Understanding Poetry

Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren

Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976 - Education - 602 pages

The fourth edition of UNDERSTANDING POETRY is a re-inspection of poetry. Keeping it teachable and flexible, the material allows for full and innocent immersion as well as raising inductive questions to develop critical and analytical skills. Students will be led to understand poetry as a means of imaginatively extending their own experience and indeed, probing the possibilities of the self. This latest incarnation of the landmark text facilitates a thorough study of poetry.

Contents

• DRAMATIC SITUATION: 17
• Afterword: 48
• The Three Ravens ANONYMOUS: 54
• Proud Maisie SIR WALTER SCOTT: 62
• IMAGES MOODS: 68
• A SECOND LOOK: 95
• TONE: 112
• Inscription HERMAN MELVILLE: 125
• Maesias Song ROBERT GREENE: 131
• A Garland of Love Poems: 138
• E The Miser and the Spendthrift: 145
• England in 1819 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY: 151
• Supplemental Poems: 164
• H Modern War: 170
• Death and Mourning: 175
• Epitaph on Salomon Pavy BEN JONSON: 181
• Cynara ERNEST DOWSON: 187
• Tell All the Truth EMILY DICKINSON: 193
• Anecdote of the Jar WALLACE STEVENS: 200
• Go Lovely Rose EDMUND WALLER: 213
• Image in the Discourse of a Poem: 220
• Image as Summary: 236
• E Combination and Variation: 242
• On the Founding of Liberia MELVIN TOLSON: 250
• Could Not Stop for Death EMILY DICKINSON: 256
• Night LOUISE BOGAN: 263
• B The Joys of the Simple Life: 282
• The Breakup of a Civilization: 290
• The Waste Land T S ELIOT: 297
• Afterword: 310
• A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal WILLIAM WORDSWORTH: 316
• E The False Lover or Indifferent Lover: 322
• Early Evening Quarrel LANGSTON HUGHES: 328
• The Day After Sunday PHYLLIS MCGINLEY: 339
• Bantams in PineWoods WALLACE STEVENS: 347
• Afterword: 359
• Nightingales ROBERT BRIDGES: 366
• 8: 406
• The Figures ROBERT CREELEY: 412
• For My Mother LOUISE GLÜCK: 418
• A Far Cry After a Close Call RICHARD HOWARD: 425
• The Old Adam: 433
• from Life on Earth: 439
• SONIA SANCHEZ: 445
• All the Spirit Powers Went to Their Dancing Place GARY SNYDER: 451
• APPENDIX: 464
• Hoed and Trenched and Weeded A E HOUSMAN: 470
• The Woman at the Washington Zoo RANDALL JARRELL: 481
• APPENDIX: 493
• Why So Pale and Wan? SIR JOHN SUCKLING: 508
• Ah Sunflower WILLIAM BLAKE: 514
• Neutral Tones THOMAS HARDY: 521
• To Daffodils ROBERT HERRICK: 528
• Onomatopoeia and Related Effects: 534
• No More Be Grieved: 540
• Voices WALTER DE LA MARE: 549
• Free Verse: 560
• There Was a Crimson Clash of War STEPHEN CRANE: 566
• Overland to the Islands DENISE LEVERTOV: 572
• APPENDIX D: 582
• With Rue My Heart Is Laden SAMUEL HOFFENSTEIN: 589
• 451: 595

About the author

Robert Penn Warren, the first Poet Laureate of the United States, was an unusually versatile writer who tried his hand at almost every kind of literature. In all of these forms, he achieved recognition and distinction, but it is as a poet, critic, and novelist that he was most widely known. Writing almost always about his native South, Warren produced 10 novels and a collection of short stories, The Circus in the Attic and Other Stories (1948). By far the most successful of his novels is All the King's Men (1946), the story of a southern politician and demagogue named Willie Stark, which Warren based on the rise and fall of Huey Long. Warren was considered one of the most influential of the New Critics, whose influence on the teaching of literature in American schools and universities during the late 1940s and 1950s could scarcely be overestimated. Because All the King's Men seemed to be the very epitome of what a good work of literature should be in New Critical terms---a complicated but highly readable narrative filled with irony and ambiguity---the novel came to be used widely in courses on modern fiction. It won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Southern Authors Award in 1947. Warren's other novels are disappointing by comparison. Following the success of All the King's Men, however, Warren seemed to turn to more loosely told stories about dramatic and romantic subjects, such as the interracial theme of Band of Angels (1955) or the natural catastrophes that serve as the crisis background for The Cave (1959) and Flood: A Romance of Our Time (1964). Wilderness: A Tale of the Civil War (1961) is an allegory of a man's spiritual quest for truth about himself and the world. Meet Me in the Green Glen (1971), the story of a tragic love affair, seemed to mark a return to the tighter structure and more complex artistry of Warren's earlier novels, but A Place to Come To (1977), his last novel, in which an elderly and renowned scholar who seems to owe much to Warren himself looks back on his family's past in an effort to find the meaning of his life, struck some reviewers as a confused and tired work. Sometime midway through his career as a novelist it is as if Warren stopped thinking of himself as a southern writer in the tradition of William Faulkner and turned instead to Thomas Wolfe for inspiration. Although in retrospect that switch must be regretted, no one can deny the immense influence of Robert Penn Warren on modern letters. Warren's poetry is intellectual, rich in powerful images, and has its roots in the pre-Civil War South. He continued to write impressive poetry almost until the time of his death.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Understanding Poetry
• Authors: Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren
• Editors: Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren
• Edition: 4, revised
• Publisher: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: Aug 5, 2010
• ISBN: 0030769809, 9780030769801
• Length: 602 pages
• Subjects: Education / Language Experience Approach; Language Arts & Disciplines / General; Literary Collections / General; Literary Criticism / Poetry; Poetry / General