Strict Wildness
Subtitle: Discoveries in Poetry and History
By: Peter Viereck
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2017
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 276
ISBN-13: 9781315130347
Subjects: Modern Poetry; History and criticism; German poetry; Modern History; Poésie allemande; Histoire et critique; Histoire moderne et contemporaine
Description: "A reviewer once called Peter Viereck's thought "not common sense but inspired, electric common sense." This volume of Viereck's selected essays on poetry and on history, written between 1938 through 2004, exemplifies this quality. Its main theme is suggested in Viereck's coined phrase "strict wildness," which suggests a balance between restraint (which by itself is staid and rigid) and passion (which by itself is incoherent). Frost called free verse tennis without the net. Viereck calls dead mechanical form "net without the tennis." Strict wildness, then, is spontaneity of feeling within strict organic form. The book explores questions of modernism and poetic craft with respect to American poetry. It discusses the controversy over Ezra Pound's politics and its relation to his poetics, as well as the nearly forgotten poet Vachel Lindsay. Viereck offers more general views on poetics, including the fruitful tensions between form and content, and the impact of modern technology on poetic expression. He also discusses history and politics, and contains essays on McCarthyism, the Cold War, political conformity of the Left and Right, and discusses issues of historiography and culture that define Viereck's highly individual, often critical brand of conservatism. In treating representative trends and figures in conservative thought, Viereck insists on clear awareness of what exists to conserve, what ought to be conserved, and why it should be conserved. In their range and originality, the writings brought together in Strict Wildness constitute an ideal introduction to Peter Viereck's literary and political thought and how they come together. It will be of interest to literary scholars, intellectual historians, and social scientists. The introduction allows the reader to grasp a clear sense of the context and background of Viereck's works."--Provided by publisher.
Table of contents: title: Part Part 1 Poetry: Controversies --; title: chapter Strict Form in Poetry --; title: chapter Vachel Lindsey, Dante of the Fundamentalists --; title: chapter The Pound Controversy --; title: chapter The Muse and the Machine --; title: part Part 2 History: Its Sadness --; title: chapter The Revolution in Values --; title: chapter Clio is No Cleo --; title: chapter New Views on Metternich --; title: chapter The Table Talk of Gay lord Babbitt  -- Squire Cabot Babbitt; title: chapter Squire Cabot Babbitt --; title: chapter The Mob within the Heart --; title: chapter Sermons of Self-Destruction --; title: chapter The Irony about Niebuhr --; title: part Part 3 German Poets --; title: chapter Transplanting to New Gardens  -- Stefan George's Poems Stefan George's Love Poems; title: chapter Stefan George's Poems --; title: chapter Stefan George's Love Poems --; title: chapter?Templars? --; title: chapter Ogling Through Ice --; title: chapter 3 Three Poems by Georg Heym 263 -- ?Hyacinth Scent? by Theodor Storm.