The Modern Poet Poetry, Academia, and Knowledge since the 1750s [Paperback]

Addressed to all readers of poetry, this is a wide-ranging book about the poet's role throughout the last three centuries. It argues that a conception of the poets as both primitive and sophisticated emerged in the 1750s. Whether considering Ossian and the Romantics, Victorian scholar-gipsies, Modernist poetries of knowledge, or contemporary poetry in Britain, Ireland, and America,The Modern Poetshows how many successive generations of poets have needed to collaborate and to battle with academia.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. The Invention of the Modern Poet
2. Acts of Judgement: Making a National Body of Poetry
3. Scholar-Gipsies
4. Modernist Cybernetics and the Poetry of Knowledge
5. Men, Women, and American Classrooms
Coda: The Poet's Work
Index

Crawford has undertaken an exhilarating (and risky) experiment in combining the modes and idioms of conventional literary history and practical criticism with disciplinary reflection, personal testimony, and polemic thrust.The Modern Poetis a book to ponder but also to be welcomed, argued with, enjoyed, and--above all--read: we should all be delighted at the possibility and the prospect of renewed commerce between what David Hume called 'the learned and the conversible worlds.' --Modern Language Quarterly

This book opens intellectual borders.... Crawford comes out as a poet in the first person, breaking with 'impersonality', demanding a place in the story.... This 'I' makes the book beguiling and accountable. --The Independent

This is a very good book. Crawford illuminates everything he touches on, and has produced a modern literary history that pays due attention to the institutions of literature, education, scholarship and publication.... Robert Crawford...is also one of the most interesting poets writing in Britain today. --English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920

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