- Share:

# Predecessors, Et Cetera

## Essays

- Share:

Reflecting on her poetic predecessors and contemporaries, Amy Clampitt reveals the many connections in their craft

Contents

I. ADDRESSES AND A PLAY "How It Strikes a Contemporary": Reflections on Poetry and the Role of the Poet - 3 From The Life: Some Remembrances - 17The History of Punchinello: A Baroque Play in One Act - 28

II. ESSAYS AND INTRODUCTIONS Counterpoise - 41 Twentieth-Century American Poetry - 43 Introduction to Kaleidoscope: Poems by American Negro Poets - 55 Preface to The New Negro - 60 Foreword to "A Portfolio of Recent American Poetry: Portfolio II" - 68 Foreword to "Anne Frank: The Child and the Legend" - 71"Something Patterned, Wild, and Free" - 74

III. INTERVIEWS AND CONVERSATIONS A Conversation During the Bicentennial - 79 "A Certain Vision" - 90 A "Romantic Realist" - 115The Poet and His Art: A Conversation - 129

Predecessors, Et Cetera collects Amy Clampitt’s reflections on her predecessors (the poets Donne, Wordsworth, Dickinson, Frost, Eliot, and Marianne Moore as well as the novelists Henry James and Edith Wharton) and her contemporaries (including James Merrill, Anthony Hecht, Howard Moss, Thomas McGrath, John Berryman, Stevie Smith, and Seamus Heaney) and reveals the intricate connections inherent in their art. Other essays include “Purloined Sincerity,” which examines the fate of the personal letter in these days of electronic communication, and “The Long, Long Wait,” which looks at the epistles of St. Paul to the Thessalonians. Along the way she offers ruminations on the poet’s craft, the vagaries of reputation, and the perennial question of what makes a poet – or any writer – tick.