Strict Wildness: Discoveries in Poetry and History

by Peter Viereck

A reviewer once called Peter Viereck's thought "not common sense but inspired, electric common sense." This volume of Viereck's selected essays on poetry and on history, written between 1938 through 2004, exemplifies this quality. Its main theme is suggested in Viereck's coined phrase "strict wildness," which suggests a balance between restraint (which by itself is staid and rigid) and passion (which by itself is incoherent). Frost called free verse tennis without the net. Viereck calls dead mechanical form "net without the tennis." Strict wildness, then, is spontaneity of feeling within strict organic form.The book explores questions of modernism and poetic craft with respect to American poetry. It discusses the controversy over Ezra Pound's politics and its relation to his poetics, and the nearly forgotten poet Vachel Lindsay. Viereck offers more general views on poetics, including the fruitful tensions between form and content, and the impact of modern technology on poetic expression. This book also discusses history and politics, and contains essays on McCarthyism, the Cold War, political conformity of the Left and Right, and issues of historiography and culture that define Viereck's highly individual, often critical brand of conservatism. In treating representative trends and figures in conservative thought, Viereck insists on clear awareness of what exists to conserve, what ought to be conserved, and why it should be conserved. In their range and originality, the writings brought together in Strict Wildness constitute an ideal introduction to Peter Viereck's literary and political thought. It will be of interest to literary scholars, intellectual historians, and political scientists.

Hardcover

First published November 30, 1999

About the author

Peter Robert Edwin Viereck (August 5, 1916 – May 13, 2006), was an American poet and political thinker, as well as a professor of history at Mount Holyoke College for five decades.

Viereck was born in New York, the son of George Sylvester Viereck. He received his B.A. summa cum laude in history in 1937 from Harvard University. He then specialized in European history, receiving his M.A. in 1939 and his Ph.D. in 1942 in history, again from Harvard.

Viereck was prolific in his writing, publishing much since 1938. He was a respected poet, who published numerous poetry collections. In addition, a number of his poems were first published in Poetry Magazine. His collection of poetry, Terror and Decorum, won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

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Author of Metapolitics (1941) and Archer in the marrow, (c1984)

Biog. resource center (Contemp. authors), Oct. 7, 2005: (Peter (Robert Edwin) Viereck; b. Aug. 5, 1916, New York, N.Y.; Harvard University, Ph. D., 1942; William R. Kenan Chair of History, Mount Holyoke College, 1979-)

Biog. resource center (Contemp. authors), May 17, 2006: (Peter (Robert Edwin) Viereck; b. Aug. 5, 1916, New York, N.Y.; Harvard University, Ph. D., 1942; William R. Kenan Chair of History, Mount Holyoke College, 1979-)

New York times WWW site, May 19, 2006: (Peter Viereck; Peter Robert Edwin Viereck; b. Aug. 5, 1916, Manhattan; d. Saturday [May 13, 2006], South Hadley, Mass., aged 89; noted historian, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, and founder of the mid-20th-century American conservative movement who later denounced what he saw as its late-20th-century excesses)

LC database, May 19, 2006 |b (hdg.: Viereck, Peter Robert Edwin, 1916- ; usage: Peter Viereck [predominant form], Peter Robert Edwin Viereck)