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Rehearsing Better Worlds: Poetry as A Way of Happening in the Works of Tomlinson and MacDiarmid
- Philosophy and Literature
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 42, Number 1, April 2018
- pp. 185-200
- 10.1353/phl.2018.0010
- Article
- Additional Information
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Abstract:
Hugh MacDiarmid and Charles Tomlinson certainly make strange bedfellows for a comparative study, yet by placing MacDiarmid's "Third Hymn to Lenin" in dialogue with Tomlinson's poems "Prometheus" and "Assassin," written in opposition to the Russian Revolution, a common approach to the question of poetry's social efficacy emerges. The central issue in these works is not superficial expression of political allegiance. Instead, I demonstrate an affirmation of poetry as "a way of happening," whereby poetic form functions as a means of rehearsing the principles by which a better world can be built.