The Politics of Speech in Later Twentieth-Century Poetry

The Politics of Speech in Later Twentieth-Century Poetry: Local Tongues in Heaney, Brooks, Harrison, and Clifton argues that local speech became a central facet of English-language poetry in the second half of the twentieth century. It is based on a key observation about four major poets from both sides of the Atlantic: Seamus Heaney, Gwendolyn Brooks, Tony Harrison, and Lucille Clifton all respond to societal crises by arranging, reproducing, and reconceiving their particular versions of local