Download or read book Democracy and Poetry written by Robert Penn Warren and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1975 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these two essays, one of America's most honored writers fastens on the interrelation of American democracy and poetry and the concept of selfhood vital to each. "I really don't want to make a noise like a pundit," Mr. Warren declares, "What I do want to do is to return us--and myself most of all--to a scrutiny of our own experience of our own world." Indeed, Democracy and Poetry offers one of the most pertinent and strongly personal meditations on our condition to have appeared in recent letters. Our native "poetry," that is, literature and art, in general, is a social document, is "diagnostic," and has often been a corrosive criticism of our democracy, Mr. Warren argues. Persuasively, and movingly, he shows that all of "art" and all that goes into the making of democracy require a free and responsible self. Yet the American experience has been one of the decay of the notion of self. Our astounding success jeopardized what we promised to create--the free man. For a century and a half the conception of the self has been dwindling, separating itself from traditional values, moral identity, and a secure relation with community. Lonely heroes in a bankrupt civilization, then protest, despair, aimlessness, and violence, have marked our literature. The anguish of Robert Penn Warren's own poetic vision of art and democracy is soothed only by his belief that poetry--the making of art can nourish and at least do something toward the rescue of democracy; he shows how art can be- come a healer, can be "therapeutic." In the face of disintegrative forces set loose in a business and technetronic society, it is poetry that affirms the notion of the self. It is a model of the organized self, an emblem of the struggle for the achieving self, and of the self in a community. More and more as our modern technetronic society races toward the abolition of the self, and diverges from a culture created to enhance the notion of selfhood, poetry becomes indispensable. Compelling, resonant, memorable, Democracy and Poetry is a major testament not only to the vitality of poetry, but also to a faith in democracy.

Download or read book Democracy Culture and the Voice of Poetry written by Robert Pinsky and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-11 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The place of poetry in modern democracy is no place, according to conventional wisdom. The poet, we hear, is a casualty of mass entertainment and prosaic public culture, banished to the artistic sidelines to compose variations on insipid themes for a dwindling audience. Robert Pinsky, however, argues that this gloomy diagnosis is as wrongheaded as it is familiar. Pinsky, whose remarkable career as a poet itself undermines the view, writes that to portray poetry and democracy as enemies is to radically misconstrue both. The voice of poetry, he shows, resonates with profound themes at the very heart of democratic culture. There is no one in America better to write on this topic. One of the country's most accomplished poets, Robert Pinsky served an unprecedented two terms as America's Poet Laureate (1997-2000) and led the immensely popular multimedia Favorite Poem Project, which invited Americans to submit and read aloud their favorite poems. Pinsky draws on his experiences and on characteristically sharp and elegant observations of individual poems to argue that expecting poetry to compete with show business is to mistake its greatest democratic strength--its intimate, human scale--as a weakness. As an expression of individual voice, a poem implicitly allies itself with ideas about individual dignity that are democracy's bedrock, far more than is mass participation. Yet poems also summon up communal life.. Even the most inward-looking work imagines a reader. And in their rhythms and cadences poems carry in their very bones the illusion and dynamic of call and response. Poetry, Pinsky writes, cannot help but mediate between the inner consciousness of the individual reader and the outer world of other people. As part of the entertainment industry, he concludes, poetry will always be small and overlooked. As an art--and one that is inescapably democratic--it is massive and fundamental.

Download or read book Poets of the Democracy written by George Currie Martin and published by . This book was released on 1917 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Poets of the Democracy written by G. C. Martin and published by . This book was released on 1973-01-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Republic of Apples Democracy of Oranges written by Frank Stewart and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2019-07-31 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Republic of Apples, Democracy of Oranges presents nearly 100 poets and translators from China and the U.S.—the two countries most responsible for global carbon dioxide emissions and the primary contributors to extreme climate change. These poetic voices express the altered relationship that now exists between the human and non-human worlds, a situation in which we witness everyday the ways environmental destruction is harming our emotions and imaginations. “What can poetry say about our place in the natural world today?” ecologically minded poets ask. “How do we express this new reality in art or sing about it in poetry?” And, as poet Forrest Gander wonders, “how might syntax, line break, or the shape of the poem on the page express an ecological ethics?” Eco-poetry freely searches for possible answers. Sichuan poet Sun Wenbo writes: ... I feel so liberated I start writing about the republic of apples and democracy of oranges. When I see apples have not become tanks, oranges not bombs, I know I've not become a slave of words after all. The Chinese poets are from throughout the PRC and Taiwan, both minority and majority writers, from big cities and rural provinces, such as Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture and Xinjiang Uyghur, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Regions. The American poets are both emerging and established, from towns and cities across the U.S. Included are images by celebrated photographer Linda Butler documenting the Three Gorges Dam, on the Yangtze River, and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, on the Mississippi River Basin.

Download or read book American Experimental Poetry and Democratic Thought written by Alan Marshall and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2009 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alan Marshall takes Alexis de Tocqueville's discussion of 'Some Sources of Poetic Inspiration in Democracies' in the second volume of his Democracy in America as the starting point for a wide-ranging examination of the nature of democratic thought and expression in American experimental poetry, from Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson in the mid-nineteenth century, to George Oppen, Frank O'Hara, and Robert Creeley a century later. The book begins by considering the political significance of what Marshall describes as 'the invisible physiognomy' of Whitman's poetry, which is followed by a re-evaluation of the flawed republican humanism of Ezra Pound in the light of the thought of Hannah Arendt. Other chapters deal with Mina Loy, Lorine Niedecker, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, and Muriel Rukeyser. The book argues against the narrowly ideological interpretation of politics that dominates contemporary literary studies. To that extent it recalls Tocquevilles concern to underline the differences between his own methods and perspectives and the historical determinism of his contemporaries. Marshall brings together an exceptional variety of theoretical writing, including works by Theodor Adorno, Seyla Benhabib, Stanley Cavell, Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger, Immanuel Kant, James Madison, Karl Marx, David Riesman, and Donald Winnicott, as he seeks to expand and develop Tocqueville's circumspect humanist critical trajectory. The chapters are conceived as a series of innovative dialogical constellations, to which the close reading of poetry is central. The aim throughout is to measure the thought of the poets or their poems against the thoughts of those who are more often called thinkers.

Download or read book Song of Ourselves written by Mark Edmundson and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the midst of a crisis of democracy, we have much to learn from Walt Whitman’s journey toward egalitarian selfhood. Walt Whitman knew a great deal about democracy that we don’t. Most of that knowledge is concentrated in one stunning poem, Song of Myself. Esteemed cultural and literary thinker Mark Edmundson offers a bold reading of the 1855 poem, included here in its entirety. He finds in the poem the genesis and development of a democratic spirit, for the individual and the nation. Whitman broke from past literature that he saw as “feudal”: obsessed with the noble and great. He wanted instead to celebrate the common and everyday. Song of Myself does this, setting the terms for democratic identity and culture in America. The work captures the drama of becoming an egalitarian individual, as the poet ascends to knowledge and happiness by confronting and overcoming the major obstacles to democratic selfhood. In the course of his journey, the poet addresses God and Jesus, body and soul, the love of kings, the fear of the poor, and the fear of death. The poet’s consciousness enlarges; he can see more, comprehend more, and he has more to teach. In Edmundson’s account, Whitman’s great poem does not end with its last line. Seven years after the poem was published, Whitman went to work in hospitals, where he attended to the Civil War’s wounded, sick, and dying. He thus became in life the democratic individual he had prophesied in art. Even now, that prophecy gives us words, thoughts, and feelings to feed the democratic spirit of self and nation.

Download or read book Time to Show Up written by Poets Unite Worldwide and published by Poetry of Witness. This book was released on 2018-03-10 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Time To Show Up" is an evocative title for an anthology on democracy: it suggests answering a call to duty or to defense; there is the awareness that "Now My Country Needs Me," and it comes from that same source as true patriotism does -If your country is right, celebrate it. If it's wrong, reform it!*As Alexandra Alter wrote: "Like virtually everything else in the Trump era, poetry has gotten sharply political these days."*Indeed, as a matter of fact, the idea of a collection of poems about democracy came to me just because of Trump. The United States of America represent the most important democracy in the world. Yet, with the election of Donald Trump as its 45th President, America's Democratic Values as well as America's international leadership are at risk --and this means that international stability and global security are at risk. *'United We Stand' - Poets Unite Wordlwide.

Download or read book Democratic Vistas written by Walt Whitman and published by . This book was released on 1871 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Democracy and Poetry written by Francis Barton Gummere and published by . This book was released on 1911 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Democracy in the Poetry of Walt Whitman written by Thomas Riggs and published by Greenhaven Publishing LLC. This book was released on 2012-10-05 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This informative edition explores Walt Whitman's poetry through the lens of democracy. Chapters include an examination of Whitman's life and influences, a look at key ideas related to democracy in Whitman's poetry, and a series of essays that explore topics such as Whitman's views of democratic comradeship, the role of bonds between men, Whitman's approach to patriotism, and Whitman's contradictory views on slavery and race. Readers are also presented with contemporary perspectives on democracy, such as the importance of an informed electorate and the impact of American individualism on contemporary politics.

Download or read book Poets of the Democracy Langland Goldsmith Burns Crabbe Wordsworth Whitman Meredith written by G. Currie Martin and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Hill We Climb written by Amanda Gorman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The instant #1 New York Times bestseller and #1 USA Today bestseller Amanda Gorman’s electrifying and historic poem “The Hill We Climb,” read at President Joe Biden’s inauguration, is now available as a collectible gift edition. “Stunning.” —CNN “Dynamic.” —NPR “Deeply rousing and uplifting.” —Vogue On January 20, 2021, Amanda Gorman became the sixth and youngest poet to deliver a poetry reading at a presidential inauguration. Taking the stage after the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden, Gorman captivated the nation and brought hope to viewers around the globe with her call for unity and healing. Her poem “The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country” can now be cherished in this special gift edition, perfect for any reader looking for some inspiration. Including an enduring foreword by Oprah Winfrey, this remarkable keepsake celebrates the promise of America and affirms the power of poetry.

Download or read book Songs of Democracy written by Walt Whitman and published by . This book was released on 1919 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Double Truth written by Chard deNiord and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2011-01-30 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Double Truth is a collection of poems that arc from myth to history, knowledge to mystery, Eros to natural love, animals to human beings, then back in an alternating poetic current that betrays a speaker who is at once a privileged witness of her time and a diachronic amalgam of voices that are as imagined as they are real in their anonymous legacy.

Download or read book Songs of Democracy written by Walt Whitman and published by . This book was released on 2013-07 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SONGS of DEMOCRACY By WALT WHITMAN THICK-SPRINKLED BUNTING "Thick-sprinkled bunting! Flag of stars! Long yet your road, fateful flag!--long yet your road, and lined with bloody death! For the prize I see at issue, at last is the world! All its ships and shores I see, interwoven with your threads, greedy banner! Dream'd again the flags of kings, highest born, to flaunt unrival'd? O hasten, flag of man! O with sure and steady step, passing highest flags of kings, Walk supreme to the heavens, mighty symbol--run up above them all, Flag of stars! thick-sprinkled bunting!" INTRODUCTION THOSE who know their Whitman will no doubt find somewhat ridiculous an enterprise which purposes to isolate a limited number of his poems under the title of the present volume, so completely is his work given up to the celebration of democracy. They will be fortified in their views, moreover, by the consciousness that the author himself would have shared them. Whitman saw in "Leaves of Grass" an organism, something which must be taken entire or not at all. Of the considerable number of "Selections" offered to the fearful, only two or three were published with his consent, and that a very reluctant consent, yielded at the promptings of a kindly desire not to wound with a rebuff the good intentions of his friends. He seems to have felt they were, after all, Edmund Clarence Stedman's or Elizabeth Porter Gould's selections, and as such were important only for the light they threw on the judgment of those excellent persons and the taste of their friends. He himself stood squarely by all that he had written, and refused to delete a line even at the urging of his much-admired Emerson. In his old age, face to face with his unpopularity, with the disapproval, even with the "anger and contempt," of his own time, he notes as "the best comfort of the whole business (after a band of the dearest friends and upholders ever vouchsafed to man or cause--doubtless all the more faithful and uncompromising--this little phalanx!--for being so few)" that "un-stopp'd and unwarp'd by any influence outside the soul within me, I have had my say entirely my own way and put it unerringly on record--the value thereof to be decided by time." Clearly it behooves one who performs yet another mutilation to prove it justified by different motives and conditions from those upon which the poet passed when he registered his veto. Let it be understood, then, at the outset, that I heartily sympathize with Whitman's attitude. I have made no attempt to propitiate the self-appointed arbiters of "the best that is known and thought in the world" by selecting those poems which seem least scornful of the time-honored... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Windham Press is committed to bringing the lost cultural heritage of ages past into the 21st century through high-quality reproductions of original, classic printed works at affordable prices. This book has been carefully crafted to utilize the original images of antique books rather than error-prone OCR text. This also preserves the work of the original typesetters of these classics, unknown craftsmen who laid out the text, often by hand, of each and every page you will read. Their subtle art involving judgment and interaction with the text is in many ways superior and more human than the mechanical methods utilized today, and gave each book a unique, hand-crafted feel in its text that connected the reader organically to the art of bindery and book-making. We think these benefits are worth the occasional imperfection resulting from the age of these books at the time of scanning, and their vintage feel provides a connection to the past that goes beyond the mere words of the text.

Download or read book A New Theory for American Poetry written by Angus FLETCHER and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intense, resonant, and deeply literary, this account of an American poetics shows how today's consumerist and conformist culture subverts the imagination of a free people. Poetry, the author maintains, is central to any coherent vision of life.