I have essays in the works on a few sexier topics (on fantasies of violence and a promised continuation of my earlier post “Air, earth, and skies”) but neither was quite ready to go for today, so I am instead posting an old essay that may strike some as quite academic—perhaps especially those most interested in its topic, the nature and essence of lyric poetry. The words below first appeared in the January-February 2016 issue of the PN Review, an excellent UK-based poetry magazine that I encourage all my readers to check out. They mark an attempt to contend with a then (perhaps still) heated dispute in the field of “lyric studies,” in which, as in so many current scholarly fields devoted to their arts, the loudest voices, and those most apt to find a following among my peers, were those insisting that their artform is an imposture needing to be dismantled.
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