NEW CRITICISM: FEBRUARY 23

NEW CRITICISM: FEBRUARY 23 

by David Lehman

NEW CRITICISM - A method of literary evaluation and interpretation practiced chiefly in the mid-20th century that emphasizes close examination of a text with minimum regard for the biographical or historical circumstances in which it was produced.

POEM

Light rain is falling in Central Park
but not on Upper Fifth Avenue or Central Park West

where sun and sky are yellow and blue

Winds are gusting on Washington Square

through the arches and on to LaGuardia Place

but calm is the corner of 8th Street and Second Avenue

which reminds me of something John Ashbery said

about his poem "Crazy Weather" he said

he was in favor of all kinds of weather

just so long as it's genuine weather

which is always unusually bad, unusually

good, or unusually indifferent,

since there isn't really any norm for weather

When he was a boy his mother met a friend

who said, "Isn't this funny weather?"

CRITIQUE:

New Criticism emphasizes explication, or "close reading," of "the work itself." It rejects old historicism's attention to biographical and sociological matters. Instead, the objective determination as to "how a piece works" can be found through close focus and analysis, rather than through extraneous and erudite special knowledge. It has long been the pervasive and standard approach to literature in college and high school curricula. February 23 caught the new criticism approach because it focuses on the text regardless of the other elements of literary piece.