Forms of Poetic Attention

Identifying a crucial link between poetic form and the forming of attention, Lucy Alford offers a new terminology for how poetic attention works and how attention becomes a subject and object of poetry. She combines close readings of a wide variety of poems with research in the philosophy, aesthetics, and psychology of attention.

List of contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: What Is Poetic Attention?
Part I. Attending to Objects
1. Modes of Transitive Attention
2. Contemplation: Attention’s Reach
3. Desire: Attention’s Hunger
4. Recollection: Attending to the Departed Object
5. Imagination: Attention’s Poiesis
Part II. Objectless Awareness
6. Modes of Intransitive Attention
7. Vigilance: States of Suspension
8. Resignation: Relinquishing the Object
9. Idleness: Doldrums and Gardens of Time
10. Boredom: End-Stopped Attention
Coda: Toward a Practice of Poetic Attention
Notes
Bibliography
Permission Credits
Index

About the author

Lucy Alford is assistant professor of literature at Wake Forest University. Her poems have appeared in Harpur Palate, Literary Matters, the Warwick Review, Streetlight, and Atelier.

Summary

Identifying a crucial link between poetic form and the forming of attention, Lucy Alford offers a new terminology for how poetic attention works and how attention becomes a subject and object of poetry. She combines close readings of a wide variety of poems with research in the philosophy, aesthetics, and psychology of attention.

Additional text

Her readings are sensitive and nuanced.

Product details

• Authors: Lucy Alford, Alford Lucy
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.04.2021
• EAN: 9780231187558
• ISBN: 978-0-231-18755-8
• No. of pages: 384
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Poetry, LITERARY CRITICISM / Poetry, LITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory, LITERARY CRITICISM / Comparative Literature, Comparative Literature, Literary studies: poetry & poets, Literature: history & criticism, Literary theory, Literary studies: poetry and poets