New Expansive Poetry [Paperback]

R.S. Gwynn (Editor)

Product Details

• Paperback: 250 pages
• Publisher: Story Line Press; Rev Sub edition (April 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1885266693
• ISBN-13: 978-1885266699
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,129,965 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars informative collection, April 25, 2004

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[e-mail] "[e-mail]" (Beaumont, tx USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: New Expansive Poetry (Paperback)

Gwynn has put together an entertaining, well-written and highly informative collection of essays on the New Expansive movement in poetry. If you are interested in narrative or formal poetry, either in reading or writing it, then this is a great collection to read. It is a revision of the earlier Feirstein edition, one that is much more up to date.

There's Dana Gioia's wonderful essay "Notes on the New Formalism" (also found in his Can Poetry Matter) and his great essay on "The Dilemma of the Long Poem." Other essays on the narrative come from Dick Allen, Frederick Feirsein, Christopher Clausen and Thomas M. Disch. Mark Jarman's essay on Robinson, Frost and Jeffers is included as is the phenomenal essay by Dave Mason "Other Lives: On Shorter Narrative Poems." Which might be the best essay in the book and a definite must to read. You'll also find the introductions from Annie Finch's A Formal Feeling Comes which includes such poets such as Rita Dove, Marilyn Hacker, Marilyn Nelson, and Mary Jo Salter among others. Tim Steele has an essay in here, which later became a chapter in his remarkable book Missing Measures. There are also essays by Keith Maillard, Meg Schoerke, Wyatt Prunty, Paul Lake (always a joy to read), Robert McPhillips, and Brad Leithauser's great essay "Metrical Illiteracy." In fact the only weak essay contained is the idiotic "The Neural Lyre" by Frederick Turner and Ernst Poppel. Schocking that even they could believe what they write. Still, Gwynn points out in his introduction that he has trouble resolving himself to all contained in the essays but all the essays contained are influential in one way or another. For those interested in contemporary poetry, this is one of those books on prosody that should be read.