ISBN-13: 9780813920733 / Angielski / Twarda / 2001 / 312 str.
ISBN-13: 9780813920733 / Angielski / Twarda / 2001 / 312 str.
Mencken's stinging characterization of the American South as -the Sahara of the Bozart- reflects an understandable frustration with the narrow view of the canon of southern literature. With its focus on novelists, it largely ignores the works of all but a few poets--the Fugitives Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, and John Crowe Ransom, and the larger-than-life James Dickey among them. Invited Guest is the first anthology that attempts to reach beyond this small coterie to encompass the range and brilliance of twentieth-century southern poetry. Editors David Rigsbee and Steven Ford Brown have compiled the works of a richly diverse collection of poets--all born or raised southerners.Women and African Americans are recognized for their alternative, subversive contributions to southern aesthetics; the myopic, often scathing views of the New Critics or the overly historicist agendas of identity politics are discarded in favor of a middle ground that allows for inclusion on both aesthetic and historical bases.Along with a respectful acknowledgement of the contributions of the most popular figures in southern poetry, Rigsbee and Brown offer long-overdue attention to underrecognized poets such as Anne Spencer, John Beecher, Eleanor Ross Taylor, and Alice Dunbar Nelson. The juxtaposition of the canonical and the little-known makes Invited Guest an intriguing illustration of the abundance and range of poetry in the twentieth-century South.