The Public World/Syntactically Impermanence - Softcover

Scalapino, Leslie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 081956379X ISBN 13: 9780819563798

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press, 1999

Synopsis

The Public World / Syntactically Impermanence is a brilliant consideration of the strategies of poetry, and the similarities between early Zen thought and some American avant-garde writings that counter the "language of determinateness," or conventions of perception. The theme of the essays is poetic language which critiques itself, recognizing its own conceptual formations of private and social, the form or syntax of the language being "syntactically impermanence." Whether writing reflexively on her own poetry or looking closely at the writing of her peers, Leslie Scalapino makes us aware of the split between commentary (discourse and interpretation) and interior experience. The"poetry" in the collection is both commentary and interior experience at once. She argues that poetry is perhaps most deeply political when it is an expression that is not recognized or readily comprehensible as discourse.

About this title

About the Author

Leslie Scalapino is the author of thirty books of poetry, prose inter-genre-fiction, plays, and essays. Granary Book just published a collaborative book by artist Kiki Smith and Leslie Scalapino, titled The Animal is in the World like Water in Water. Scalapino's It's go in horizontal/Selected Poems, 1974-2006 was published by University of California Press at Berkeley in 2008. Other books of Scalapino's poetry include DAY OCEAN STATE OF STARS' NIGHT (Green Integer), a collection of eight years; ZITHER & AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Wesleyan University Press), The Tango (Granary Press), ORCHID JETSAM (Tuumba), Dahlia's Iris--Secret Autobiography and Fiction (FC2 Publishers); a reprint of the prose work DEFOE by Green Integer; and IT'S GO IN/ QUIET ILLUMINED GRASS/ LAND (The Post-Apollo Press).

From the Back Cover

The Public World/Syntactically Impermanence is a brilliant consideration of the strategies of poetry, and the similarities between early Zen thought and some American avant-garde writings that counter the "language of determinateness", or conventions of perception. The theme of the essays is poetic language which critiques itself, recognizing its own conceptual formations of private and social, the form or syntax of the language being "syntactically impermanence".

Edition details

• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 081956379X
• ISBN 13: 9780819563798
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 158