Questions of Possibility: Contemporary Poetry and Poetic Form [Hardcover]

David Caplan (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195169573 | ISBN-13: 978-0195169577 | Publication Date: December 30, 2004

Questions of Possibility examines the particular forms that contemporary American poets favor and those they neglect. The poets' choices reveal both their ambitions and their limitations, the new possibilities they discover and the traditions they find unimaginable.

By means of close attention to the sestina, ghazal, love sonnet, ballad, and heroic couplet, this study advances a new understanding of contemporary American poetry. Rather than pitting "closed" verse against "open" and "traditional" poetry against "experimental," Questions of Possibility explores how poets associated with different movements inspire and inform each other's work. Discussing a range of authors, from Charles Bernstein, Derek Walcott, and Marilyn Hacker to Agha Shahid Ali, David Caplan treats these poets as contemporaries who share the language, not as partisans assigned to rival camps. The most interesting contemporary poetry crosses the boundaries that literary criticism draws, synthesizing diverse influences and establishing surprising affinities. In a series of lively readings, Caplan charts the diverse characteristics and accomplishments of modern poetry, from the gay and lesbian love sonnet to the currently popular sestina.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Poetic discourse in the century past was taken up disproportionately by what David Caplan, in this excellent book, calls 'the prosody wars.'... Caplan has the eminently reasonable idea of seeing what it is that poets are actually doing with poetic form.... Drawing from the works of Adrienne Rich, Anthony Hecht, Derek Walcott, and Seamus Heaney, among others, Caplan has written a book that working poets and serious readers of poetry alike will find of great value."--Virginia Quarterly Review

"In a lively, intelligent study unencumbered by the jargon that infests much current work, Caplan offers a sensitive and convincing consideration of poetic form within social and political contexts.... Caplan's study is valuable.... Highly recommended."--Choice

"David Caplan's Questions of Possibility: Contemporary Poetry and Poetic Form is a good and necessary book that teaches or reinforces some vital lessons about poetry and poetic form.... An astute book that offers much, supplying a generous amount of information on the details of recent poetic history."--Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing

About the Author

David Caplan is Assistant Professor of English at Ohio Wesleyan University.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (December 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195169573
• ISBN-13: 978-0195169577
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,322,490 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars metrical verse is not dead, November 20, 2007

By 

Paul A. Baker "communicator" (Madison, Wis., US) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Questions of Possibility: Contemporary Poetry and Poetic Form (Paperback)

Why study poetic form? Why write in metrical verse?

Haven't literary and cultural history already doomed metrical poetry to irrelevance, or at least to political and aesthetic conservatism?

David Caplan, professor of English at Ohio Wesleyan, contends that much of the most vital and interesting contemporary metrical verse shows a voracious curiosity, an openness to seemingly incompatible techniques and procedures.

And contemporary poetry demands catholicity, he writes. Many readers enjoy poetry that literary criticism insists on separating into different groups.

Two reasons in particular recommend the study of metrical poetry, Caplan argues. Poetic form obsesses twentieth- and twenty-first century American poets, and our current understanding of poetic form, especially contemporary metrical verse, remains inadequate.

Caplan focuses on five verse forms to trace the contours of contemporary metrical verse and poetic culture: the sestina, ghazal, love sonnet, heroic couplet, and ballad, including examples of contemporary poets working in each form.

He aims to "move discussion beyond the simple oppositions that often impede discussions of contemporary American verse" by highlighting the interplay between allegedly antagonistic practices, between prosody and "theory," between "traditional" and "experimental" poetry.

Younger poets, he argues, tend to place different traditions in dialogue, not put them in competition. Instead of manufacturing another "poetry war," younger poets present themselves as a generation whose "game will become an entire century."