Defensive measures

Description:

"Defensive Measures explores strategies by which poets claim their distinctiveness, and argues that poetry is the one literary form that most insistently demands a defense. It demands a defense, it would seem, because it is perpetually in crisis - not only in regard to its utility and its aesthetic appeal (or the vigor of its renunciation of such an appeal), but in regard to its generic existence. Upton defines a generative conception of defense and examines in a new light the poetry of Lorine Niedecker, Elizabeth Bishop, Louise Gluck, and Anne Carson. In writing about Bishop, Upton puts this well-regarded poet in a new framework, aligning her work with that of three poets whose aesthetics might be viewed as antithetical to her own and giving due to the more experimental elements of her poetics."--Jacket.

subjects: Criticism and interpretation,  American poetry,  History and criticism,  Women authors,  Women and literature,  History,  Bishop, elizabeth, 1911-1979,  American poetry, history and criticism, 20th century,  American poetry, women authors

People: Lorine Niedecker,  Louise Glück (1943-),  Anne Carson (1950-),  Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)

Places: United States

Times: 20th century