Indifference is a common, even indispensable element of human experience. But it is rare in poetry, which is traditionally defined by its direct opposition to indifference--"by its heightened emotion, consciousness, and effort. This definition applies especially to English poets of the nineteenth century, heirs to an age that predicated aesthetics on moral sentiment or feeling. Yet it was in this period, Erik Gray argues, that a concentrated strain of poetic indifference began to emerge. "The Poetry of Indifference analyzes nineteenth-century works by Wordsworth, Keats, Byron, Tennyson,...
Indifference is a common, even indispensable element of human experience. But it is rare in poetry, which is traditionally defined by its direct oppos...
