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Susan Holbrook How to Read (and Write about) Poetry. Broadview $24.99
Astrid Lohöfer Ethics and Lyric Poetry: Language as World Disclosure in French Symbolism and Canadian Modernism. Universitätsverlag Winter euro 58.00
Reviewed by Michael Roberson
In the introduction to her instructional guide, How to Read (and Write about) Poetry, Susan Holbrook draws two conclusions about the ethics of reading poetry. She posits:
If language contours the way we think, then, all the language coming at you every day . . . is shaping who you are and how you see the world. If poetry can ignite awareness of letters and words in you, . . . then perhaps you can be more conscious of that shaping, become a more critical thinker about your world as you participate in it as a citizen.
Not surprisingly, Astrid Lohöfer's argument about the ethics of lyric poetry rests on a similar supposition about the demands and effects of poetry's formal qualities-qualities that by virtue of engendering ambiguity and complexity equip poetry with the "ability . . . to unmask and challenge existing values and beliefs" and, through the process of attending to those qualities, "to effect changes in [the] moral and political mindset" of readers. In other words, for both Holbrook and Lohöfer, an effective poetry (hopefully) results in an affective ethics.
While these beliefs about the ethics of poetry might represent the only point of convergence between Holbrook's instructional guide and Lohöfer's academic study, these beliefs raise the ultimate question about how form constitutes meaning in poetry. Holbrook does state and demonstrate how...