Strategies of Difference in Modern Poetry

Book excerpt: This volume consists of a collection of essays, mostly by European scholars, on the ways modern poets have dealt with the crucial concept of "difference" in their practice of poetic composition. What is examined here through the works of Stevens, Roethke, Yeats, Pound, Ammons, Graham, Laviera, Reznikoff, and Kinsella is the range of strategies used in poetry to convey a sense of disruption, estrangement, disturbance, indeterminacy. The aim is to track down the many kinds of "difference" that these poets' works illustrate and the challenges they pose to the critic.