Richard Cory BookRags | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 5 pages of analysis & critique of Richard Cory BookRags.

Richard Cory BookRags | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 5 pages of analysis & critique of Richard Cory BookRags.
This section contains 1,280 words
(approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Harry R. Garvin

SOURCE: “Poems Pickled in Anthological Brine,” in The CEA Critic, Vol. 20, No. 7, October, 1958, pp. 1, 4.

In the following essay, Garvin advocates a fresh and careful rereading of “Richard Cory,” as well as of other poems whose impact has been blunted by fame.

Famous poems have a ready-made audience with ready-made appreciations. If through a chance ignorance a reader comes innocently and freshly upon a famous poem, its reputation may subsequently bestill his first vibrant impressions, particularly if he teaches poetry, with the result that his first emotions toward the poem will readily be recalled but no longer be felt. Sometimes the immediate success of a fine poem—[Edwin Arlington Robinson's] “Richard Cory,” for example—keeps it from being read properly. Readers eventually exhaust the aesthetic possibilities of merely good poems; but a poem that is greatly good or even finely good is inexhaustible; and a failure in sensitiveness towards...

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This section contains 1,280 words
(approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Harry R. Garvin
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Critical Essay by Harry R. Garvin from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.