Description:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction: The Lyric in the Age of the Brain -- 1. Robert Lowell and the Chemistry of Character -- 2. Physiological Thinking: Robert Creeley and A. R. Ammons -- 3. James Merrill's Embodied Memory -- 4. John Ashbery's Mindlessness -- 5. Jorie Graham and the Ethics of the Eye -- Conclusion: Anti-Lyric in the Age of the Brain -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index
Science has transformed understandings of the mind, supplying physiological explanations for what once seemed transcendental. Nikki Skillman shows how lyric poets-caught between a reductive scientific view and naïve literary metaphors-struggled to articulate a vision of consciousness that was both scientifically informed and poetically truthful