Disjunctive Poetics: From Gertrude Stein and Louis Zukofsky to Susan Howe

by Peter Quartermain

Overview

Disjunctive Poetics examines some of the most interesting and experimental contemporary writers whose work forms a counterpoint to the mainstream writing of our time. Peter Quartermain suggests that the explosion of noncanonical modern writing is linked to the severe political, social, and economic dislocation of non-English-speaking immigrants who, bringing alternative culture with them as they passed through Ellis Island in their hundreds of thousands at the turn of the century, found themselves uprooted from their tradition and disassociated from their culture. The line of American poetry that runs from Gertrude Stein through Louis Zukofsky and the Objectivists to the Language Writers, Quartermain contends, is not the constructive but deconstructive aspect that emphasized the materiality and ambiguity of the linguistic medium and the arbitrariness and openess of the creative process.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521101301
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	02/12/2009
Series:	Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture , #59
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; Introduction; 1. 'A Narrative of Undermine': Gertrude Stein's Multiplicity; 2. Recurrencies: No. 12 of Louis Zukofsky's Anew; 3. 'Instant Entirety': Zukofsky's 'A'; 4. 'Not at All Surprised by Science': Louis Zukofsky's First Half of 'A' - 9; 5. 'Actual Word Stuff, Not Thoughts for Thoughts': Williams and Zukofsky; 6. 'Only Is Oreder Othered. Nought Is Nulled': Finnegans Wake and Middle and Late Zukofsky; 7. 'To Make Glad the Heart of Man': Bunting, Pound and Whitman; 8. Six Plaints and a Lament for Basil Bunting; 9. Exploring the Mere: A Note on Charles Reznikoff's Shorter Poems; 10. Robert Creeley What Counts; 11. 'Go Contrary, Go Sing': Robert Duncan 1919–1988; 12. Writing as Assemblage: Guy Davenport; 13. And The Without: An Interpretive Essay on Susan Howe; Notes; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"Articulate, resourceful readings of the decisive poetry of our time, beginning with Gertrude Stein and continuing to the latest, crucial ground work of Susan Howe. Truly a pioneering work." Robert Creely

"The line of American experimentalist poetry that extends from Gertrude Stein to Susan Howe (with such major figures as Louis Zukofsky, Robert Creely, Robert Duncan, and Guy Davenport along the way) has never had a more lucid, subtle, and discriminating interpreter than Peter Quartermain. In their spirited engagement with seemingly recalcitrant material, these superb essays are sure to become classics of their kind." Marjorie Perloff |x x

From the Publisher