Differentials: Poetry, Poetics, Pedagogy (Modern and Contemporary Poetics)

Marjorie Perloff offers 'Differentials' with her usual erudition, humor, and interdisciplinary insight. These essays, written between 1999 and 2004, address performance poetry, concrete poetry, multimedia poetry, constricted writing, and how teachers might help their students make sense of it all. Perloff's prodigious knowledge of twentieth century artistic movements allows her to relate the work of Ezra Pound to Marcel Duchamp, to explain "differential poetry" that varies according to the medium of presentation, to compare the performance poetry of Laurie Anderson, Joan Retallack and Caroline Bergvall, and to elaborate on distinctions between Kenneth Goldsmith's rule-generated writing and Ronald Johnson's verbivocovisuals. And how to teach 'experimental' poetry? Take nothing for granted. Insist on close readings. And a close reading must account for all the elements in a given text, not just the ones that support a particular interpretation, she reminds us. In Differentials, Perloff Explores And Defends Her Belief In The Power Of Close Reading, A Strategy Often Maligned As Reactionary In Today's Critical Climate But Which, When Construed Differentially, Is Vital, She Believes, To Any True Understanding Of A Literary Or Poetic Work, Irrespective Of How Traditional Or Experimental It Is. Perloff Also Examines Key Issues In Modernism, From Eliot's Conservative Poetics And Pound's Nominalism To Translation Theory (wittgenstein, Eugene Jolas, Haroldo De Campos), And The Contemporary Avant Garde, As Represented By Writers Like Susan Howe, Tom Raworth, Rae Armantrout, Ron Silliman, Ronald Johnson, Caroline Bergvall, And Kenneth Goldsmith. Ultimately, Perloff's Most Important Offerings In Differentials Are Her Remarkably Original Reflections On The Aesthetic Process: On How Poetry Works, And What It Means, In And For Our Time. --publisher Description. Crisis In The Humanities? Reconfiguring Literary Study For The Twenty-first Century -- Cunning Passages And Contrived Corridors: Rereading Eliot's Gerontion -- The Search For Prime Words: Pound, Duchamp, And The Nominalist Ethos -- But Isn't The Same At Least The Same? Wittgenstein On Translation -- Logocinéma Of The Frontiersman: Eugene Jolas's Multilingual Poetics And Its Legacies -- The Silence That Is Not Silence: Acoustic Art In Samuel Beckett's Radio Plays -- Language Poetry And The Lyric Subject: Ron Silliman's Albany, Susan Howe's Buffalo -- After Language Poetry: Innovation And Its Theoretical Discontents -- The Invention Of Concrete Prose: Haroldo De Campos's Galaxias And After -- Songs Of The Earth: Ronald Johnson's Verbivocovisuals -- The Oulipo Factor: The Procedural Poetics Of Christian Bök And Caroline Bergvall -- Filling The Space With Trace: Tom Raworth's Letters From Yaddo -- Teaching The New Poetries: The Case Of Rae Armantrout -- Writing Poetry/writing About Poetry: Some Problems Of Affiliation. Marjorie Perloff. Chiefly Essays Previously Published In Various Sources. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [269]-298) And Index. A new collection of essays from a distinguished critic of contemporary poetry. Marjorie Perloff is one of the foremost critics of contemporary American poetry writing today. Her works are credited by many with creating and sustaining new critical interest not only in the work of major modernist poets such as Yeats, Pound, Eliot, and Williams but also in the postwar tradition of American poetic innovation that ranges from the Black Mountain poets, through the New York School and concrete poetry, to the Language Poets of the 1980s and '90s. In Differentials , Perloff explores and defends her belief in the power of close reading, a strategy often maligned as reactionary in today's critical climate but which, when construed differentially, is vital, she believes, to any true understanding of a literary or poetic work, irrespective of how traditional or experimental it is. Perloff also examines key issues in modernism, from Eliot's conservative poetics and Pound's nominalism to translation theory (Wittgenstein, Eugene Jolas, Haroldo de Campos), and the contemporary avant garde, as represented by writers like Susan Howe, Tom Raworth, Rae Armantrout, Ron Silliman, Ronald Johnson, Caroline Bergvall, and Kenneth Goldsmith. Ultimately, Perloff's most important offerings in Differentials are her remarkably original reflections on the aesthetic process: on how poetry works, and what it means, in and for our time. Contents......Page 6 Acknowledgments......Page 8 Introduction: Differential Reading......Page 12 1. Crisis in the Humanities? Recon¤guring Literary Study for the Twenty-first Century......Page 38 2. Cunning Passages and Contrived Corridors: Rereading Eliot's "Gerontion"......Page 57 3. The Search for “Prime Words”: Pound, Duchamp, and the Nominalist Ethos......Page 76 4. “But isn’t the same at least the same?” Wittgenstein on Translation......Page 97 5. “Logocinéma of the Frontiersman”: Eugene Jolas’s Multilingual Poetics and Its Legacies......Page 119 6. “The Silence that is not Silence”: Acoustic Art in Samuel Beckett’s Radio Plays......Page 139 7. Language Poetry and the Lyric Subject: Ron Silliman’s Albany, Susan Howe's Buffalo......Page 166 8. After Language Poetry: Innovation and Its Theoretical Discontents......Page 192 9. The Invention of “Concrete Prose”: Haroldo de Campos’s Galaxias and After......Page 212 10. Songs of the Earth: Ronald Johnson’s Verbivocovisuals......Page 231 11. The Oulipo Factor: The Procedural Poetics of Christian Bök and Caroline Bergvall......Page 242 12. Filling the Space with Trace: Tom Raworth’s “Letters from Yaddo"......Page 264 13. Teaching the “New” Poetries: The Case of Rae Armantrout......Page 280 14. Writing Poetry/Writing about Poetry: Some Problems of Affiliation......Page 295 Notes......Page 306 Index......Page 336