The Poet Resigns: Essays on Poetry in a Difficult Time

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What are we really wishing for when we want poetry to have the prominence it had in the past? Why do American poets overwhelmingly identify with the political left? How do poems communicate? Is there an essential link between formal experimentation and political radicalism? What happens when poetic outsiders become academic insiders? Just what makes a poem a poem? If a poet gives up on her art, what reasons could she find for coming back to poetry? These are the large questions animating the essays of The Poet Resigns :PoetryinaDifficultWorld, a book that sets out to survey not only the state of contemporary poetry, but also the poet’s relationship to politics, society, and literary criticism. In addition to pursuing these topics, The Poet Resigns peers into the role of the critic and the manifesto, the nature of wit, the poetics of play, and the persistence of modernism, while providing detailed readings of poets as diverse as Harryette Mullen and Yvor Winters , George Oppen and Robert Pinsky, Pablo Neruda and C.S. Giscombe. Behind it all is a sense of poetry not just as an academic area of study, but also as a lived experience and a way of understanding. Few books of poetry criticism show such range—yet the core questions remain clear: what is this thing we love and call ‘poetry,’ and what is its consequence in the world? Robert Archambeau’s book, The Poet Resigns: Poetry in a Difficult World, is a fascinating study of what it means to practice the art in a new century. Archambeau is a wise and honest writer in assessing the pitfalls of poetry, and the shifting nature of the poet’s role as public intellectual or private mutterer in the larger, noisier culture that has never really privileged poetry to the extent that the myth and history of its privilege purports. His personal touch and winning tone make the book suitable to those who favor a rich and friendly discussion of the social and cultural implications , and possible obligations, of poetry in our age. —Maxine Chernoff If you want to see somebody having fun while thinking provocatively about contemporary poetry, try Archambeau; I always do. —Stephen Burt Archambeau is one of our smartest poetic sociologists, and he tackles the biggest problem facing poetry in our time: the dwindling of its audience and the growing divide between poets and a mainstream literary readership. —Norman Finkelstein, Contemporary Literature ABOUT THE AUTHOR Robert Archambeau is a critic and poet whose books include Word Play Place, Laureates and Heretics, and Home and Variations. He is professor of English at Lake Forest College. LITERARY CRITICISM / POETRY The University of Akron Press Akron, Ohio www.uakron.edu/uapress AKRON SERIES IN CONTEMPORARY POETICS A R C H A M B E A U T H E P O E T R E S I G N S POETRY IN A DIFFICULT WORLD A K R O N The Poet Resigns Robert Archambeau Essays into Contemporary Poetics The Poet Resigns Essays into Contemporary Poetics The Poet Resigns Poetry in a Difficult World ...