The Fourth Dimension of a Poem

September 3, 2012
With "a stubborn predilection for finding out what a poem determinately means," renowned 100-year-old scholar Abrams (The Mirror and the Lamp) explores a variety of literary subjects in this insightful new collection, which includes studies of Keats and Hazlitt, the foundations of modern aesthetics, the state of literary humanism, and the titular "fourth dimension" of a poem, defined as "the activity of enunciating the great variety of speech-sounds that constitute words." Abrams's general stance in these essays is humanistic, maintaining that literature is "composed by a human being, for human beings, and about human beings." His style reflects his attitude. Using "the ordinary language that has been developed... to deal with... the human predicament," Abrams conveys his deep love and understanding of literature to a general audience with reasoned expositions and close readings. The title essay is especially noteworthy, as is "How to Prove an Interpretation," an investigation into the hermeneutic process that doubles as a concise essay on how to read well. This volume is not only a worthy production by one of the great scholars of his generation, but a penetrating contribution to "the unceasing, diverse, and unpredictable dialogue... of readers with literary works and of readers with each other."

July 1, 2012
A former professor and distinguished literary critic who will reach his 100th birthday this year offers a collection of essays and speeches dealing with the art of poetry and the nature of criticism. A founding editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Abrams (Doing Things With Texts: Essays in Criticism and Critical Theory, 1989, etc.) shows he remains both in firm command of his craft and a sturdy defender of the traditional views of literature that the author-absent New Criticism threatened to sweep away. Here, for example, is a lengthy, cogent argument about Wordsworth's meaning of the line, "A slumber did my spirit seal." Was the poet writing another Dead Lucy poem? Or was the spirit entombed? Another piece deals with, and generally dismisses, the idea of the removal of the author's biography and intent from literary criticism. Abrams argues for a criticism that recognizes a literature "composed by a human being, for human beings, and about human beings and matters of human concern." The author emphasizes this theme throughout the collection. The title essay deals with the physical/physiological aspects of reading a poem aloud--the ways that poets move our tongues in our mouths to affect the effects and meanings of the words. Abrams also includes pieces about the evolving view of nature in our literature, a long piece about Kant and art that alludes to everyone from Plato to Poe and beyond, an essay about the journey in Western literature (from the Bible to Eliot), and a crisp tribute to critic William Hazlitt. Abrams recognizes that Hazlitt worked from the individual sentence forward--seeing where each sentence would lead him before composing the next. A pleasant whiff of nostalgia for old libraries and older books, gently held and translated for us by a man who loves them.

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September 1, 2012
This collection of nine masterful essays and lectures by Abrams, the grand old man of American literary criticism and the founding editor of the Norton Anthology of English Literature, celebrates his 100th birthday. Critic, friend, and former student Harold Bloom gets things rolling with his foreword. The title piece, a talk delivered at several universities in the last few years, proves that the venerable Abrams remains keen of mind and sharp of tongue. Poetry's fourth dimension, Abrams explains, is the act of utterance, meaning the work of the sound-making apparatusthroat, teeth, and tripping tongue. He proves his claim by analyzing works by Auden, Dickinson, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Dowson, and Ammons. The second essay is an in-depth examination of Keats' aural/oral mastery. Other highlights include a pair of meticulously argued critiques of critical theory and a profound essay on the history of aesthetics. The writing is scholarly: dense, qualified, full of citations. But it is welcoming and stimulating, too, because it is cogent, vigorous, sensible, and humane. Abrams is a treasure.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)