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Summary

This chapter expands on Theodor Adorno’s account of the enigma in Aesthetic Theory in order to scrutinise further his paradox between the critical impulse and literature that does not ‘extinguish [its] enigmaticalness’. I explore the implications of this tension in relation to J. H. Prynne’s collection Acrylic Tips (2002), and its resistances towards signification. The difficulty of interpretation, I emphasise, is not coterminous with incomprehensibility. Subsequently, I analyse enigmatical poetics in examples of both mainstream and ‘innovative’ writing. Don Paterson’s ‘The Sea at Brighton’ from Landing Light (2003) contains moments of lyrical sublimity, but then pulls back from the ‘remainder’, distrusting any notion of ‘difficult’ poetry. In contrast, Geraldine Monk’s collection Ghosts & Other Sonnets(2008) emphasises the linguistic ‘clowning’ that Adorno laments will appear to some uninitiated readers of modern art as merely ridiculous verbiage.

This book discusses contemporary British poetry in the context of metamodernism. The author argues that the concept of metamodernist poetry helps to recalibrate the opposition between mainstream and innovative poetry, and he investigates whether a new generation of British poets can be accurately defined as metamodernist. Antony Rowland analyses the ways in which contemporary British poets such as Geoffrey Hill, J. H. Prynne, Geraldine Monk and Sandeep Parmar have responded to the work of modernist writers as diverse as T. S. Eliot, H. D. and Antonin Artaud, and what Theodor Adorno describes as the overall enigma of modern art.

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Chapter 1 - Contemporary British Poetry and Enigmaticalness

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Metamodernism and Contemporary British Poetry

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Chapter 1 - Contemporary British Poetry and Enigmaticalness

Summary

Metamodernism and Contemporary British Poetry