In his introduction to this collection of essays, its editor John Gibson tells us that the emphasis here is on modern poetry. In modern poetry, meaning is latent rather than overt, or is put into question, and any sense of narrative or anecdote is fractured or subverted. For Gibson, any theory based on the concept of narrative would be inapplicable to poetry in the modernist paradigm. (It is pertinent to point out that most poetry, whether of the past or of the present, doesn’t obey this paradigm.) Yet, if we need different philosophical theories for each different genre, style, or period of poetry (which, after all, are scarcely watertight categories), this doesn’t say much for the scope of theory. We are led inexorably from the generalities of the philosopher theorizing about a particular artform, to the specifics of the literary critic giving an account of a particular poem. In practice, regardless of Gibson’s strictures, many of the contributors to this volume are happy to generalize about poetry as such.
How my heart sings 