Classic Writings On Poetry

Poetry has always given rise to interpretation, judgement and controversy. Indeed, the history of poetry criticism is as rich and varied a journey as the history of poetry itself. But classic writings such as Emerson's essay 'The Poet' and Whitman's preface to Leaves of Grass serve as more than a critical 'call and response': the works are striking examples of how the finest poets themselves have written on poetics and the works of their peers and predecesors - revealing, in the process, much about the theory and passion behind their own works. Spanning thousands of years and including thiry-three of the most major influential critical essays ever written, Classic Writings on Poetry is the first major anthology of criticism devoted exclusively to poetry. Beginnnng with a survey of the history of poetics and providing an introduction and brief biography for each reading, esteemed poet and critic William Harmon takes readers from Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Poetics to the Norse mythology of Snorri Sturluson's Skaldskaparmal. John Dryden's An Essay of Dramatic Poesy and Shelley's A Defense of Poetry are included, as is an excerpt from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's verse novel Aurora Leigh, arriving, finally at the modernist sensibility of 'Poetic Reality and Critical Unreality,' by Laura (Riding) Jackson.