How to Study Modern Poetry

In this book Tony Curtis, himself an award-winning poet, offers clear and positive help to students who are faced by a modern poem which puzzles and frightens them. How do we proceed to construct a critical response to a poem which may not rhyme, may not have metrical regularity, may not be written in verses or even have conventional punctuation? This book deals imaginatively and originally with such problems. It also provides helpful critical readings of many of the major poems of the post-war years, by poets such as Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Dylan Thomas, Philip Larkin, Seamus Heaney, R S Thomas, Dannie Abse and William Carlos Williams.

Autorentext

Tony Curtis is an established and acclaimed poet, novelist and critic. He has written and edited over forty books, including his debut novel 'Darkness in the City of Light', which was shortlisted for the Paul Torday Memorial Prize, and 'Where the Birds Sing our Names', an anthology of poems for the children's charity T Hafan. He was Wales's first Professor of Poetry at the University of Glamorgan, where he developed and directed the M. Phil in Writing. He was awarded a Gregory Award in 1972; won the National Poetry Competition in 1983; and the Dylan Thomas Award for Spoken Poetry in 1993, judged by Dannie Abse and Dylan's daughter Aeronwy. He had a Cholmondeley Award in 1998 and a D.Litt. in 2004. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Inhalt

Part 1 Shakespeare: Shall I compare thee to a Summer's Day?.- William Carlos Williams: this is just to say Adrienne Rich: Aunt Jennifer's Tigers/Translations.- Part 2 Tony Curtis: The Death of Richard Beattie-Seaman in the Belgian Grand Prix,1939.- The progress of this prize-winning poem through draft stages.- Part 3 The 1940s and 1950s: Alun Lewis: All day it has rained Keith Douglas: Vergissmeinnicht.- Dylan Thomas: A Refusal to Mourn.- R.S.Thomas: A Peasant.