Skepticism and Impersonality in Modern Poetry

"V. Joshua Adams traces the history of impersonality in modern poetry from Mallarmâe and Eliot through to the present, engaging with work by W.R. Johnson, Maud Ellman, and Sharon Cameron. Defending impersonality as a response to skeptical problems, Adams uses what he terms "experiments in impersonality" to answer the skeptic's wish. His account of impersonality promises a new theoretical justification for our practical interest in literary texts and promises to renovate our conception of how poems might do philosophical work, as well as our sense of what a philosophical poem can be"--