Colin Falck (14 July 1934 — 27 December 2020) was a British

literary critic A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature' ...

and poet. He was associate professor in modern literature at

York College of Pennsylvania York College of Pennsylvania is a private college in Spring Garden Township, Pennsylvania, near the city of York. It offers more than 70 baccalaureate majors in professional programs, the sciences, and humanities to 3,500 full-time undergraduate ...

. In 1962, Falck co-founded the influential

postwar A post-war or postwar period is the interval immediately following the end of a war. The term usually refers to a varying period of time after World War II, which ended in 1945. A post-war period can become an interwar period or interbellum, ...

British poetry magazine ''The Review'' with

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...

schoolmates Ian Hamilton,

Michael Fried Michael Martin Fried (born April 12, 1939 in New York City) is a modernist art critic and art historian. He studied at Princeton University and Harvard University and was a Rhodes Scholar at Merton College, Oxford. He is the J.R. Herbert Boone ...

, and John Fuller. Falck's poetry would later appear in the first issue of Hamilton's magazine ''The New Review''. In January 1985 he set up, and from that date acted as chair of, the Thurlow Road Poetry Workshop. Among the poets to have brought their work to the fortnightly (now monthly) meetings of the group are

Hugo Williams Hugo Williams (born Hugh Anthony Mordaunt Vyner Williams on 20 February 1942) is an English poet, journalist and travel writer. He received the T. S. Eliot Prize in 1999 and Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2004. Family and early life Will ...

Jo Shapcott Jo Shapcott (born 24 March 1953 in London) is an English poet, editor and lecturer who has won the National Poetry Competition, the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the Costa Book of the Year Award, a Forward Prizes for Poetry and the Cholmondele ...

Ruth Padel Ruth Sophia Padel FRSL FZS (born 8 May 1946) is a British poet, novelist and non-fiction author. Life She studied Greek at Oxford, where she sang in Schola Cantorum of Oxford, wrote a PhD on ancient Greek poetry, and was a Research Fellow at W ...

Eva Salzman Eva Salzman (born 1960) is a contemporary American poet. Eva Salzman was born in 1960 in New York City to musicologist/composer Eric Salzman and activist/writer Lorna Salzman. She grew up in Brooklyn, where, from the age of 10 until 22, she was a ...

Adam Thorpe Adam Thorpe (born 5 December 1956) is a British people, British poet and novelist whose works also include short stories, translations, radio dramas and documentaries. He is a frequent contributor of reviews and articles to various newspapers, ...

Michael Donaghy Michael Donaghy (May 24, 1954 – September 16, 2004) was a New York City poet and musician, who lived in London from 1985. Life and career Donaghy was born into an Irish family and grew up with his sister Patricia in the Bronx, New York, lo ...

Don Paterson Donald Paterson (born 1963 in Dundee) is a Scottish poet, writer and musician. His work has won several awards, including the Forward Poetry Prize, the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. He was recipient of the Queen' ...

, Jane Duran.

Kate Clanchy Kate Clanchy MBE (born 1965) is a British poet, freelance writer and teacher. Education and early life She was born in 1965 in Glasgow to medieval historian Michael Clanchy and teacher Joan Clanchy (née Milne). She was educated at George Wa ...

, Greta Stoddart and

Vicki Feaver Vicki Feaver (born 1943) is an English poet. She has published three poetry collections. Feaver's poem "Judith", from her book, ''Handless Maiden'', was awarded the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. The book was also the recipient of a Heinem ...

. His 1989

treatise A treatise is a Formality, formal and systematic written discourse on some subject concerned with investigating or exposing the main principles of the subject and its conclusions."mwod:treatise, Treatise." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Acc ...

''Myth, Truth and Literature: Towards a True Postmodernism'', attempted to re-think the entire foundation of Romantic

art criticism Art criticism is the discussion or evaluation of visual art. Art critics usually criticize art in the context of aesthetics or the theory of beauty. A goal of art criticism is the pursuit of a rational basis for art appreciation but it is quest ...

since

Kant Immanuel Kant (born Emanuel Kant; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, et ...

. The first chapter is a sustained

polemic Polemic ( , ) is contentious rhetoric intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and to undermine the opposing position. The practice of such argumentation is called polemics, which are seen in arguments on controversial to ...

against what Falck argued was the

nihilism Nihilism () encompasses various views that reject certain aspects of existence. There have been different nihilist positions, including the views that Existential nihilism, life is meaningless, that Moral nihilism, moral values are baseless, and ...

and

ontological Ontology is the philosophical study of being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of reality and every ...

emptiness of

post-modernism Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting the wor ...

and

post-structuralist Post-structuralism is a philosophical movement that questions the objectivity or stability of the various interpretive structures that are posited by structuralism and considers them to be constituted by broader systems of Power (social and poli ...

literary theory Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for literary analysis. Culler 1997, p.1 Since the 19th century, literary scholarship includes literary theory and considerations of intellectual history, m ...

. The next chapter offers, in opposition to Saussure, a theory of the

origin of language The origin of language, its relationship with human evolution, and its consequences have been subjects of study for centuries. Scholars wishing to study the origins of language draw inferences from evidence such as the fossil record, archaeolog ...

based on

onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia (or rarely echoism) is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetics, phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias in English include animal noises such as Oin ...

. One critic said:

He offers a
Neo-Romantic The term neo-romanticism is used to cover a variety of movements in philosophy, literature, music, painting, and architecture, as well as social movements, that exist after and incorporate elements from the era of Romanticism. It has been used ...
, expressivist view influenced by Shelley. His view is ''not'' self-expressivist, however, since it denies the
epistemological Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowled ...
notion of a detached
subject Subject ( "lying beneath") may refer to: Philosophy *''Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing **Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective consciousness, or ...
and situates the human being in the world in the manner of modern
phenomenology Phenomenology may refer to: Art * Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties Philosophy * Phenomenology (Peirce), a branch of philosophy according to Charles Sanders Peirce (1839� ...
...Art, for Falck, gives
ontological Ontology is the philosophical study of being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of reality and every ...
truth.

The book makes constant reference to

Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge ( ; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets with his friend William Wordsworth ...

Schiller Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (, short: ; 10 November 17599 May 1805) was a German playwright, poet, philosopher and historian. Schiller is considered by most Germans to be Germany's most important classical playwright. He was born i ...

, Shelley,

Blake Blake or Blake's may refer to: People * Blake (given name), a given name of English origin (includes a list of people with the name) * Blake (surname), a surname of English origin (includes a list of people with the name) ** William Blake (1757 ...

Keats John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tub ...

and

Goethe Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...

. Author

Camille Paglia Camille Anna Paglia ( ; born April 2, 1947) is an American academic, social critic and Feminism, feminist. Paglia was a professor at the University of the Arts (Philadelphia), University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1984 until ...

hailed the book as "reveal ngthe future of literary criticism". Falck criticized

W. H. Auden Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry is noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, ...

didactic Didacticism is a philosophy that emphasises instructional and informative qualities in literature, art, and design. In art, design, architecture, and landscape, didacticism is a conceptual approach that is driven by the urgent need to explain. ...

theory of poetry: "Responsible poetry therefore becomes a kind of war-time fruit-cake, with the raisins of escape thinly distributed in a daily bread of

parable A parable is a succinct, didactic story, in prose or verse, that illustrates one or more instructive lessons or principles. It differs from a fable in that fables employ animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature as characters, whe ...

". Falck died on 27 December 2020, at the age of 86.

Notes

Bibliography

*''The Garden in the Evening'' by

Antonio Machado Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz (26 July 1875 – 22 February 1939), known as Antonio Machado, was a Spanish poet and one of the leading figures of the Spanish literary movement known as the Generation ...

(translator) The Review, Oxford *''Backwards Into the Smoke'' *''Poems Since 1900: an Anthology of British and American Verse in the Twentieth Century'' Hamilton, Ian Macdonald and Jane's, UK London 1975 *''In This Dark Light'' London, TNR 1978 *"A Defence of Poetry", ''Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism'' 44.4 (summer 1986): 398. 37. *"Beyond Theory", ''Essays in Criticism'' 1986 XXXVI(1):1-10; 1986 Oxford University Press *''Selected Poems by

Robinson Jeffers John Robinson Jeffers (January 10, 1887 – January 20, 1962) was an American poet known for his work about the central California coast. Much of Jeffers' poetry was written in narrative and Epic poetry, epic form. However, he is also known f ...

: The Centenary Edition''

Carcanet Press Carcanet Press is a publisher, primarily of poetry, based in the United Kingdom. Originally a student magazine devised by undergraduates collaborating between Oxford and Cambridge, it was refounded in 1969 by Michael Schmidt. In 2000 it was nam ...

Ltd. United Kingdom 1987 *''

Edna St. Vincent Millay Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) was an American lyric poetry, lyrical poet and playwright. Millay was a renowned social figure and noted Feminism, feminist in New York City during the Roaring Twenties and beyond. ...

: Selected Poems: the Centenary Edition'' Harpercollins 1991 *''Memorabilia'' Stride Publications (March 1992) *''Myth, Truth and Literature: Towards a True Postmodernism'' Cambridge University Press 1989, (revised & expanded) 1994 *''Post-Modern Love: An Unreliable Narration'' (1997) *''American and British Verse in the Twentieth Century: The Poetry that Matters'' Ashgate, December 2003 *''Leni’s Triumph'' Shoestring Press (December 2020)

External links

American and British Verse in the Twentieth Century''Myth, Truth and Literature'' at Google Books''Myth, Truth and Literature'' at Cambridge University Press
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20070309034506/http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=1675 Falck poem "After Christmas"br>Falck poem "Midwinter Spring"Falck poem "Mid-May"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Falck, Colin 1934 births 2020 deaths English literary critics English male poets Literary critics of English English male non-fiction writers