Story Line Press, 1999
Reissued by Wordtech Editions
This courageous collection of essays on poetic form from a diversity of poets heralded the changes that were to come to formal poetics in the 21st century as poets from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives found in poetic form a tool of great potential range and power.
After New Formalism is a landmark text in a still-expanding conversation on the formal possibilities of contemporary poetry and on the implications of formalism for poetic history, practice, and theory. It combines classic essays such as Adrienne Rich’s “Format and Form” and Agha Shahid Ali’s “The Ghazal: May I” with essays impossible to find elsewhere in book form such as Marilyn Nelson’s “Owning the Masters” (first written especially for this volume) and Paul Lake’s “Verse That Print Bred.”
Contributors include Dana Gioia, Mark Jarman, David Mason, Marilyn Nelson, Molly Peacock, and Adrienne Rich, among others. This book was the first book publication of now-classic essays such as Marilyn Nelson’s “Owning the Masters” and Paul Lake’s “Verse That Print Bred.”
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ANNIE FINCH
Introduction
TRADITIONS
ADRIENNE RICH
Format and Form
MARILYN NELSON
Owning the Masters
DANIEL HOFFMAN
Wings of a Phoenix? Rebellion and Resuscitation
PAUL LAKE
Verse That Print Bred
DANA GIOIA
The Poet in an Age of Prose
MARK JARMAN
Aspects of Robinson
CAROL E. MILLER
Toward an Alternative Formalist Tradition:
The Other Harlem Renaissance
POETICS
CAROLYN BEARD WHITLOW
Blues in Black and White
MOLLY PEACOCK
From Gilded Cage to Rib Cage
ROBERT McPHILLIPS
The New Formalism and the Revival of the Love Lyric
TIMOTHY STEELE
Boundless Wealth from a Finite Store
DAVID MASON
Other Voices, Other Lives
ANNIE FINCH
Metrical Diversity: A Defense of the Non-Iambic Meters
AGHA SHAHID ALI
The Ghazal in America: May I?
JAMES CUMMINS
Calliope Music: Notes on the Sestina
DIRECTIONS
AMITTAI AVIRAM
Why We Need a New. Rhythm-Centered
Theory of Poetry
KATHERINE VARNES
Feminist Formalist: A Critical Oxymoron
KEVIN WALZER
Expansive Poetry and Postmodernism
FREDERICK FEIRSTEIN
Psychoanalysis and Poetry
ALLISON CUMMINGS
Playing Tennis in Asbestos Gloves:
Women, Formalism and Subjectivity in the 1980’s
FREDERICK TURNER
The Inner Meaning of Poetic Form
CHRISTIAN WIMAN
An Idea of Order
ANNE STEVENSON
The Trouble With a Word Like Formalism
