Lyric Logic: How Modern American Poetry Reasons

Lyric Logic: How Modern American Poetry Reasons - Paperback

$57.60
$57.60
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Lyric Logic: How Modern American Poetry Reasons
  • Lyric Logic: How Modern American Poetry Reasons
Lyric Logic: How Modern American Poetry Reasons - Paperback

Lyric Logic: How Modern American Poetry Reasons - Paperback

by Johanna Winant
$57.60
$57.60

Book Overview

by Johanna Winant (Author)

Between the Civil War and the Cold War, American literary modernism and philosophy both grappled with the challenge of novelty and the chance to make it new. Bringing together modern poetry's aesthetic experimentation and modern philosophy's attention to the problem of induction, Lyric Logic argues that poems use logical form as literary form. The modern poem can be characterized by its logic: details that appear fragmentary add up to sense-making.

Johanna Winant recasts the poetics of central figures as modeling and defending inductive reasoning: Walt Whitman makes lists, Emily Dickinson constructs analogies, Gertrude Stein presents facts, Marianne Moore investigates predictions, Elizabeth Bishop draws inferences, and Gwendolyn Brooks tests the limits of deduction. Winant offers in-depth close readings of canonical poems that show the sophistication of their philosophic logic. Although philosophers tend to see induction as flawed and unreliable, these poets display its strengths. Their work demonstrates how to make sense of the unpredictable modern world.

Author Biography

Johanna Winant is associate professor of English and humanities at Reed College. She is coeditor, with Dan Sinykin, of Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century (2025).

Number of Pages: 272
Dimensions: 0.61 x 9 x 6 IN
Publication Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN9780231217477
Author Johanna Winant
PublisherColumbia University Press
GenreLiterature and Philosophy
FormatPaperback
PublishedApril 2026
LanguageENG- English
Pages272
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Literary Criticism Nonfiction Philosophy Poetry

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