In this Book

Acts of Mind: Conversations with Contemporary Poets

Book
Richard Jackson
2014
Published by: The University of Alabama Press
summary
A good poem is, to borrow from Wallace Stevens, a “poem of the mind in the act of finding / What will suffice” (“Of Modern Poetry”), a poem of the mind that both thinks and feels
 
Acts of Mind grew out of interviews conducted by the author for Poetry Miscellany. The aim of which was to help develop a method for talking about the work of contemporary poets.
 
The poets whose views appear in this volume represent a fair cross-section of the more important tendencies and impulses to be found in contemporary poetry and poetics.
 

Table of Contents

restricted access

Cover

Title Page, Copyright, Dedication

pp. i-vi

Contents

pp. vii-viii

Preface

pp. ix-xii

The Path of Saying (Stanley Plumly)

pp. 1-6

The Sanctioned Babel (Miller Williams)

pp. 7-12

Untelling the Hour (Mark Strand)

pp. 13-18

The Domain of the Marvelous Prey (Charles Simic)

pp. 19-26

The Hallowing of the Everyday (Jean Valentine)

pp. 27-31

Event: Corrective: Cure: (A. R. Ammons)

pp. 32-38

Stepping into the Sky (Carol Muske)

pp. 39-47

Unnaming the Myths (W. S. Merwin)

pp. 48-52

On the Horizon of Time (Robert Penn Warren)

pp. 53-60

Distilled from Thin Air (Marvin Bell)

pp. 61-68

The Imminence of a Revelation (John Ashbery)

pp. 69-76

Renaming the Present (David St. John)

pp. 77-83

Lives We Keep Wanting to Know (Philip Booth)

pp. 84-92

Doubling the Difference (Heather McHugh)

pp. 93-100

Questions of Will (Robert Pack)

pp. 101-106

Settling in Another Field (Maxine Kumin)

pp. 107-112

Living the Layers of Time (Stanley Kunitz)

pp. 113-119

Double Vision (Daniel Mark Epstein)

pp. 120-125

Emergencies of the Moment (William Stafford)

pp. 126-131

The Languages of Illusion (Dara Wier)

pp. 132-139

The Mystery of Things That Are (Richard Wilbur)

pp. 140-145

Before the Beginning (Donald Finkel)

pp. 146-152

On the Margins of Dreams (Fred Chappell)

pp. 153-157

Unbreakable Codes (Linda Pastan)

pp. 158-163

Projecting the Literal Word (Robert Creeley)

pp. 164-171

Answering the Dark (David Ignatow)

pp. 172-177

Shaping Our Choices (Marge Piercy)

pp. 178-182

Magic: Power: Activation: Transformation (Michael S. Harper)

pp. 183-190

On the Periphery of Time (Donald Hall)

pp. 191-195

The Candle in the Pitcher (John Hollander)

pp. 196-205

Selected Bibliography

pp. 206-212

Index

pp. 213-222
Back To Top