Contents

• Poetry and enlightenment: Kant on orientation
• Whitman on the Brooklyn Ferry, and Celan on the meridian
• Hard problems in poetry, especially valuing
• Why is death in Arcadia? poetic process, literary humanism, and the example of pastoral
• The passion of the laocoon: warfare of the religious against the poetic institution
• Figuring the real: Wordsworth’s "The solitary reaper"
• On communicative difficulty in general and "difficult" poetry in particular: the example of Hart Crane’s "the broken tower"
• Coda: teaching literature in a discredited civilization: a talk for teachers