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Synopsis
There is something offensive and scandalous about poetry, judging by the number of attacks on it and defenses of it written over the centuries. Poetry, Hazard Adams argues, exists to offend-not through its subject matter but through the challenges it presents to the prevailing view of what language is for.
Poetry achieves its cultural value by opposing the binary oppositions-form and content, fact and fiction, reason and emotion-that structure and polarize most understandings of literature and of life. Adams takes a position antithetical to the extremes of both abstract formalism and the politicization of literary content. He concludes with an appreciation of what he calls the double offense of "great bad poetry," poetry so exceptionally bad that it transcends its shortcomings and leads to gaiety.
About the Author:
Hazard Adams is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, University of Washington, and founder and honorary senior fellow of the School of Criticism and Theory