The Form of Love: Poetry's Quarrel with Philosophy
James Kuzner
Abstract
Can poetry, even a deeply philosophical poetry, articulate something about love that philosophy itself cannot? The Form of Love argues that it can. In close readings of seven “metaphysical” poems, this book shows how figures ranging from John Donne to Emily Dickinson use poetic form to turn philosophy to new ends, transforming its concern to know truth about love into concern to create virtual experiences of love. These poems create strange loves made in, rather than through, the forms—the devices, structures and forces particular to verse—where they appear. Tracing how poems think, this book ... More
Can poetry, even a deeply philosophical poetry, articulate something about love that philosophy itself cannot? The Form of Love argues that it can. In close readings of seven “metaphysical” poems, this book shows how figures ranging from John Donne to Emily Dickinson use poetic form to turn philosophy to new ends, transforming its concern to know truth about love into concern to create virtual experiences of love. These poems create strange loves made in, rather than through, the forms—the devices, structures and forces particular to verse—where they appear. Tracing how poems think, this book argues, requires an intimate form of reading: close—from one perspective, even too close—attention to and thinking with the text. In The Form of Love, Kuzner reads as closely as possible in order to consider as seriously as possible how poetry thinks of love otherwise than other fields: how poems do not complete philosophy or compete with it, and how poetry and philosophy instead can enter into a relation that is itself like love.
Keywords:
form,
love,
lyric theory,
metaphysical poetry,
new formalism,
philosophy,
poetics
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2021 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780823294503 |
| Published to Fordham Scholarship Online: January 2022 |
DOI:10.5422/fordham/9780823294503.001.0001 |
