This book examines the literary impact of famed British poet, Barry Mac Sweeney, who worked at the forefront of poetic discovery in post-war Britain. Agitated equally by politics and the possibilities of artistic experimentation, Barry Mac Sweeney was ridiculed in the press, his literary reputation only recovering towards the end of his life which was cut short by alcoholism. With close readings of Mac Sweeney alongside his contemporaries, precursors, and influences, including J.H. Prynne, Shelley, Jack Spicer, and Sylvia Plath, Luke Roberts offers a fresh introduction to the field of modern poetry. Richly detailed with archival and bibliographic research, this book recovers the social and political context of Mac Sweeney’s exciting, challenging, and controversial impact on modern and contemporary poetry.
Table of Content
1. ‘here we all are to greet you’.- 2. Books, Devices, Verbal Chicanery, and Cosmological Range.- 3. Strikers with Poems: from Green Cabaret to Black Torch.- 4. Seeing and Being Seen: Serial Poetry and Surveillance, 1970-1975.- 5. Into the Dangerous Decade: 1979-1982.- 6. Class and Representation: Wild Knitting to Hellhound Memos.- 7. Pearl on the Law.- 8. Conclusion: Nostalgia for the Future.- Bibliographies.- Index.
About the author
Luke Roberts is a Lecturer in Modern Poetry at King’s College London, UK. His writing on English and American poetry has appeared in Textual Practice, Chicago Review, PN Review and in edited collections such as Modernist Legacies (2014) and Accelerated Times (2016). In 2012, he co-edited Certain Prose of the English Intelligencer. His own poetry has been published widely.
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