The Force of Poetry - Hardcover

Ricks, Christopher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198117221 ISBN 13: 9780198117223

Publisher: Clarendon Press, 1984

Synopsis

Christopher Ricks is one of the best-known living critics of English, and was described by W. H. Auden as "the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding." Though published independently over many years, each of the essays in this collection asks how a poet's words reveal the "force ofpoetry," that force--in Dr Johnson's words--"which calls new power into being, which embodies sentiment, and animates matter." The poets covered range from John Gower, Marvell, and Milton to Wordsworth, Empson, Stevie Smith, Lowell, and Larkin, and the book contains four wider essays on cliches, lies, misquotations, and American English.

About this title

Review

Christopher Ricks is our most distinctive critic...the natural heir to Empson, exciting and fertile. (Blake Morrison, Observer)

The richness and variety of these essays is truly remarkable (John Bayley, Listener)

About the Author

Christopher Ricks is one of the best-known living critics of English, and was described by W. H. Auden as 'the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding' He is author of Beckett's Dying Words (OUP, 1993) Keats and Embarrassment (OUP, 1974) and editor of The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse (Oxford, 1987)

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarendon Press
• Publication date: 1984
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0198117221
• ISBN 13: 9780198117223
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 460