The Force of PoetryChristopher Ricks is one of the best-known living critics of English, and was described by W. H. Auden as "the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding." Though published independently over many years, each of the essays in this collection asks how a poet's words reveal the "force ofpoetry," that force--in Dr Johnson's words--"which calls new power into being, which embodies sentiment, and animates matter." The poets covered range from John Gower, Marvell, and Milton to Wordsworth, Empson, Stevie Smith, Lowell, and Larkin, and the book contains four wider essays on cliches, lies, misquotations, and American English. |
From inside the book
Results 1-3 of 41
Page 67
... felt . Adam waits for Eve to return ; our unshared sense of a premonition felt in another's heart is quite different from that which we share with Hamlet's premonition at his heart . Yet oft his heart , divine of something ill , Misgave ...
... felt . Adam waits for Eve to return ; our unshared sense of a premonition felt in another's heart is quite different from that which we share with Hamlet's premonition at his heart . Yet oft his heart , divine of something ill , Misgave ...
Page 68
... felt ' ) ; it is to make us feel very differently- to feel a quite different dismay from any which he feels , and to feel it retrospectively through what is for him the prospective pressure of ' divine of something ill ' , where ...
... felt ' ) ; it is to make us feel very differently- to feel a quite different dismay from any which he feels , and to feel it retrospectively through what is for him the prospective pressure of ' divine of something ill ' , where ...
Page 121
... Felt in the . . . and felt along the ... To be slotted in are the words heart and blood . The expected placing would give : ' Felt in the heart , and felt along the blood , ' since the heart is static and the blood is diffused . Indeed ...
... Felt in the . . . and felt along the ... To be slotted in are the words heart and blood . The expected placing would give : ' Felt in the heart , and felt along the blood , ' since the heart is static and the blood is diffused . Indeed ...
Contents
Metamorphosis in other words | 1 |
Its own resemblance | 34 |
Sound and sense in Paradise Lost | 60 |
Copyright | |
15 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
acknowledge American Appreciations become Beddoes begins better blood brackets bring called child cliché comes create criticism dark dead death earth effect Eliot Empson English Essays eyes face fact fear feel felt final force give Gower's hand heart Hill Hill's human hyphen idea imagination important instance Johnson kind language less lies light live look Lowell matter means metaphor mind move nature never once pain particular pass Pater perhaps person phrase play poem poet poetry possible Prelude present punctuation question relation rhyme seems seen sense silence simply song sound speak spirit story suggest tell thing thou thought touch true truth turn verse violence voice whole wish words Wordsworth write young