Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Literary Life Cycles

2005; Routledge; Volume: 38; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3200/hmts.38.2.45-60

1940-1906

David W. Galenson,

Cultural History and Identity Formation

The author examines the careers of 11 leading twentieth-century American poets. Using the frequency with which poems are reprinted in anthologies as a measure of their importance, quantitative analysis reveals that among these poets there were two distinctly different life cycles: one group produced their most important work early in their careers—in their 20s and 30s; whereas the other group produced their most important work considerably later—in their 40s. 50s, and even their 60s. These different career patterns appear to reflect differences in the nature of their poetry. The conceptual poets E. E. Cummings, T. S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, Ezra Pound, and Richard Wilbur arrived early and suddenly at a technically sophisticated poetry based on imagination and the study of literary history; the experimental poets Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost, Robert Lowell. Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams arrived later and more gradually at a poetry rooted more often in real speech and observation.