World, Self, Poem

Book excerpt: World, Self, Poem collects the best of the essays submitted by poets and scholars from around the U.S. and Canada, and beyond, for presentation at the "Jubilation of Poets" festival celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center in October 1986. In this collection, eighteen critics consider the works of a number of important postmodern poets and, using various approaches, confront some of the central problems posed by the poetry of the past 25 years. John Ashbery, Wendell Berry, Edward Dorn, Robert Duncan, Geoffrey Hill, Ted Hughes, Lousie Gluck, Adrienna Rich, Denise Levertov, Gary Snyder, Gerald Stern, and William Stafford are among the poets who receive detailed attention in these essays. The questions addressed include political involvement and noninvolvement, the theme of nuclear annihilation, the poet's use and misuse of history, poetry workshops in Central America; the "I" in contemporary poetry; the pastoral vein in contemporary poetry; the nature and implications of concrete and "found" poetry; analogies of poetry and music.