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THE POET EDGAR ALLAN POE

Name: THE POET EDGAR ALLAN POE
Author: Jerome McGann
ISBN: 978-0674416666

ALIEN ANGEL

by Jerome McGann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2014

In a book for literary critics, scholars and instructors, Poe as a consummate craftsman who daringly reimagined how poems...

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A scholarly defense of Poe’s aesthetics.

Although Poe was a popular poet among his contemporaries, the eminent Ralph Waldo Emerson scorned him as “The Jingle Man,” and many later readers concurred, including poet and critic Yvor Winters, who attacked Poe’s “obliviousness to the function of intellectual content in poetry.” Yet both T.S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams insisted that Poe was both significant and influential. McGann (English/Univ. of Virginia; A New Republic of Letters: Memory and Scholarship in the Age of Digital Reproduction, 2014, etc.) addresses this study to those “who remain uncertain” about Poe’s poetic importance. The author provides meticulously close readings of poems and a few prose selections: Marginalia (“the theoretical center of Poe’s work”), his reviews of Hazlitt and Longfellow, and a long, discursive letter to poet James Russell Lowell. “Poe stands out,” writes McGann, “…because of the intimate connection between his theoretical writings and poetic practice.” Poe conceived of poetry as oral performance, using imagery and language whose “predominant power is acoustic.” Vehemently opposed to what he called the “heresy of The Didactic,” Poe believed that “social and ethical attitudes had ossified into various kinds of American ideologies, American exceptionalism and social progress being two of the most baneful.” Such ideas did not inform his poetry. Annotating poems’ literary allusions does not enrich a reader’s experience but rather “can be quite misleading if it suggests that the poetry requires the external control of translation or decoding,” and in fact, such scholarly investigations can undermine the force of “the work’s catastrophic energies.” The author finds recurring use of uncanny words, “dazzling verbal transformations” and unexpected rhymes.

In a book for literary critics, scholars and instructors, Poe as a consummate craftsman who daringly reimagined how poems invent meaning.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2014

ISBN: 978-0674416666

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Harvard Univ.

Review Posted Online: July 21, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.