Three dozen reviews and essays examine particular works and overall themes of contemporary American poet Bly, documenting the reception of his work at the various stages of his career. Some are reprinted, others commissioned for the volume. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Victoria Frenkel Harris traces the aesthetic journey of poet Robert Bly from his early structured works of mystical imagery and lyrical landscapes to his recent explorations of intimate relationships and male socialization. Examining the various ways Bly’s prose poems articulate his opposition to the Vietnam War and his recent writings manipulate more formal patterns in detailing the intricacies of human relationships, Harris labels this evolution in form, subject, and imagery the incorporative consciousness, incorporative because it assimilates Jungian psychological categories, international poetic traditions, and a compelling breadth of topics. Harris relies in part on contemporary feminist theory to throw revealing new light on Bly’s recent works. Though sympathetic to Bly, Harris finds that—in spite of his affirmation of the interaction of psychic, creative, and intellectual energies in both sexes—the poet’s later, erotic poems tend to objectify women in counterproductive ways. Bly’s idealization of woman as a Jungian universal, Harris contends, can blind him toward actual women. Harris is at her best as she delimits with balance and precision the full complexity of the poet’s work.

Introduction -- The Midwest and white virtue -- Heartland histories -- Inside out : the global production of insular whiteness -- No place like home : the "ordinary" Midwest through popular fiction and fantasy -- Theater of whitness : mass media discourses on the Midwest region -- Conclusion -- Appendix A : bibliography of films referenced in chapter 4 -- Appendix B : bibliography of media articles referenced in chapter 5.

Robert Bly

Indian poets who wrote in English—a small middle class minority—were divided from the regional language poets by more than language for long. The English poets had a selected readership, were known unto themselves, in academic circles if they were widely published, but were looked down upon with a kind of derision by regional writers. However, the scenario has changed now. From English being spurned as a colonizer’s tongue that was nobody’s language, it has now become everybody’s language with English medium schools, English movies, ads, soaps and serials. For a generation living in a global village, genuine readership and appreciation of English poetry is no longer an encumbrance. This book, in its second edition, continues to educate the students with diverse and thought-provoking essays that vary from personal to argumentative to objectively discursive English literature and to those who are genuinely interested in Indian English poetry. The Fourteen poets selected in this anthology are Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Toru Dutt, Rabindranath Tagore, Aurobindo Ghosh, Sarojini Naidu, Jibanananda Das, Nissim Ezekiel, Jayanta Mahapatra, A.K. Ramanujan, Arun Kolatkar, Rajagopal Parthasarathy, Kamala Das, and Dilip Chitre. The poets included are all on the syllabi of major universities in India.

A comprehensive collection of essays on this important American writer, containing both early reviews and a broad selection of more modern scholarship. Among the authors of reprinted articles and reviews are James Wright, Wendell Berry, Robert Bly, Paul Carroll, and Frederic Jameson. In addition to a substantial introduction by editor Kirschten, there are also five original essays commissioned specifically for this volume. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Critical Essays on William Faulkner compiles scholarship by noted Faulkner studies scholar Robert W. Hamblin. Ranging from 1980 to 2020, the twenty-one essays present a variety of approaches to Faulkner’s work. While acknowledging Faulkner as the quintessential southern writer—particularly in his treatment of race—the essays examine his work in relation to American and even international contexts. The volume includes discussions of Faulkner’s techniques and the psychological underpinnings of both the origin and the form of his art; explores how his writing is a means of “saying 'no' to death"; examines the intertextual linkages of his fiction with that of other writers like Shakespeare, Twain, Steinbeck, Warren, and Salinger; treats Faulkner’s use of myth and his fondness for the initiation motif; and argues that Faulkner’s film work in Hollywood is much better and of far greater value than most scholars have acknowledged. Taken as a whole, Hamblin’s essays suggest that Faulkner’s overarching themes relate to time and consequent change. The history of Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha stretches from the arrival of the white settlers on the Mississippi frontier in the early 1800s to the beginnings of the civil rights movement in the 1940s. Caught in this world of continual change that produces a great degree of uncertainty and ambivalence, the Faulkner character (and reader) must weigh the traditions of the past with the demands of the present and the future. As Faulkner acknowledges, this process of discovery and growth is a difficult and sometimes painful one; yet, as Hamblin attests, to engage in that quest is to realize the very essence of what it means to be human.

"Jed Rasula is a preeminent scholar of avant-garde poetics, noted for his erudition, intellectual range, and critical independence. He's also a gifted writer-his recent books have won praise for their entertaining, clear prose in addition to their scholarship. He is also an alumnus of UAP's distinguished Modern and Contemporary Poetics series, which published his Syncopations fifteen years ago. Rasula returns to the MCP series with Wreading, A collection of essays, interviews and occasional writings that reflects the breadth and diversity of his curiosity. One of the referees likened Wreading to a "victory lap, but one that sets its own further record in the taking." This is a collection of highlights from Rasula's shorter critical pieces, but also a carefully assembled and revised intellectual autobiography. Wreading consists of two parts: an assortment of Rasula's solo criticism, and selected interviews and conversations with other critics and scholars (Evelyn Reilly, Leonard Schwartz, Tony Tost, Mike Chasar, Joel Bettridge, and Ming-Qian Ma). The collection opens with a trio of essays that complicate the idea of a "poet." By interrogating the selection of poets for anthologies in the 20th century, Rasula identifies a host of "forgotten" poets, once prominent but now forgotten. Another essay on the state of the poetry anthology reveals how much influence literary gatekeepers have, and what a reimagination of the anthology form could make possible. In subsequent chapters, Rasula finds surprising overlap between Dada and Ralph Waldo Emerson, charts the deep links between image and poetic inspiration, and reckons with Ron Silliman's The Alphabet, a UAP classic. In the book's second half, Rasula engages in detailed conversations with a roster of fellow critics. Their exchanges confront ecopoetics, the corporate university, the sheer volume of contemporary poetry, and more. This substantial set of dialogues gives readers a glimpse inside a master critic's deeply informed critical practice, and lists his intellectual touchstones. The balance between essay and interview achieves a distillation of Rasula's long-established idea of "wreading." In his original use, the term denotes how any act of criticism inherently adds to the body of writing that it purports to read- how Rasula "couldn't help but participate" in his favorite poems. In this latest form, Wreading captures a critical perception that sparks insight and imagination, no matter what it sees"--

The Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century contains over 400 entries that treat a broad range of individual poets and poems, along with many articles devoted to topics, schools, or periods of American verse in the century. Entries fall into three main categories: poet entries, which provide biographical and cultural contexts for the author's career; entries on individual works, which offer closer explication of the most resonant poems in the 20th-century canon; and topical entries, which offer analyses of a given period of literary production, school, thematically constructed category, or other verse tradition that historically has been in dialogue with the poetry of the United States.

"The second volume of the letters and life of James Dickey. This volume chronicles Dickey's career from the publication of Deliverance through his poetic experimentation in The Eye Beaters, Blood, Victory, Madness, Buckhead and Mercy and Puella. Includes correspondence with Saul Bellow, Arthur Schlesinger, and Robert Penn Warren"--Provided by publisher.