Instabilities in Contemporary British Poetry [Paperback]

The author explores the impact on poetic practice in the 1970s and 1980s of recent theoretical developments, offering a criticism of the work of Seamus Heaney and of poets including Michael Hofmann, reassessing life on Mars and providing retrospective surveys of Fleur Adcock and others.Acknowledgements - Preface - James Fenton's 'narratives': some reflections on Postmodernism - Theatre of Trope: Craig Raine and Christopher Reid - Waiting for the end: absences in the poetry of Michael Hofmann - History to the defeated: Geoffrey Hill's The Mystery of the Charity of Charles P guy - The mastering eye: Douglas Dunn's social perceptions - The civil art: Tom Paulin's representations of Ulster - Seamus Heaney: the free state of image and allusion - Declarations of independence: some response to feminism - Notes - Index