Poetics of Emptiness: Transformations of Asian Thought in American Poetry (American Literatures Initiative)

The Poetics of Emptiness uncovers an important untold history by tracing the historically specific, intertextual pathways of a single, if polyvalent, philosophical term, emptiness, as it is transformed within twentieth-century American poetry and poetics. This conceptual migration is detailed in two sections. The first focuses on "transpacific Buddhist poetics," while the second maps the less well-known terrain of "transpacific Daoist poetics." In Chapters 1 and 2, the author explores Ernest Fenollosa's "The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry" as an expression of Fenollosa's distinctly Buddhist poetics informed by a two-decade-long encounter with a culturally hybrid form of Buddhism known as Shin Bukkyo ("New Buddhism"). Chapter 2 explores the classical Chinese poetics that undergirds the lost half of Fenellosa's essay. Chapter 3 concludes the first half of the book with an exploration of the didactic and soteriological function of "emptiness" in Gary Snyder's influential poetry and poetics. The second half begins with a critical exploration of the three-decades-long career of the poet/translator/critic Wai-lim Yip, whose "transpacific Daoist poetics" has been an important fixture in American poetic late modernism and has begun to gain wider notoriety in China. The last chapter engages the intertextual weave of poststructural thought and Daoist and shamanistic discourses in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's important body of heterocultural productions. By formulating interpretive frames as hybrid as the texts being read, this book makes available one of the most important yet still largely unknown stories of American poetry and poetics. This book uncovers an important untold history by tracing the historically specific, intertextual pathways of a single, if polyvalent, philosophical term, emptiness, as it is transformed within twentieth-century American poetry and poetics. This conceptual migration is detailed in two sections. The first focuses on “transpacific Buddhist poetics,” while the second maps the less well-known terrain of “transpacific Daoist poetics.” In Chapters 1 and 2, the text explores Ernest Fenollosa's “The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry” as an expression of Fenollosa's distinctly Buddhist poetics informed by a two-decade-long encounter with a culturally hybrid form of Buddhism known as Shin Bukkyo (“New Buddhism”). Chapter 2 explores the classical Chinese poetics that undergirds the lost half of Fenellosa's essay. Chapter 3 concludes the first half of the book with an exploration of the didactic and soteriological function of “emptiness” in Gary Snyder's influential poetry and poetics. The second half begins with a critical exploration of the three-decades-long career of the poet/translator/critic Wai-lim Yip, whose “transpacific Daoist poetics” has been an important fixture in American poetic late modernism and has begun to gain wider notoriety in China. The last chapter engages the intertextual weave of poststructural thought and Daoist and shamanistic discourses in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's important body of heterocultural productions. By formulating interpretive frames as hybrid as the texts being read, this book makes available one of the most important yet still largely unknown stories of American poetry and poetics Contents......Page 8 List of Figures and Tables......Page 10 Acknowledgments......Page 12 Prologue: Transformations of a Transpacific Imaginary......Page 18 Introduction: The Poetics of Emptiness, or a Cult of Nothingness......Page 26 PART ONE: Buddhist Imaginaries......Page 48 1 Emptiness in Flux: The Buddhist Poetics of Ernest Fenollosa’s “The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry”......Page 50 2 Patterned Harmony: Buddhism, Sound, and Ernest Fenollosa’s Poetics of Correlative Cosmology......Page 76 3 Teaching the Law: Gary Snyder’s Poetics of Emptiness......Page 114 PART TWO: Daoist Imaginaries......Page 138 4 Language of Emptiness: Wai-lim Yip’s Daoist Project......Page 140 5 Pacing the Void: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictée......Page 174 Epilogue......Page 208 Notes......Page 216 Bibliography......Page 252 B......Page 274 C......Page 275 D......Page 276 F......Page 277 K......Page 278 N......Page 279 P......Page 280 S......Page 281 T......Page 282 Y......Page 283 Z......Page 284 "The Poetics of Emptiness uncovers an important untold history by tracing the historically specific, intertextual pathways of a single, if polyvalent, philosophical term, emptiness, as it is transformed within twentieth-century American poetry and poetics." -- Amazon