Poetry as Survival

Contents

Contents Acknowledgments vii INTRODUCTION Everywhere and Always 7 PART ONE The Self, Jeopardy, and Song 1 Poised on a Mountain Peak, Floating on the Ocean 73 2 The Dinner Party and the Sailor at War 24 3 The Embodied Self 37 4 The Edge as Threshold 57 5 Bags Full of Havoc 59 6 The Two Survivals 8} 7 The Powers of Poetry 93 PART TWO Trauma and Transformation 8 The Dangerous Angel 7 / 7 9 Convulsive Transformation of the Overculture 733 10 Wordsworth and the Permanent Forms 141 11 Keats and the Ardor of the Pursuer 149 12 Whitman and the Habit of Dazzle 759 13 Dickinson and the Brain s Haunted Corridors 777 14 Wilfred Owen and the Horrors of War 182 15 The Quest and the Dangerous Path 189 16 Constellations and Medicine Pouches 204 APPENDIX A Sacred and Secular Lyric 209 APPENDIX B The Social Lyric and the Personal Lyric 273 APPENDIX c Incarnating Eros 225 Index 237 This page intentionally left blank ...