Anne Sexton and Middle Generation Poetry

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Anne Sexton and Middle Generation Poetry The Geography of Grief

Philip McGowan

Book Code: GM1514

ISBN: 0-313-31514-0

ISBN-13: 978-0-313-31514-5

DOI:

168 pages, n/a

Praeger Publishers

Publication: 9/30/2004

List Price: $87.95 (UK Sterling Price: £49.95)

Availability: In Stock

Media Type: Hardcover

Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4

Subjects:

Series Title: Contributions to the Study of American Literature

Series Number: 16

Reviews:

McGowan considers Sexton to be at the heart of mid-20th-century-generation poetry. He is extremely knowledgeable and sensitive to the challenges facing a female poet, as she writes in a language dominated by maleness and in a culture not prone to take women's writing as seriously as men's....McGowan succeeds in showing that Sexton speaks for many more selves than her own....Recommended. Graduate and research collections.
—Choice May 2005

Description: Focusing on Sexton's poems rather than on the life she led, this fresh critique of her work restarts the debate about her poetry 30 years after her death. McGowan argues that Sexton's poetry collections develop a three-way investigation into the possibilities of language to convey an individual's response to her own existence, to the project of defining love (by physical, human, and divine standards) and to the purpose of the aesthetic in our understanding of these entities. He charts the chronological development of Sexton's poetic aesthetic and provides a new interpretation of this major poet's work. Informed by the poetic and philosophical works of a number of other writers, McGowan's readings of Sexton's work are detailed and thorough. The work opens with a reconsideration of an early Sexton poem and moves through her other works in a carefully crafted fashion. He argues against the confessional interpretations of earlier readings and resituates the debate into Sexton's poetic territories, concentrating on her words, not her world. Concluding that Sexton's work challenges aesthetic and philosophical issues concerning our existence in this world and how language attempts to respond to such questions, McGowan offers a new approach and a fresh outlook on the poetry Sexton has left us.

Table of Contents:

Preface
Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Sexton's Obsessive Combinations
First Collections
Life and Death and Love
Sexton's Transformations
Religion and Torment
Poetry Repeating
Afterword
Works Consulted
Index

LC Card Number: 2004044227

LCC Class: PS3537

Dewey Class: 811


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