Momentous Inconclusions: The Life and Work of Larry Eigner (Recencies Series: Research and Recovery in Twentieth-Century American Poetics)

Larry Eigner (1927-1996), born with cerebral palsy, was an active and significant figure for the New American Poets of the 1950s and 1960s, particularly with the Black Mountain School. While his writing has been overshadowed by his contemporaries, such as Charles Olson and Robert Creeley, Eigner's work has had a significant influence on generations of poets as he was at the center of the development of a postmodern poetics. The essays in this collection examine the breadth of Eigner's interests and influence, considering issues pertaining to ecopoetics, race and ethnicity, disability, technology, media, soundscapes, phenomenology, and popular culture. Jennifer Bartlett and George Hart, alongside their fellow contributors, provide the first scholarly volume to focus solely on Larry Eigner and his work. This book promises to be a foundational text for Eigner studies as well as an important addition to critical work about twentieth-century poetry and poetics. Momentous Inconclusions: The Life and Work of Larry Eigner is a valuable contribution to scholars in the field and to academics researching the intersection of disability studies and poetics--back cover Cover Half title Title Copyright Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Larry Eigner’s Momentous Inconclusions by Jennifer Bartlett and George Hart Part 1. Place, Predecessors, and Projective Verse Chapter 1. “What Is Here and Now In the World”: Larry Eigner’s Perceptual Place Making by Marie Landau Chapter 2. “My Nose On the Ground”: Larry Eigner’s Civil War by George Hart Chapter 3. “People like Radios / Radios as People”: Aural Form in the Poetry of Larry Eigner by Seth Forrest Chapter 4. Poetry as a Scene of Decision: Larry Eigner as Distributed Author by Barrett Watten Part 2. Space and Time, Sight and Sound Chapter 5. Larry Eigner’s Televisual Impressionism by Andrew Rippeon Chapter 6. Larry Eigner’s Archives in Flight by Stephanie Anderson Chapter 7. What Sounds: Larry Eigner’s Environment by Jonathan Skinner Chapter 8. Ways of Being Earthly: Sympoetic Ecopoesis and Birds in Larry Eigner’s Poems by Linda Russo Part 3. Selected Letters: 1953–1992 A Note on Transcriptions LE to Robert Creeley 08/29/53 LE to Paul Blackburn 05/06/54 LE to Janet Eigner 07/02/63–07/07/63 LE to Denise Levertov 10/15/63–10/18/63 LE to Robert Duncan 12/29/69–01/01/70 LE to Jackson Mac Low 03/31/70 LE to Ron Silliman 10/21/72 LE to George Butterick 06/04/74–06/09/74 LE to Joseph Eigner Family 02/27/75–03/01/75 LE to Arthur MacFarland 01/07/80 LE to Clayton Eshleman 05/21/82 LE to “D..R Folks (Mike, Paul) 10/05/90–10/07/90 LE to Ruth Polansky Bloom 08/03/92–08/05/92 Works Cited List of Contributors Index The essays in this collection examine the breadth of Larry Eigner's interests and influence, considering issues pertaining to ecopoetics, race and ethnicity, disability, technology, media, soundscapes, phenomenology, and popular culture.