The Lyric of Contemporary American Poets : from Emerson to Graham

The essay explores the writings on poetics of 19-and-20-century American poets in order to assess their contribution to a contemporary theory of the lyric. A gestalt of the experience of poetry writing is first retraced, which relies on an Emersonian, post-Romantic conception of poetry as equivalent to the lyric. A demonstration follows of the contemporary renewal of the ancient association of the lyric with music in the new exploitation of the melodic potential of voice in speech intonation.