The Plural of Us is the first book to focus on the poet's use of
the first-person plural voice--poetry's "we." Closely exploring the
work of W. H. Auden, Bonnie Costello uncovers the trove of thought
and feeling carried in this small word. While lyric has long been
associated with inwardness and a voice saying "I," "we" has hardly
been noticed, even though it has appeared throughout the history of
poetry. Reading for this pronoun in its variety and ambiguity,
Costello explores the communal function of poetry--the reasons,
risks, and rewards of the first-person plural. Costello adopts a
taxonomic approach to her subject, considering "we" from its most
constricted to its fully unbounded forms. She also takes a
historical perspective, following Auden's interest in the full
range of "the human pluralities" in a time of particular pressure
for and against the collective. Costello offers new readings as she
tracks his changing approach to voice in democracy. Examples from
many other poets--including Walt Whitman, T. S. Eliot, Elizabeth
Bishop, and Wallace Stevens--arise throughout the book, and the
final chapter offers a consideration of how contemporary writers
find form for what George Oppen called "the meaning of being
numerous." Connecting insights to philosophy of language and to
recent work in concepts of community, The Plural of Us shows how
poetry raises vital questions--literary and social--about how we
speak of our togetherness.
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