Poetry and the PracticalUniversity of Arkansas Press, 1. jan. 1998 - 124 sider Delivered as a three-part lecture series in 1854 at the famous Hibernian Society Hall in Charleston, South Carolina, Simms's spirited defense of poetry stands in the nobel line of poetic credos from poets such as Sir Philip Sidney and Percy Bysshe Shelley. It is the only full-length work of its kind in American literature, and it has never before been published. Seventh in the University of Arkansas Press's Simms Series, Poetry and the Practical is a clear, forceful rebuttal of arguments that would relegate poetry to the margins of life. It proclaims the high calling of poets as spokesmen and romantic visionaries, underscoring their mission to reveal truth and passion, mind and heart and to transcend the limiting bounds of the empirical. In proving poetry's utility and worth, Simms uses all the tools of persuasion open to him: his wide reading, his considerable knowledge of the history of culture and civilizations, his understanding of the values of place and tradition, and, above all, an oratorical eloquence, which allows his words to leave the page in a rush of inspiration. These lectures, which still retain their identity as scripts prepared and punctuated for performance, provide profound insight into Simms the poet and into the effects of industrialization, the southern sensibility, and the influence of European thought on southern literature at a critical point in that literature's development. |
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... poet , and that in times after , it would be through this medium that he would be remembered . His poetry also held a very special place for Miss May , and she was certain that Simms was correct in his assessment . So it has been this ...
... Poets write to themselves and to an aca- demic audience , but find few listeners elsewhere . The poet becomes ever further from the center of the world and increasingly his own center . Simms , when he wrote Poetry and the Practical in ...
... poet and society has become an abyss , with no bridge in sight . And any defense of the poet must be at the same time a solemn critique of a world which has marginalized him . Simms was first and foremost the dedicated poet who felt the ...
... poet as vaies . As seer and prophet , the poet performed his ancient and essential traditional duties to his community . Poetry and the Practical in its highest moments becomes revelation . There are memo- rable lines and images in this ...
... poet is saying through the example of the perform- ance itself . Simms , in his act of inspired affection for both his subject and his listeners , communicates his truth and becomes that truth . This is the essence of inspiration , and ...
Indhold
xi | |
II SYNOPSIS | xxxiii |
POETRY AND THE PRACTICAL | 1 |
LECTURE I | 3 |
LECTURE II | 41 |
LECTURE III | 69 |
EXPLANATORY NOTES | 99 |
NOTES ON THE TEXT | 115 |
INDEX | 119 |