In this Book
- Flexible Lyric
- Book
- 1999
- Published by: University of Georgia Press
- Series: The Life of Poetry: Poets on Their Art and Craft
Intimate as well as informative, the collection begins with a discussion of the creative process and Voigt's fascination with the writing of Flannery O'Connor and Elizabeth Bishop. Readings of lyric poems by Shakespeare, Sidney, Poe, Stevens, Williams, Larkin, Bogan, Roethke, Plath, Levertov, Berryman, and others demonstrate the roles of gender, point of view, image, and music in poetry. An experienced teacher, Voigt focuses on the lyric but encourages, in any study of poetry, original thinking, attention to structure, and, above all, close reading of the work itself. An intelligent and thought-provoking marriage of art and scholarship, The Flexible Lyric exemplifies, with fierceness, dedication, and precision, how the making of poems is not just a trade but a calling.
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-x
- In the Waiting Room
- pp. 1-14
- Poetry and Gender
- pp. 15-34
- Rethinking Adjectives
- pp. 35-54
- Structural Subversion
- pp. 94-113
- The Flexible Lyric
- pp. 114-171
- Ruthless Attention
- pp. 172-196
- A Moment's Thought
- pp. 197-216
- Selected Bibliography
- pp. 217-222