To find a personal style is, for a writer, to become adult; and
to write one's first "perfect" poem--a poem that wholly and
successfully embodies that style--is to come of age as a poet. By
looking at the precedents, circumstances, and artistry of the first
perfect poems composed by John Milton, John Keats, T. S. Eliot, and
Sylvia Plath, "Coming of Age as a Poet" offers rare insight into
this mysterious process, and into the indispensable period of
learning and experimentation that precedes such poetic
achievement.
Milton's "L'Allegro," Keats's "On First Looking into Chapman's
Homer," Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," and Plath's
"The Colossus" are the poems that Helen Vendler considers,
exploring each as an accession to poetic confidence, mastery, and
maturity. In meticulous and sympathetic readings of the poems, and
with reference to earlier youthful compositions, she delineates the
context and the terms of each poet's self-discovery--and
illuminates the private, intense, and ultimately heroic effort and
endurance that precede the creation of any memorable poem.
With characteristic precision, authority, and grace, Vendler
helps us to appreciate anew the conception and the practice of
poetry, and to observe at first hand the living organism that
breathes through the words of a great poem.
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