Samuel Beckett's Poetry

The first book-length study of Samuel Beckett's complete poetry, combining new work from major literature critics and new critical perspectives.

Samuel Beckett's Poetry is the first systematic study of Beckett's complete poetry, designed for students and scholars of 20th century poetry and literature, as well as for specialist readers of Beckett's works. Readers will find accessible guidance for understanding the often difficult and uneven collected poetry of this modern literary icon.Samuel Beckett's Poetry is the first book-length study of Beckett's complete poetry, designed for students and scholars of twentieth century poetry and literature, as well as for specialists of Beckett's work. This volume explores how poetry provided Beckett a medium of expression during key moments in his life, from his earliest attempts at securing a reputation as a published writer, to the work of restoring his own speech while suffering aphasia shortly before his death. Often these were moments of desperation and discouragement, when more substantial works were not possible: moments of illness, of personal loss or of public disaster. This volume includes an introduction that contextualizes Beckett as a poet and a chronology of the composition and publication of all his known poems. Essays offer a range of critical perspectives, from translation theory, war poetics and Irish Studies to Beckett's debts to Modernism, Romanticism and the Jazz Age.