Fables of the Self: Studies in Lyric Poetry [Hardcover]

Rosanna Warren (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 17, 2008

A landmark work—part personal narrative, part critical exploration—by a distinguished American poet.

Fables of the Self traces ideas of imagined selfhood through the lyric poetry of classical Greece and Rome, the modernist poetry of France, and modern and contemporary English and American lyrics. Rosanna Warren's work emerges from the tradition of British and American poet-critics such as William Empson, Donald Davie, and Randall Jarrell. Her readings of Sappho, Virgil, Baudelaire, Melville, Rimbaud, Mark Strand, and Louise Glück, among others, combine Helen Vendler's passionate attention to detail and something of Harold Bloom's panoramic view. Warren opposes both the literalizing, autobiographical approach to self in so-called confessional poetry and the other extreme of avant-garde erasures of self. Framing her critical studies between a memoir of childhood and a concluding journal entry, Warren has composed an occult autobiography, showing the imagination as a transfiguring and potentially moral force. 3 illustrations

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This first gathering of literary criticism by poet Warren (Departure) shines, much like her verse, because of her ability to make the past and present connect. Warren writes skillfully about English poetry (in a fine piece on negation in Thomas Hardy) and modern France (with superb introductions to the poets Max Jacob and Guillaume Apollinaire, though there are few surprises when she examines Rimbaud). She also advances fine arguments about how English-language poets use the classical past: Swinburne's adaptations of Sappho, for example, and Auden's Alcaic elegy. Warren's father was the poet and novelist Robert Penn Warren (All the King's Men), and some readers may focus on the few essays that include autobiography (more about Warren's own artistic development than about her family life). Other readers, no doubt, will find these essays too highbrow—and they do sound academic at times. On the whole, though, the book deserves great praise: Warren is a matchless guide to her favorite major poets. (Sept.)
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About the Author

Rosanna Warren, the author of four collections of poetry, has received awards from the Academy of Arts and Letters and has won the Lamont Poetry Prize. She teaches at Boston University and lives in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (September 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393066134
• ISBN-13: 978-0393066135
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #592,254 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Telling the truth, September 11, 2008

By 

Maggie Hivnor "Maggie Hivnor" (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fables of the Self: Studies in Lyric Poetry (Hardcover)

Warren's collection of essays is carefully (in every sense) written, wise, and exciting. She begins with a story about how, as a 12-year old child plunked down in a very strict French lycee, she felt rescued by French and Latin poetry. ("I found languages I thought "my own.") Later, she returns to English, that "hospitable, hodgepodge tongue" and includes readings of Hardy and Melville with essays on Virgil, Nerval, and Dante. Her insights could rescue students of literature who are tired of over-politicized critical theory. Warren, herself a poet, loves poetry and her voice is clear as a bell. "When we try to tell truth," she writes, "whoever we are. . . the best we can do, often, is sputter. ... Poetry heals nothing. But ... it can draw us into imaginative relation with truths beyond our own ..."