Growth and the Grid: Organic vs Constructivist Conceptions of Poetry

Two important types of metaphors have dominated the history of poetics: organic and constructivist metaphors. This article first examines both conceptions by analysing different volumes of poetry in English and determining their place in respectively the organic and the constructivist traditions, in order to chart the interaction of both conceptions in 20th-century poetic volumes by T. S. Eliot, Louis Zukofsky, Sylvia Plath, and Simon Armitage. The notion of "growth" as it was employed e.g. in Whitman criticism is contrasted to the notion of the "grid," which is emblematic of the modernist ambition, according to Rosalind Krauss. From the perspective of genetic criticism, however, both conceptions usually appear to be inextricably intertwined in 20th-century poetry. As a consequence, the article pleads for a form of literary criticism that considers both a transitive and an intransitive type of poetic "growth."