Force of Poetry

Christopher Ricks is one of the best-known living critics of English, and was described by W. H. Auden as "the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding." Though published independently over many years, each of the essays in this collection asks how a poet's words reveal the "force ofpoetry," that force--in Dr Johnson's words--"which calls new power into being, which embodies sentiment, and animates matter." The poets covered range from John Gower, Marvell, and Milton to Wordsworth, Empson, Stevie Smith, Lowell, and Larkin, and the book contains four wider essays on cliches, lies, misquotations, and American English.Ricks, Christopher is the author of 'Force of Poetry', published 1984 under ISBN 9780198117223 and ISBN 0198117221.