Contemporary Poetry and Postmodernism

Contemporary Poetry and Postmodernism explores the fraught relationship between the poetry of the mainstream and kinds of modernist poetry that have had to make their way outside it. Mainstream poets like Paul Muldoon, James Fenton and Carol Ann Duffy multiply voices and so draw on resources from the novel - Bakhtin's concept of the dialogic is therefore used to explain their techniques. By contrast, Shklovsky's concept of 'estrangement' is shown to be more useful in accounting for the radical experimentation of poets like Edwin Morgan, Christopher Middleton and Denise Riley. However, the book concludes by suggesting that - partly because of the influence of surrealism in women poets like Selima Hill and Jo Shapcott - the mainstream has recently been infiltrated by modernist and postmodernist estrangement effects.

Acknowledgements - Introduction - PART 1: DIALOGUE - 'But Who Is Speaking': Novelisation in the Poetry of Craig Raine - 'The Best of Both Worlds': the Hybrid Construction of Paul Muldoon - James Fenton: Expert at Cross-Fertilisation - 'Your Voice Speaking in My Poems': Polyphony in Fleur Adcock - Carol Ann Duffy: Monologue as Dialogue - 'Grapevine, Barge Pole, Whirlpool, Chloride, Concrete, Bandage, Station, Story': Some Version of Narrative - PART 2: ESTRANGEMENT - Estrangement and Retro-Modernists - Edwin Morgan's Metamorphoses - Christopher Middleton: Journeys Broken at the Threshold - Music of the Generous Eye: The Poetry of Roy Fisher - A Various Art: Veronica Forrest-Thomson and Denise Riley - John Ashbery and British Postmodernism - The Estranging of the Mainstream - Notes - Index