Hugh Foley is currently a teaching fellow at Queen Mary University of London. He has taught at the University of Liverpool, and at the University of Oxford, where he received his DPhil in 2017.

• Introduction


• 1. Introduction


• 2. Our Art and Our Government


• 3. Poems, Persons, Critique


• 4. Liberalism, Individualism, A Note on Historical Method


• 5. Overview


• Chapter 1. Tradition and the Individual Dissent


• 1: 1. The View from Prison


• 1: 2. The View from Kenyon


• 1: 3. 'The unforgivable landscape'


• 1: 4. The View from the Library of Congress


• 1: 5. The View from Blue Hill


• Chapter 2. Universalism and the Universe of Death


• 2: 1. 'Not one death but many'


• 2: 2. 'Some slightness of feeling they think is sweet and long to die inside'


• 2: 3. The deadly idiot of compromise'


• 2: 4. 'If I see past what I feel'


• Chapter 3. 'Freedom that has turned into a painting'


• 3: 1. 'One more painted sunset'


• 3: 2. 'Instantaneously extending your hesitation into an empire'


• 3: 3. 'Our fate can be exemplary'


• Chapter 4. 'The Injustice of the World'


• 4: 1. 'To know the world'


• 4: 2. 'A picture held us captive'


• 4: 3. 'The finished painting'


• 4: 4. 'The genius of the shore'


• Conclusion

Lyric and Liberalism in the Age of American Empire re-examines the work of Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Amiri Baraka, John Ashbery, and Jorie Graham, changing our understanding of their writing and the field of post-war American poetry.