Reading the Difficulties: Dialogues with Contemporary American Innovative Poetry (Modern & Contemporary Poetics) - Softcover

Book 31 of 61: Modern and Contemporary Poetics
 
9780817357528: Reading the Difficulties: Dialogues with Contemporary American Innovative Poetry (Modern & Contemporary Poetics)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0817357521 ISBN 13: 9780817357528
Publisher: University of Alabama Press, 2014

Synopsis

The bold essays that make up Reading the Difficulties offer case studies in and strategies for reading innovative poetry.

Definitions of what constitutes innovative poetry are innumerable and are offered from every quarter. Some critics and poets argue that innovative poetry concerns free association (John Ashbery), others that experimental poetry is a “re-staging” of language (Bruce Andrews) or a syntactic and cognitive break with the past (Ron Silliman and Lyn Hejinian). The tenets of new poetry abound.

But what of the new reading that such poetry demands? Essays in Reading the Difficulties ask what kinds of stances allow readers to interact with verse that deliberately removes many of the comfortable cues to comprehension―poetry that is frequently nonnarrative, nonrepresentational, and indeterminate in subject, theme, or message.

Some essays in Thomas Fink and Judith Halden-Sullivan’s collection address issues of reader reception and the way specific stances toward reading support or complement the aesthetic of each poet. Others suggest how we can be open readers, how innovative poetic texts change the very nature of reader and reading, and how critical language can capture this metamorphosis. Some contributors consider how the reader changes innovative poetry, what language reveals about this interaction, which new reading strategies unfold for the audiences of innovative verse, and what questions readers should ask of innovative verse and of events and experiences that we might bring to reading it.

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About the Author

Thomas Fink is a professor of English at the City University of New York, USA.

Judith Halden-Sullivan is a professor of English at Millersville University of Pennsylvania, USA.

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Publisher
University of Alabama Press
Publication date
2014
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0817357521
ISBN 13 
9780817357528
Binding
Paperback
Edition number
1
Number of pages
232
Editor
Fink Thomas, Halden-Sullivan Judith