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What is a poem? What ideas about the poem as such shape how readers and audiences encounter individual poems? To explore these questions, the first section of this Companion addresses key conceptual issues, from singularity and genre to the poem's historical exchanges with the song and the novel. The second section turns to issues of form, focusing on voice, rhythm, image, sound, diction, and style. The third section considers the poem's social and cultural lives. It examines the poem in the archive and in the digital sphere, as well as in relation to decolonization and global capitalism. The chapters in this volume range across both canonical and non-canonical poems, poems from the past and the present, and poems by a diverse set of poets. This book will be a key resource for students and scholars studying the poem.
List of contents
Introduction; Part I. Ideas of the Poem: 1. Singularity Derek Attridge; 2. Genre Steven Yao; 3. Poem / song Boris Maslov; 4. Poem / novel Emily Allen and Dino Felluga; 5. Poem / concept David Nowell Smith; 6. The poem in translation Peter Robinson; Part II. Forms of the Poem: 7. Voice Rosinka Chaudhuri; 8. Rhythm Eric Weiskott; 9. Image Kristin Grogan; 10. Sound Christopher Nealon; 11. Diction Alexis Chema; 12. Style Sean Pryor; Part III. The Poem in the World: 13. Decolonizing the poem Tsitsi Jaiji; 14. The poem as world Jahan Ramazani; 15. The poem and its audiences Arka Chattopadhyay and Anuparna Mukherjee; 16. The poem in the archive Ruth Abbott; 17. The poem and the commodity Ruth Jennison; 18. The poem in the digital age Mike Chasar.
About the author
Sean Pryor is an Associate Professor of English at the University of New South Wales. His books include Poetry, Modernism, and an Imperfect World (2017), his articles have appeared in journals such as ELH and Modernism/modernity, and he was an Associate Editor for The Oxford Encyclopedia of Literary Theory (2022).
Summary
What is a Poem? Where did the genre come from and where might it be going? This book examines the poem from three angles: the idea of the poem, the workings of the poem, and the poem's social and cultural contexts. Chapters will provide information on the history and the theory of the poem to explain how the emergence and maturity of key genres.
Foreword
This Companion offers an engaging and accessible introduction to key concepts in the study of poetry and poetics.
