Lyric as Comedy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Calista McRae
Keyword(s):  
Robert Lowell ◽  
John Berryman ◽  
American Poets ◽  
Insight Into

A poet walks into a bar... this book explores the unexpected comic opportunities within recent American poems about deeply personal, often embarrassing, experiences. Lyric poems, the book finds, can be surprising sites of a shifting, unruly comedy, as seen in the work of John Berryman, Robert Lowell, A. R. Ammons, Terrance Hayes, Morgan Parker, Natalie Shapero, and Monica Youn. The book draws out the ways in which key American poets have struggled with persistent expectations about what expressive poetry can and should do. It reveals how the modern lyric, rather than bestowing order on the poet's thoughts and emotions, can center on impropriety and confusion, formal breakage and linguistic unruliness, and self-observation and self-staging. The close readings in the book also provide new insight into the theory and aesthetics of comedy, taking in the indirect, glancing comic affordances of poetry. In doing so, the book captures varieties of humor that do not align with traditional terms, centering abjection and pleasure as facets of contemporary lyric practice.

scholarly journals HISTORY OF CONFESSIONAL POETRY IN INDIAN WOMEN WRITINGS A SHORT OVERVIEW

2020 ◽  
pp. 79-89
Author(s):  
Richa Mishra ◽  
Hitesh Raviya
Keyword(s):  
Human Condition ◽  
Sylvia Plath ◽  
Confessional Poetry ◽  
Anne Sexton ◽  
Indian Women ◽  
Robert Lowell ◽  
John Berryman ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Poets ◽  
Women In India

‘Confessional’ is an adjective first applied to the poems of the American poets Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, W.D. Snodgrass, John Berryman and Theodore Roethke to refer to the autobiographical nature of their work. The confessional poet considers the world, an extension of herself. All confessional poetry springs from the need to confess; confessional poets bare their soul and body and hide nothing between their self and their direct expression of that self. They put no restrictions on subject matter, no matter how personal. Usually anti-elegant and anti- establishment, confessional poems are almost like war-cries triumphing over pain and defeat. The best confessional poems are more than confessions: they are revelations, about their creator’s personal vexations, dilemmas and predicaments, and above all about the human condition. This review work tries to prove that confessional poetry was always present in Writings by women in India. This work is a literature review of known writings by women in India.

Dylan Thomas and American Poetry: ‘a kind of secret, but powerful, leaven’

2019 ◽  
pp. 197-214
Author(s):  
Philip Coleman
Keyword(s):  
American Poetry ◽  
Elizabeth Bishop ◽  
Charles Olson ◽  
Broad View ◽  
John Berryman ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dylan Thomas ◽  
American Poets ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Way

In The Poetry of Dylan Thomas (2013), John Goodby argues that ‘[t]he scope of Thomas’s impact on US poetry is remarkable, and it testifies to his characteristic hybrid ambivalence’. In the spirit of elaborating on this observation, this chapter considers how a number of quite different American poets have engaged with Thomas’s work, including Charles Olson, Delmore Schwartz, Elizabeth Bishop, and Denise Levertov. The essay also brings into focus the more explicit dialogue established throughout the poetry of John Berryman, for whom Thomas was a constant and almost familial figure from the 1940s to the end of his career. In Dream Song 88, Berryman imagines Thomas in the afterlife ‘with more to say / now there’s no hurry, and we’re all a clan.’ In this chapter, the idea of American poets belonging to or seeking to belong to such a ‘clan’ is examined, up to and including the work of a number of contemporary poets and schools of verse. The chapter takes a broad view, then, of the many ways Thomas has influenced the writing of poetry, and in doing so scrutinises the way the history of American poetry has so often been narrated.

Kunitz, Stanley

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brett C. Millier
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Confessional Poetry ◽  
New School ◽  
Poet Laureate ◽  
John Berryman ◽  
Long Time ◽  
American Poets ◽  
The University

The career of American poet Stanley Kunitz (1905–2006) spanned nearly eighty years of continuous productivity and achievement. At the age of 95, he was named Poet Laureate of the United States, and was also a Guggenheim (1945), Pulitzer Prize (1959), and National Book Award (1995, at the age of 90) winner. Born on the older edge of a generation of American poets whose lives were saddened and cut short by mental illness and alcoholism (his friends Theodore Roethke and Robert Lowell among them, as well as Randall Jarrell, John Berryman, Elizabeth Bishop, and Delmore Schwartz), Kunitz overcame early sorrow and personal disappointment and lived, writing poems up to the time of his death at the age of 100. His early work showed the influence of the Metaphysicals and was generally highly formal and intellectually abstract. He resisted the move toward looser, “confessional” poetry for a long time after his contemporaries had embraced it, but critics agree that most of his best work followed his first “confessional” volume, The Testing Tree (1971). From 1946, Kunitz taught literature and creative writing at universities including Bennington College, SUNY Pottsdam, the New School, the University of Washington, and Columbia University. After his retirement, he devoted himself to gardening, and to writing “visionary” poems of maturity and old age, some of the finest in the language.

‘Our Looks, Two Looks’: Miniature Portraits in the Letters of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell

2019 ◽  
Vol 71 (300) ◽  
pp. 528-553
Author(s):  
Sophie Baldock
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Letter Writing ◽  
The Other ◽  
Elizabeth Bishop ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
Robert Lowell ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
American Poets ◽  
Visual Materials

Abstract This article examines parallels between the exchange of miniature portraits in late eighteenth-century letters and the exchange of photographs and keepsakes in the twentieth-century correspondence of American poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. Drawing on theories of the miniature in Susan Stewart’s work, alongside art-historical and literary-critical accounts of the practice of exchanging miniature portraits in letters, the article builds on arguments that portraits go hand-in-hand with the genre of letter writing. I argue that previous criticism of the Bishop-Lowell correspondence has not yet adequately explored their epistolary discussion and exchange of visual materials. As in the case of their eighteenth- and nineteenth-century predecessors, for Bishop and Lowell, letter writing frequently involved a literal and metaphorical exchange of portraits. The article places particular photographs in their original context alongside letters, demonstrating the symbiotic relationship between images and text and the key role played by the visual in letter writing. It provides a fresh reading of Bishop’s and Lowell’s linked poems, ‘The Armadillo’ and ‘Skunk Hour’, arguing that these poems are a means of portrait-painting in relation to the other. The poems are examined alongside descriptions of an antique miniature cameo, sent by Lowell to Bishop as a companion to his poem, which functions as an ambivalently gendered portrait of Bishop. Finally, the poets’ interlocking memoirs, ‘91 Revere Street’ and ‘Memories of Uncle Neddy’, are analysed to show their origin in letters, and their shared preoccupation with portraiture, scale and framing.

Calibration problems in hydrogen luminosities

1966 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 322-330
Author(s):  
A. Beer
Keyword(s):  
Galactic Structure ◽  
B Stars ◽  
Insight Into

The investigations which I should like to summarize in this paper concern recent photo-electric luminosity determinations of O and B stars. Their final aim has been the derivation of new stellar distances, and some insight into certain patterns of galactic structure.

Stochasting modeling of planetary ring systems

1984 ◽  
Vol 75 ◽  
pp. 461-469 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert W. Hart
Keyword(s):  
Maximum Entropy ◽  
Ring System ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Ultimate State ◽  
Interparticle Interactions ◽  
Ring Systems ◽  
First Order ◽  
Planetary Ring ◽  
Insight Into

ABSTRACTThis paper models maximum entropy configurations of idealized gravitational ring systems. Such configurations are of interest because systems generally evolve toward an ultimate state of maximum randomness. For simplicity, attention is confined to ultimate states for which interparticle interactions are no longer of first order importance. The planets, in their orbits about the sun, are one example of such a ring system. The extent to which the present approximation yields insight into ring systems such as Saturn's is explored briefly.

Skeletal elements of crinoid echinoderms: High-resolution structural and microanalytical results

1983 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
pp. 194-195
Author(s):  
D. F. Blake ◽  
L. F. Allard ◽  
D. R. Peacor
Keyword(s):  
High Resolution ◽  
Marine Invertebrates ◽  
Sea Urchins ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Sea Stars ◽  
High Resolution Tem ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

Echinodermata is a phylum of marine invertebrates which has been extant since Cambrian time (c.a. 500 m.y. before the present). Modern examples of echinoderms include sea urchins, sea stars, and sea lilies (crinoids). The endoskeletons of echinoderms are composed of plates or ossicles (Fig. 1) which are with few exceptions, porous, single crystals of high-magnesian calcite. Despite their single crystal nature, fracture surfaces do not exhibit the near-perfect {10.4} cleavage characteristic of inorganic calcite. This paradoxical mix of biogenic and inorganic features has prompted much recent work on echinoderm skeletal crystallography. Furthermore, fossil echinoderm hard parts comprise a volumetrically significant portion of some marine limestones sequences. The ultrastructural and microchemical characterization of modern skeletal material should lend insight into: 1). The nature of the biogenic processes involved, for example, the relationship of Mg heterogeneity to morphological and structural features in modern echinoderm material, and 2). The nature of the diagenetic changes undergone by their ancient, fossilized counterparts. In this study, high resolution TEM (HRTEM), high voltage TEM (HVTEM), and STEM microanalysis are used to characterize tha ultrastructural and microchemical composition of skeletal elements of the modern crinoid Neocrinus blakei.

Structure and function of neural networks in the retina

1988 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 26-27
Author(s):  
Peter Sterling
Keyword(s):  
Ganglion Cells ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Structure And Function ◽  
Synaptic Connections ◽  
Visual Axis ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
Cat Retina ◽  
Ultrathin Sections ◽  
And Function ◽  
Insight Into

The synaptic connections in cat retina that link photoreceptors to ganglion cells have been analyzed quantitatively. Our approach has been to prepare serial, ultrathin sections and photograph en montage at low magnification (˜2000X) in the electron microscope. Six series, 100-300 sections long, have been prepared over the last decade. They derive from different cats but always from the same region of retina, about one degree from the center of the visual axis. The material has been analyzed by reconstructing adjacent neurons in each array and then identifying systematically the synaptic connections between arrays. Most reconstructions were done manually by tracing the outlines of processes in successive sections onto acetate sheets aligned on a cartoonist's jig. The tracings were then digitized, stacked by computer, and printed with the hidden lines removed. The results have provided rather than the usual one-dimensional account of pathways, a three-dimensional account of circuits. From this has emerged insight into the functional architecture.

Radiation Damage Studies with the HVEM

1972 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 680-681
Author(s):  
J. J. Laidler ◽  
B. Mastel
Keyword(s):  
Radiation Damage ◽  
Stainless Steels ◽  
Volume Expansion ◽  
Austenitic Stainless Steels ◽  
Test Facility ◽  
Fast Breeder Reactors ◽  
Breeder Reactors ◽  
Under Construction ◽  
Development Laboratory ◽  
Insight Into

One of the major materials problems encountered in the development of fast breeder reactors for commercial power generation is the phenomenon of swelling in core structural components and fuel cladding. This volume expansion, which is due to the retention of lattice vacancies by agglomeration into large polyhedral clusters (voids), may amount to ten percent or greater at goal fluences in some austenitic stainless steels. From a design standpoint, this is an undesirable situation, and it is necessary to obtain experimental confirmation that such excessive volume expansion will not occur in materials selected for core applications in the Fast Flux Test Facility, the prototypic LMFBR now under construction at the Hanford Engineering Development Laboratory (HEDL). The HEDL JEM-1000 1 MeV electron microscope is being used to provide an insight into trends of radiation damage accumulation in stainless steels, since it is possible to produce atom displacements at an accelerated rate with 1 MeV electrons, while the specimen is under continuous observation.

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