James Longenbach: Poetic Amplitude (January 2009)

How do great works of verbal art incorporate language that might seem, in another context, to violate any familiar prescription for what makes writing good?  In this lecture, James Longenbach examines how writers can use moments of flat or enervated language to thrilling, amplifying effect; he looks, for examples, at three of Shakespeare’s plays and at poems by Bishop, Eliot, Moore, Ashbery, Bidart and Glück.