edited by Nicholas Nace and Charles Altieri contributions by Langdon Hammer and Al Filreis
Northwestern University Press, 2017 eISBN: 978-0-8101-3607-6 | Paper: 978-0-8101-3605-2 | Cloth: 978-0-8101-3606-9 Library of Congress Classification PS326.F38 2018 Dewey Decimal Classification 811.609
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
The Fate of Difficulty in the Poetry of Our Time offers original readings of poems composed in this century—poems that are challenging to follow, challenging to understand, challenging to discuss, and challenging to enjoy. Difficult poetry of the past relied on allusion, syntactic complexity, free association, and strange juxtapositions. The new poetry breaks with the old in its stunning variety; its questioning of inherited values, labels, and narratives; its multilingualism; its origin in and production of unnamed affects; and its coherence around critical and social theorists as much as other poets.
The essays in this volume include poets writing on the works of a younger generation (Lyn Hejinian on Paolo Javier, Bob Perelman on Rachel Zolf, Roberto Tejada on Rosa Alcalá), influential writers addressing the work of peers (Ben Lerner on Maggie Nelson, Michael W. Clune on Aaron Kunin), critics making imaginative leaps to encompass challenging work (Brian M. Reed on Sherwin Bitsui, Siobhan Philips on Juliana Spahr), and younger scholars coming to terms with poets who continue to govern new poetic experimentation (Joseph Jeon on Myung Mi Kim, Lytle Shaw on Lisa Robertson).
In pairings that are both intuitive (Marjorie Perloff on Craig Dworkin) and unexpected (Langdon Hammer on Srikanth Reddy), The Fate of Difficulty in the Poetry of Our Time illuminates the myriad pathways and strategies for exploring difficult poetry of the present.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
CHARLES ALTIERI is a professor and the Rachael Anderson Stageberg Endowed Chair of English at the University of California, Berkeley.
NICHOLAS D. NACE is a visiting assistant professor of rhetoric at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia.
REVIEWS
"Truly more than the sum of its parts, this exceptionally well-edited collection offers a smart and imaginative concept that not only sheds important light on the individual poems and poets addressed, but opens up the entire field of contemporary poetics by putting critical pressure on the concept of 'difficulty.'" —Craig Dworkin, author of Reading the Illegible and No Medium
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
I. CONTINUITIES
1. Langdon Hammer: Voice and Erasure in Srikanth Reddy’s Voyager
2. Al Filreis: Rewriting the Sonnet’s Cunning: On Laynie Browne’s Daily Sonnets
3. Aaron Kunin: Trouble with Difficulty: Jacqueline Waters’s “The Tax”
4. Charles Altieri: Some Contemporary Roles For Difficulty in Geoffrey G. O’Brien’s People on Sunday
5. John Wilkinson: The Dark Looks of “The Husband”
6. Michael W. Clune: The Science of Creation: On Aaron Kunin’s “First”
II. TROUBLED AFFECTS
THE PLIGHTS OF LYRIC
7. Siobhan Philips: On Spahr’s Poem “switching”
8. Michael Davidson: Attended with Trouble: Jena Osman’s “Persona Ficta”
9. Ben Lerner: After Difficulty
LOCATING AUTHENTICITY
10. Judith Goldman: “A poem of how to be”: Abjection and Biopolitical Capitalism in Ariana Reines’s “RENDERED”
11. Cary Nelson: From Private to Public Worlds: The Evolution of Atsuro Riley’s Hyper-Hyphenated Universe
12. Joseph Jonghyun Jeon: Paranoid Poetics: Targeting and Evasion in Myung Mi Kim’s Penury
III. ADDRESSING THE MULTIPLE
NEGOTIATING DIFFERENCE
13. Brian Reed: Sherwin Bitsui’s Blank Dictionary: Navajo Poetics and Non-Indigenous Readers
14. Nadia Nurhussein: Patter as Misdirection in Douglas Kearney’s “The Miscarriage: A Minstrel Show”
15. Jeanne Heuving: “What is More Precise than Precision?” Tisa Bryant’s Unexplained Presence
16. Evie Shockley: Difficulty Bees as Difficulty Does
MULTI-LINGUAL MODES
17. Roberto Tejada: Difficulties That Matter: Rosa Alcalá’s Voice Activation
18. Lyn Hejinian: Incipient Lust
19. Jennifer Scappettone: Street Linguistics and Daggering Lingua Francas in Latasha N. Nevada Diggs: Tuning to the “Clusterfuck of Tongues”
IV. RHETORICS OF INFORMATION
LOCATING FORM
20. Bob Perelman: Ethical Character Recognition
21. Lytle Shaw: Robertson’s Research
22. Geoffrey G. O’Brien: “Distributed via whatever”: Locating Form in Kevin Davies’ “Lateral Argument”
CONCEPTUALISM AND CONSEQUENCE
23. Nicholas D. Nace: In Bad Taste: Type, Token, and Tone in Vanessa Place’s “First Stone”
24. Adalaide Morris: Hellocasting the Holocaust: Appropriative Poetry as an Ethical Practice
25. Jennifer Ashton: Self-Expression without Self-Expression: The Political Meaning of Self -Evident Poems
26. Marjorie Perloff: Meditation as Mediation: Craig Dworkin in the Pine-Woods
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CONTRIBUTOR BIOS
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
edited by Nicholas Nace and Charles Altieri contributions by Langdon Hammer and Al Filreis
Northwestern University Press, 2017 eISBN: 978-0-8101-3607-6 Paper: 978-0-8101-3605-2 Cloth: 978-0-8101-3606-9
The Fate of Difficulty in the Poetry of Our Time offers original readings of poems composed in this century—poems that are challenging to follow, challenging to understand, challenging to discuss, and challenging to enjoy. Difficult poetry of the past relied on allusion, syntactic complexity, free association, and strange juxtapositions. The new poetry breaks with the old in its stunning variety; its questioning of inherited values, labels, and narratives; its multilingualism; its origin in and production of unnamed affects; and its coherence around critical and social theorists as much as other poets.
The essays in this volume include poets writing on the works of a younger generation (Lyn Hejinian on Paolo Javier, Bob Perelman on Rachel Zolf, Roberto Tejada on Rosa Alcalá), influential writers addressing the work of peers (Ben Lerner on Maggie Nelson, Michael W. Clune on Aaron Kunin), critics making imaginative leaps to encompass challenging work (Brian M. Reed on Sherwin Bitsui, Siobhan Philips on Juliana Spahr), and younger scholars coming to terms with poets who continue to govern new poetic experimentation (Joseph Jeon on Myung Mi Kim, Lytle Shaw on Lisa Robertson).
In pairings that are both intuitive (Marjorie Perloff on Craig Dworkin) and unexpected (Langdon Hammer on Srikanth Reddy), The Fate of Difficulty in the Poetry of Our Time illuminates the myriad pathways and strategies for exploring difficult poetry of the present.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
CHARLES ALTIERI is a professor and the Rachael Anderson Stageberg Endowed Chair of English at the University of California, Berkeley.
NICHOLAS D. NACE is a visiting assistant professor of rhetoric at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia.
REVIEWS
"Truly more than the sum of its parts, this exceptionally well-edited collection offers a smart and imaginative concept that not only sheds important light on the individual poems and poets addressed, but opens up the entire field of contemporary poetics by putting critical pressure on the concept of 'difficulty.'" —Craig Dworkin, author of Reading the Illegible and No Medium
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
I. CONTINUITIES
1. Langdon Hammer: Voice and Erasure in Srikanth Reddy’s Voyager
2. Al Filreis: Rewriting the Sonnet’s Cunning: On Laynie Browne’s Daily Sonnets
3. Aaron Kunin: Trouble with Difficulty: Jacqueline Waters’s “The Tax”
4. Charles Altieri: Some Contemporary Roles For Difficulty in Geoffrey G. O’Brien’s People on Sunday
5. John Wilkinson: The Dark Looks of “The Husband”
6. Michael W. Clune: The Science of Creation: On Aaron Kunin’s “First”
II. TROUBLED AFFECTS
THE PLIGHTS OF LYRIC
7. Siobhan Philips: On Spahr’s Poem “switching”
8. Michael Davidson: Attended with Trouble: Jena Osman’s “Persona Ficta”
9. Ben Lerner: After Difficulty
LOCATING AUTHENTICITY
10. Judith Goldman: “A poem of how to be”: Abjection and Biopolitical Capitalism in Ariana Reines’s “RENDERED”
11. Cary Nelson: From Private to Public Worlds: The Evolution of Atsuro Riley’s Hyper-Hyphenated Universe
12. Joseph Jonghyun Jeon: Paranoid Poetics: Targeting and Evasion in Myung Mi Kim’s Penury
III. ADDRESSING THE MULTIPLE
NEGOTIATING DIFFERENCE
13. Brian Reed: Sherwin Bitsui’s Blank Dictionary: Navajo Poetics and Non-Indigenous Readers
14. Nadia Nurhussein: Patter as Misdirection in Douglas Kearney’s “The Miscarriage: A Minstrel Show”
15. Jeanne Heuving: “What is More Precise than Precision?” Tisa Bryant’s Unexplained Presence
16. Evie Shockley: Difficulty Bees as Difficulty Does
MULTI-LINGUAL MODES
17. Roberto Tejada: Difficulties That Matter: Rosa Alcalá’s Voice Activation
18. Lyn Hejinian: Incipient Lust
19. Jennifer Scappettone: Street Linguistics and Daggering Lingua Francas in Latasha N. Nevada Diggs: Tuning to the “Clusterfuck of Tongues”
IV. RHETORICS OF INFORMATION
LOCATING FORM
20. Bob Perelman: Ethical Character Recognition
21. Lytle Shaw: Robertson’s Research
22. Geoffrey G. O’Brien: “Distributed via whatever”: Locating Form in Kevin Davies’ “Lateral Argument”
CONCEPTUALISM AND CONSEQUENCE
23. Nicholas D. Nace: In Bad Taste: Type, Token, and Tone in Vanessa Place’s “First Stone”
24. Adalaide Morris: Hellocasting the Holocaust: Appropriative Poetry as an Ethical Practice
25. Jennifer Ashton: Self-Expression without Self-Expression: The Political Meaning of Self -Evident Poems
26. Marjorie Perloff: Meditation as Mediation: Craig Dworkin in the Pine-Woods
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CONTRIBUTOR BIOS
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE