularity of prose genres but in the resultant compromises with truth and elegance in literature. In essays on "the rhapsodic fallacy," confessionalism, and the romance of perceptual response, Kinzie diagnoses some of the trends that diminish the poet's flexibility. Conversely, she also considers individual poets—Randall Jarrell, Elizabeth Bishop, Howard Nemerov, Seamus Heaney, and John Ashbery—who have found ingenious ways of averting the risks of prosaism and preserving the special character of poetry.”