Open Form in American Poetry : Essays by Burton Hatlen
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Description
Scholar, poet, and professor Burton Hatlen (1936-2008) taught at the University of Maine for many years. He also was the Director of the National Poetry Foundation, where he oversaw its long list of book and journal publications, including editing the ground-breaking collection, George Oppen, Man and Poet. Although Professor Hatlen's scholarly writing and poetics were well-known through his many essays in literary journals, he never compiled a volume of his own essays, always anticipating a new area of research with new insights. Open Form in American Poetry is thus the first published one-author collection of Burton Hatlen's scholarly writing. Burt Hatlen was a passionate critic, and a believer in the passion and commitments of the artists about whom he wrote. And this was an amazing list--among them Pound, Williams, Oppen, Zukofsky, Reznikoff, Rakosi, Bunting, Olson and Duncan, but also Boyle, Retallack, Stevens, Dorn, Enslin, H.D., Levertov, and Spicer. Despite being among the first people to write assiduously and systematically about the Objectivists, he always produced a "second order" criticism--subtle, nuanced, sophisticated and deeply engaged (rather than a first order criticism of simple--if necessary--introduction and gloss). His perspicacity, accuracy, and penetration have been models for all critics who have followed his work. He was an authentic lover of poetry and of the hard poem. He was instrumental in putting writers and a whole part of U.S. poetry on the critical agenda.
ISBN
9780891011316
Publication Date
2021
Publisher
University of Maine Press
City
Orono
Keywords
American poetry, Poetics
Disciplines
Literature in English, North America
Recommended Citation
Hatlen, Burton, "Open Form in American Poetry : Essays by Burton Hatlen" (2021). Faculty and Staff Monograph Publications. 328.
https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/fac_monographs/328
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