Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Inscription and Modernity
1. Lifeless Things: Being and Structure in Romantic Inscription
2. Empty and Full: Poetry, Self, and Society in Lamartine, Baudelaire, and Poncy
3. Kernels of the Acropolis: Poetry and Modernization in Blok, Kliuev, and Khlebnikov
4. Unkind Weight: Mandelstam, History, and Catastrophe
Conclusion
Coda: In Descending Sizes
Notes
Works Cited and Consulted
Index

Promotional Information

Examines the tradition of inscriptive lyric poetry and its transformation by Romantic and post-Romantic poets

About the Author

John MacKay is Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Yale University.

Reviews

. . . MacKay's readings elucidate poems from roughly 1750 to 1945 and encompass major Western writers ranging from Wordsworth to Elizabeth Bishop. Sensitive that 'the poem should sing its own understanding, without the help of ventriloquists,' MacKay portrays the critic's task as gesturing toward the performance of the poem within a community. This poetic sampling notably exposes poems from lesser-known Russians such as Nikolai Kliuev and Velimir Khlebnikov, along with French worker-poet Charles Poncy. . . . MacKay helps the reader see the writings of early-20th-century Russian poets in a larger framework—that of the relationship between poetry and community. . . . Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, and scholars.
*Choice*