Overview

The Politics of Speech in Later Twentieth-Century Poetry: Local Tongues in Heaney, Brooks, Harrison, and Clifton argues that local speech became a central facet of English-language poetry in the second half of the twentieth century. It is based on a key observation about four major poets from both sides of the Atlantic: Seamus Heaney, Gwendolyn Brooks, Tony Harrison, and Lucille Clifton all respond to societal crises by arranging, reproducing, and reconceiving their particular versions of local speech in poetic form. The book’s overarching claim is that “local tongues” in poetry have the capacity to bridge aesthetic and sociopolitical realms because nonstandard local speech declares its distinction from the status quo and binds people who have been subordinated by hierarchical social conditions, while harnessing those versions of speech into poetic structures can actively counter the very hierarchies that would degrade those languages. The diverse local tongues of these fourpoets marshaled into the forms of poetry situate them at once in literary tradition, in local contexts, and in prevailing social constructs.

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9783031078910

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“Fogarty’s book relies on poems to help us explore the political tensions that animate everyday language. … The poems he chooses illuminate acutely political situations in ways that would challenge other kinds of expression. The Politics of Speech makes its case with an enviable dexterity of style and an easy reference to a large corpus of scholarship. There is, in addition, a rare and beautiful humanity that accompanies the scholarly humility, which is not a pose but an earnest trust in poetry” (Walt Hunter, Modern Philology, December 18, 2023)

Author Information

William Fogarty is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Central Florida, USA.

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