The New Poetries and Some Old

This collection of twenty-nine essays represents a summation of Kostelanetz’s thoughts on poetry since the publication of his earlier work The Old Poetries and the New.

In sections on “The New Poetries,” “Some Old,” and “Autobiographical Addenda,” the essays range from sketches of Kenneth Burke, John Berryman, and Northrop Frye through considerations of the latest sound-text poetry to Kostelanetz’s justification of his own work. These pieces reflect Kostelanetz’s ongoing commitment to the esthetics he ascribes to high modernism—innovation, abstraction, intelligence, and complexity in all the arts.