ENG LYRIC POETRY.pdf - STIBA Malang

FOREWORD
Literary histories are supposed to be things of the past. This is especially true of
histories of poetry—that most literary of genres—and truer still of poetry of the
distant past, like the lyric poetry of the early seventeenth century: the subject of
this book. What more can be said? And need anything more be said about
Herrick or Donne when there is so much to say today about their “culture”? And
to whom is one to speak? To other specialists? To people seeking to enter the
profession? To university or college students? To readers who want to know more
about poetry in general? To readers and practitioners of contemporary verse who
feel the need, say, to know something about Herbert if they wish to understand
that most nuanced of his many descendants, Elizabeth Bishop? I raise these as
concerns at the outset because they are part of the present climate of literary
studies and, tonally at least, are one way of differentiating the present inquiry
from previous literary histories and the judgments they contain. But I raise them
as questions since the purpose of this study is not to produce another lament
that literature has been kidnapped for “other” purposes, but to indicate a belief
that, partly in response to the scholarly and critical work produced during the
last two decades, the poetry of the earlier seventeenth century—an awkward
period designation if there ever was one—continues to be immensely rewarding
for those who wish to read not only between the lines but the lines themselves,
and who prefer individual poets to overarching themes and genres.
In making this claim, I plead guilty in advance to enjoying thoroughly much
of the verse of the period. I would rather have written a line by Marvell than by
Marx; and a few poems by Herbert are worth many late nights with Calvin. Of
course there is no reason, except for time, to read exclusively, and the
appearance in these pages of John Taylor, the Water Poet, serves as a warning
that not every bit of verse in the seventeenth century was written with a
Jonsonian design to escape the ages. And yet Taylor is such an odd duck,
publishing his Works (numbering “three and sixty”) halfway through his literary
life, that it’s difficult to refuse him notice for a lifetime of versifying. I do not
mean to sound flippant about matters of inclusion or exclusion, although
scholars have sometimes been too heated or solemn on this subject. (I regret,
rather than applaud, the absence of Crashaw and Traherne in these pages.) And
another critic would no doubt develop a different angle on the poetry of this
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