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d istant Ol ymp us o f Strong Poets. In such a schema a poet's deeply felt
reac tions aga in st certa in trends in cul tura l history can be subsumed in
a narrow struggle fo r p riority a nd immor ta li ty in an a historical
cosmos. Ba te and Bloom have immense ly enriched o ur understanding
of the p ro blem s o f poe tic crea tion , but in their me thod is the danger
that socio -po litical issues will be seen ephemera l.
T hus when Perkins wr ites his sec tion on "The Widening of
Subj ec t Ma tter " in modern poetry, h1 rejects histor ical expl ana tion s.
For him " the immedia te cause o f this deve lo pment lies in the reac tion
of poets to their la te- Victorian predecessors, no t in the new exper iences
and percep tions modern poe ts may be su pposed to have acqui red ." He
acknowledges tha t " Profound altera tions in the conditions o f human
life were occurring," but find s the rea l ca use of mode rn poetic trea t–
ments o f the c ity, na ture, and the individua l to be "The conventions
tha t domina ted Eng lish a nd American poe try a t the turn of the
century." T his reading rema ins well within the ma instream o f forma l–
is t interpre ta tio n current for the las t forty years. Wha t is unaccep ta ble
in Perkin s's descripti on is his sepa ra tion o f the content, the imp lied
convic ti on s, o f these conventions from their form. T h e poets o f
modernity were in fac t striving to arti cula te profound obj ec tions to the
culture of their time. When these poe ts did turn against their poe tic
fathers, the impul se was as much a ma tter of philosophy and po litics as
of technique a nd style.
A case in p o int is Perkins's trea tment o f the modernist revo lution
aga in st the poe ts o f the "Georg ia n Antho logy," the " nonmodernist
Eng lish poe ts who became known just before, during, a nd a fter the
First World Wa r or who did their bes t work during this period ." A line
is drawn from the o rig in , which is romanticism , th ro ugh the reaction
of Vic torianism , down to the do uble reac tion o f moderni sm , a nd poetic
change is mapped chiefl y according to thi s aes thetic trajec to ry. Per–
kins 's Georg ia ns come bela tedl y, onl y to find tha t the tropes o f na ture
have been exh au sted by better poe ts. T he onl y history they seem to
know is tha t o f poe tic conventio ns. T hi s bela tedness, a rg ues Perkin s,
not the histo ry of the use and perception of na ture by urba n, capita list
societies o f the nineteenth century, exp la ins Georg ian vacuo usness.
Perkins slips into the Georgian reading o f romanticism becau se it
is required by his theoretica l model, which pos tula tes tha t a ttitudes
towards na ture in poe try a re determined by pas t poe tic trea tments o f
na ture. Such trea tmen ts a re, on the contrary, refl ective o f wha t Fo u–
cault has ca lled the "episteme" of a g ive n age, which determines what
an obj ec t o f knowledge like " na ture" can be, wha t its use is, and who
