Charles Tomlinson's American Voices

£6.99

Symbiosis 7.1 136-156
Author: Richard Swigg
Pages: 25

'Charles Tomlinson’s American Voices' by Richard Swigg, offers a detailed exploration of the profound influence of American poets on Charles Tomlinson's work. Originally published in Symbiosis: a Journal of Anglo-American Literary Relations, this essay examines how Tomlinson adapted various verse-forms from poets like Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams, and how American voices are woven into his poetry. Swigg delves into Tomlinson’s ability to bring the sound and texture of these voices into his work, highlighting the transatlantic dialogue that enriched his poetic expression. This scholarly work is essential for readers interested in literary criticism, modern poetry, and the interplay between American and British literary traditions.

Symbiosis 7.1 136-156
Author: Richard Swigg
Pages: 25

Essay Excerpt

"Charles Tomlinson’s poetry, from The Necklace (1955) to The Vineyard Above the Sea (1999), has continued a remarkable dialogue with America. Adapting different verse-forms by Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams, he has extended his range and sharpened his grasp of a Wordsworthian syntactic inheritance. But he has also brought the sound and texture of American voices themselves into the poetry. Re-evoked—indeed, at times, retrieved from the unheard or buried—they attest to the widened sense of singularities, in people and place, that the experience of America has given Tomlinson—that which, translated back to Europe with a new poetic collectivity, can also return once more, enlivened, to its original country."