It seems intuitive that lyric poems proceed in inductive fashion, assembling particulars until the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. However, saying that inductive reasoning is the special work of lyric and a philosophical project in its own right, is an entirely new claim and a bold one. Winant turns our intuition about lyric into a research question. What are inductive reasoning’s special techniques? What is the nature of its validity? Are there moments when poetry actively borrows from philosophies defending induction? Winant answers these questions both directly and through powerful new readings of major U.S. poetries from Walt Whitman through Gwendolyn Brooks. And, by showing how poems themselves “close read the world,” Lyric Logic offers a compelling defense of that method without disparaging other critical approaches, a striking achievement all on its own.
