Contemporary American Poetry [antikvár]

Foreword Many of our Forum series have been concerned with what might, in an academic sense, be called "disciplines." Certainly poetry is not in this sense a "discipline," in fact, it seems to resist definition and limitation. For that reason we ought perhaps to speak, not so much of what poetry is, as of what poems do. One of the things that a poem does for the reader, the real reader, is to translate the reality he thinks he already knows into some kind of discovery. This process is a personal one, of course — for the poet as well as for the reader. And so we have in these Forum talks by nineteen representative American poets not the usual lectures or essays in scholarly format, but nineteen highly personal approaches to, let us say, the art of translating and interpreting. Howard Nemerov, who coordinated the series and selected the contributing poets, has let them speak to four questions: 1. Do you see your work as having essentially changed in character or style since you began? 2. Is there, has there been, was there ever, a "revolution" in poetry, or is all that a matter of a few sleazy technical tricks? 3. Does the question whether the world has changed during this century preoccupy you in poetry? Does your work appear to you to envision the appearance of a new human nature, for better or worse, or does it view the many and obvious changes as essentially technological? 4. What is the proper function of criticism? Is there a species of it you admire (are able to get along with)?