The Fate of Difficulty in the Poetry of Our Time

Voice And Erasure In Srikanth Reddy's Voyager / Langdon Hammer -- Rewriting The Sonnet's Cunning : On Laynie Browne's Daily Sonnets / Al Filreis -- Trouble With Difficulty : Jacqueline Waters's The Tax / Aaron Kunin -- Some Contemporary Roles For Difficulty In Geoffrey G. O'brien's People On Sunday / Charles Altieri -- The Dark Looks Of The Husband / John Wilkinson -- The Science Of Creation : On Aaron Kunin's First / Michael W. Clune -- On Spahr's Poem Switching / Siobhan Philips -- Attended With Trouble : Jena Osman's Persona Ficta / Michael Davidson -- After Difficulty / Ben Lerner -- A Poem Of How To Be : Abjection And Biopolitical Capitalism In Ariana Reines's Rendered / Judith Goldman -- From Private To Public Worlds : The Evolution Of Atsuro Riley's Hyper-hyphenated Universe / Cary Nelson -- Paranoid Poetics : Targeting And Evasion In Myung Mi Kim's Penury / Joseph Jonghyun Jeon --^ Sherwin Bitsui's Blank Dictionary : Navajo Poetics And Non-indigenous Readers / Brian Reed -- Patter As Misdirection In Douglas Kearney's The Miscarriage: A Minstrel Show / Nadia Nurhussein -- What Is More Precise Than Precision? Tisa Bryant's Unexplained Presence / Jeanne Heuving -- Difficulty Bees As Difficulty Does / Evie Shockley -- Difficulties That Matter : Rosa Alcala's Voice Activation / Roberto Tejada -- Incipient Lust / Lyn Hejinian -- Phrasebook Pentecosts And Daggering Lingua Francas In The Poetry Of Latasha N. Nevada Diggs : Tuning To The Clusterfuck Of Tongues / Jennifer Scappettone -- Ethical Character Recognition / Bob Perelman -- Robertson's Research / Lytle Shaw -- Distributed Via Whatever : Locating Form In Kevin Davies's Lateral Argument / Geoffrey G. O'brien -- In Bad Taste : Type, Token, And Tone In Vanessa Place's First Stone / Nicholas D. Nace -- Hellocasting The Holocaust : Appropriative Poetry As An Ethical Practice / Adalaide Morris --^ Self-expression Without Self-expression : The Political Meaning Of Self-evident Poems / Jennifer Ashton -- Meditation As Mediation : Craig Dworkin In The Pine-woods / Marjorie Perloff. Edited By Charles Altieri And Nicholas D. Nace. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. 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 Part anthology, part essay collection, 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.