The Dance of the Intellect: studies in Poetry of the Pound Tradition (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture, Series Number 6) - Softcover

Perloff, Marjorie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521347564 ISBN 13: 9780521347563

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1987

Synopsis

Ezra Pound termed a fresh strain in Post-Modernist poetry 'Logopoeia - the dance of the intellect among words', and in this collection of essays, Marjorie Perloff examines this fresh strain in poetics. These essays focus on the poetry of Swinburne, Yeats, Stevens, Joyce, Williams, Cage, and Pound, among others. Through her analyses, the author traces a distinct direction in Post-Modernist poetry to Pound, whose legacy is present throughout this volume, even in essays not specifically devoted to him. Professor Perloff finds that the Symbolist elements that Yeats rejected - fragments, purely metrical or visual impressions, and theoretical concepts - became increasingly important to later poets. She also argues that the Romantic and Modernist cult of the personality has given way to a denial of the authoritative ego. These developments, combined with other cultural influences which Perloff identifies, such as the art of the Italian Futurists, lead to a fresh strain in poetry.

About this title

Review

"There are few critics we are drawn to not only for insight into their particular enthusiasm of the moment but also for the sheer joy of watching their intelligence worry this text or that. . . . For our area, Marjorie Perloff is quickly joining [these] ranks. . . . "The Dance of the Intellect" continues the project begun by Perloff in "The Poetics of Indeterminacy, "examination of the 'other' (dare we yet say primary) tradition in American poetry." --Lee Bartlett, "American Literary Scholarship"

From the Back Cover

Must poetic form be, as Yeats demanded, "full, sphere-like, single", or can it accommodate the "impurities" Yeats and his Modernist generation found so problematic? Sixty years later, these are still open questions, questions to which Marjorie Perloff addresses herself in the essays collected here. The first group of essays deals with Pound's own poetics as that poetics related to two of his great contemporaries, Stevens and Joyce, as well as to the visual arts of his day. The second group deals with the more technical aspects of verse and prose. In the last four essays, Perloff takes up broader issues, including the current pessimism about the state of poetry, and the work of experimental poets and conceptual poets.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521347564
• ISBN 13: 9780521347563
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256