The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing and Literary HistoryLanguage writing, the most controversial avant-garde movement in contemporary American poetry, appeals strongly to writers and readers interested in the politics of postmodernism and in iconoclastic poetic form. Drawing on materials from popular culture, avoiding the standard stylistic indications of poetic lyricism, and using nonsequential sentences are some of the ways in which language writers make poetry a more open and participatory process for the readers. Reading this kind of writing, however, may not come easily in a culture where poetry is treated as property of a special class. It is this barrier that Bob Perelman seeks to break down in this fascinating and comprehensive account of the language writing movement. A leading language writer himself, Perelman offers insights into the history of the movement and discusses the political and theoretical implications of the writing. He provides detailed readings of work by Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman, and Charles Bernstein, among many others, and compares it to a wide range of other contemporary and modern American poetry. |
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... political and social purposes — these would not be found . The confessional poets were the model : Lowell , Plath , Sexton , Berryman . Poems were short , narrative , focused on small or large moments of crisis or optimism . Whether the ...
... politics were always the source of dispute . For some , language writing was too programmatically political to be poetry ; for a number of New American poets and their supporters , it was too poststructuralist to be political . Many ...
... political and poetic . In the latter case , the goal may be either to overthrow or to enter the poetic mainstream . Given the long - delayed nature of most literary politics , these two alternatives become less oppositional . In the ...
... political claims ; but the claims have tended to receive more consideration than the writing itself and the specific literary traditions it grew out of . Language writers have used structuralist and poststructuralist theory at times to ...
... Politics of the Referent , ” " Some Recent British Poetry Magazines , " or a section on “ Reading Stein . " 9 The development of presses — Lyn Hejinian's Tuumba chapbook series ; Geoff Young's press , The Figures ; Barrett Watten's This ...
Contents
The Avantgarde Particulars | 38 |
The New Sentence in Theory | 59 |
Orthography and Community | 79 |
Bruce Andrews | 96 |
Eight An Alphabet of Literary History | 144 |
NOTES | 167 |
INDEX | 183 |
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The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing and Literary History Bob Perelman Limited preview - 1996 |
The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing and Literary History Bob Perelman Limited preview - 1996 |