Scepticisms, notes on contemporary poetry [Hardcover]

Conrad, Aiken (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1919

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919. Excerpt: ... Apologia Pro Specie Sua IT has not been my intention, in the pages which compose this book, to deal comprehensively with contemporary poetry, nor even, for that matter, to deal exhaustively with that part of it which I have touched at all. That sort of study has seldom attracted me. It has been my aim, rather to deal only with the most interesting aspects of contemporary poetry, and to do so in a manner which might provoke and stimulate not only the casual reader but, odd as it may seem, the unfortunate poet himself. Anybody must have been aware, as I point out repeatedly in the following pages, of the fact that the present poetic era is one of uncertainty, of confusion and conflict. New ground has been broken in a good many directions, or ground which, if not new, has been at any rate so long unused as to have that appearance, at least, and to inspire a DO certain amount of scepticism as to the resultant crops; and it has been engagingly natural, under these circumstances, that each poet should claim the most astounding properties for his own plot of soil, and become a little wilfully cynical as to the claims of his rivals. No one would expect much praise of Masefield or Abercrombie or Gibson at the hands of the Imagists, for example, nor, on the other side should one hope for much gratuitous enthusiasm over the Imagists or Others from, let us say, Frost or Masters. Those poets who, like myself, are critics of poetry as well, have had an almost unfair advantage in this situation. They have been able to articulate their particular theories, to argue for them in the public forum. It was a perception of the advantages of this sort of propaganda which drew the Imagists together under a somewhat specious symbol, and persuaded them to write prefaces in which t...

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 3305 pages
• Publisher: Classic Books (January 1919)
• ISBN-10: 0742641872
• ISBN-13: 978-0742641877