A Vertical Art: On Poetry
From the UK Poet Laureate and bestselling translator, a spirited book that demystifies and celebrates the art of poetry today

In A Vertical Art, acclaimed poet Simon Armitage takes a refreshingly common-sense approach to an art form that can easily lend itself to grand statements and hollow gestures. Questioning both the facile and obscure ends of the poetry spectrum, he offers sparkling new insights about poetry and an array of favorite poets.

Based on Armitage’s public lectures as Oxford Professor of Poetry, A Vertical Art illuminates poets as varied as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Marianne Moore, W. H. Auden, Ted Hughes, Thom Gunn, A. R. Ammons, and Claudia Rankine. The chapters are often delightfully sassy in their treatment, as in “Like, Elizabeth Bishop,” in which Armitage dissects—and tallies—the poet’s predilection for similes. He discusses Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize, poetic lists, poetry and the underworld, and the dilemmas of translating Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Armitage also pulls back the curtain on the unromantic realities of making a living as a contemporary poet, and ends the book with his own list of “Ninety-Five Theses” on the principles and practice of poetry.

An appealingly personal book that explores the volatile and disputed definitions of poetry from the viewpoint of a practicing writer and dedicated reader, A Vertical Art makes an insightful and entertaining case for the power and potential of poetry today.

1140376341
A Vertical Art: On Poetry
From the UK Poet Laureate and bestselling translator, a spirited book that demystifies and celebrates the art of poetry today

In A Vertical Art, acclaimed poet Simon Armitage takes a refreshingly common-sense approach to an art form that can easily lend itself to grand statements and hollow gestures. Questioning both the facile and obscure ends of the poetry spectrum, he offers sparkling new insights about poetry and an array of favorite poets.

Based on Armitage’s public lectures as Oxford Professor of Poetry, A Vertical Art illuminates poets as varied as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Marianne Moore, W. H. Auden, Ted Hughes, Thom Gunn, A. R. Ammons, and Claudia Rankine. The chapters are often delightfully sassy in their treatment, as in “Like, Elizabeth Bishop,” in which Armitage dissects—and tallies—the poet’s predilection for similes. He discusses Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize, poetic lists, poetry and the underworld, and the dilemmas of translating Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Armitage also pulls back the curtain on the unromantic realities of making a living as a contemporary poet, and ends the book with his own list of “Ninety-Five Theses” on the principles and practice of poetry.

An appealingly personal book that explores the volatile and disputed definitions of poetry from the viewpoint of a practicing writer and dedicated reader, A Vertical Art makes an insightful and entertaining case for the power and potential of poetry today.

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A Vertical Art: On Poetry

A Vertical Art: On Poetry

by Simon Armitage
A Vertical Art: On Poetry

A Vertical Art: On Poetry

by Simon Armitage

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Overview

From the UK Poet Laureate and bestselling translator, a spirited book that demystifies and celebrates the art of poetry today

In A Vertical Art, acclaimed poet Simon Armitage takes a refreshingly common-sense approach to an art form that can easily lend itself to grand statements and hollow gestures. Questioning both the facile and obscure ends of the poetry spectrum, he offers sparkling new insights about poetry and an array of favorite poets.

Based on Armitage’s public lectures as Oxford Professor of Poetry, A Vertical Art illuminates poets as varied as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Marianne Moore, W. H. Auden, Ted Hughes, Thom Gunn, A. R. Ammons, and Claudia Rankine. The chapters are often delightfully sassy in their treatment, as in “Like, Elizabeth Bishop,” in which Armitage dissects—and tallies—the poet’s predilection for similes. He discusses Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize, poetic lists, poetry and the underworld, and the dilemmas of translating Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Armitage also pulls back the curtain on the unromantic realities of making a living as a contemporary poet, and ends the book with his own list of “Ninety-Five Theses” on the principles and practice of poetry.

An appealingly personal book that explores the volatile and disputed definitions of poetry from the viewpoint of a practicing writer and dedicated reader, A Vertical Art makes an insightful and entertaining case for the power and potential of poetry today.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780691233109
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication date: 05/24/2022
Pages: 376
Sales rank: 1,050,579
Product dimensions: 5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Simon Armitage is UK Poet Laureate, professor of poetry at the University of Leeds, and former Oxford Professor of Poetry. He is the author of more than a dozen poetry collections and is the acclaimed translator of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and other books.

Table of Contents

Introduction vii

1 The Parable of the Solicitor and the Poet 1

2 Mind the Gap: Omission, Negation, and 'A Final Revelation of Horrible Nothingness' 27

3 On Lists 53

4 Access All Areas: Poetry and the Underworld 85

5 We Need to Talk About Robert: Bob Dylan and the Nobel Prize in Literature 113

6 The Hawks and the Doves: Raptors and Rapture in the Poems of Thom Gunn and Ted Hughes 139

7 Like, Elizabeth Bishop 167

8 Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres 195

9 Damned if He Does and Damned if He Doesn't? Dilemmas and Decisions in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 219

10 'Undisfigured by False or Vicious Ornaments': Clarity and Obscurity in the Age of Formlessness 247

11 'When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer' 277

CODA. Ninety-five Theses: On the Principles and Practice of Poetry 303

Notes 337

Acknowledgements 359

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