Treating the work of Sappho, Goethe, Blake, Hölderlin, Verlaine, George, Mörike, and Yeats in detail, Bennett makes the provocative argument that the nature of lyric poetry in the West has an element of defectiveness. This study delves into the irresolvable conflict between a poem's guise as quasi-architectural stasis and quasi-musical kinesis.

Introduction PART I: ELEMENTAL POETRY 1. Sappho and the Wordsworth Problem 2. The Poem as Hieroglyph: Goethe's 'Über allen Gipfeln' PART II: METER AND MEANING 3. The Voices of Experience in Blake 4. Meter and Metaphysics: Hölderlin's 'Hyperions Schicksalslied' PART III: THE SYMBOLIST MOVE 5. A Song to Worry about: Verlaine's 'Chanson d'automne' 6. Stefan George and the Construction of a Poetic Idiom PART IV: THE POLITICAL DIMENSION 7. Criticism as Wager: The Politics of the Mörike-Debate and Its Object 8. The Things on Yeats's Desk Bibliography

Benjamin Bennett is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of German at the University of Virginia, USA.