A Vertical Art
On Poetry
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- US$16.99
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- US$16.99
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From the UK Poet Laureate and bestselling translator, a spirited book that demystifies and celebrates the art of poetry today
In A Vertical Art, acclaimed poet Simon Armitage takes a refreshingly common-sense approach to an art form that can easily lend itself to grand statements and hollow gestures. Questioning both the facile and obscure ends of the poetry spectrum, he offers sparkling new insights about poetry and an array of favorite poets.
Based on Armitage’s public lectures as Oxford Professor of Poetry, A Vertical Art illuminates poets as varied as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Marianne Moore, W. H. Auden, Ted Hughes, Thom Gunn, A. R. Ammons, and Claudia Rankine. The chapters are often delightfully sassy in their treatment, as in “Like, Elizabeth Bishop,” in which Armitage dissects—and tallies—the poet’s predilection for similes. He discusses Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize, poetic lists, poetry and the underworld, and the dilemmas of translating Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Armitage also pulls back the curtain on the unromantic realities of making a living as a contemporary poet, and ends the book with his own list of “Ninety-Five Theses” on the principles and practice of poetry.
An appealingly personal book that explores the volatile and disputed definitions of poetry from the viewpoint of a practicing writer and dedicated reader, A Vertical Art makes an insightful and entertaining case for the power and potential of poetry today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
English poet laureate Armitage (Magnetic Field) gathers the lectures he delivered as Oxford Professor of Poetry from 2015 to 2019 in this solid compendium covering Walt Whitman, Claudia Rankine, Ted Hughes, and the anonymous author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, among others. While Armitage's touchstones are often classical, he is skilled at weaving in references to contemporary cultural, as in "The Parable of the Solicitor and the Poet," in which he explores poetry's "standing in this world" via a parable about a poet dealing with insurance claims (and makes a detour into the drawbacks of reading on a Kindle device, specifically its inability to recreate a book's "satisfying materiality"). Armitage is at his best in essays that range across the form to explore broader themes, as in "Access All Areas," which examines poetry on death and the underworld via the work of Geoffrey Hill, Elizabeth Jennings, and Jon Stallworthy. Best of all is the coda; in 95 "theses," Armitage reflects on modern poetry. Among the gems there are the descriptions of poetry as the "semiconductor of language, regulating both flow and restraint" and as the source of a"legal high." Poetry students and fans will enjoy the ride.
