Contemporary Poetics

Contemporary Poetics
Author: Louis Armand
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2007
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0810123606

Exploring the boundaries of one of the most contested fields of literary study—a field that in fact shares territory with philology, aesthetics, cultural theory, philosophy, and even cybernetics—this volume gathers a body of critical writings that, taken together, broadly delineate a possible poetics of the contemporary. In these essays, the most interesting and distinguished theorists in the field renegotiate the contours of what might constitute "contemporary poetics," ranging from the historical advent of concrete poetry to the current technopoetics of cyberspace. Concerned with a poetics that extends beyond our own time, as a mere marker of present-day literary activity, their work addresses the limits of a writing "practice"—beginning with Stéphane Mallarmé in the late nineteenth century—that engages concretely with what it means to be contemporary. Charles Bernstein's Swiftian satire of generative poetics and the textual apparatus, together with Marjorie Perloff's critical-historical treatment of "writing after" Bernstein and other proponents of language poetry, provides an itinerary of contemporary poetics in terms of both theory and practice. The other essays consider "precursors," recognizable figures within the histories or prehistories of contemporary poetics, from Kafka and Joyce to Wallace Stevens and Kathy Acker; "conjunctions," in which more strictly theoretical and poetical texts enact a concerted engagement with rhetoric, prosody, and the vicissitudes of "intelligibility"; "cursors," which points to the open possibilities of invention, from Augusto de Campos's "concrete poetics" to the "codework" of Alan Sondheim; and "transpositions," defining the limits of poetic invention by way of technology.

Perishable Poetics

Perishable Poetics
Author: Jenny Thomasson
Publisher: Schiffer Publishing
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2020-06-15
Genre: Crafts & Hobbies
ISBN: 9780764359866

In an invitation to expand and liberate your creative voice in floral design, Jenny Thomasson (AIFD, PFCI, EMC) generously unfolds her artistic process that has made her a rising star in the industry through 40+ beautifully shot compositions. The delicacy, intensity, and cyclical temporality of flowers mirror our deepest emotions--making them a potent source of inspiration and innovation. In over 200 lustrous color photos, Thomasson shares how she uses emotion to push the boundaries of contemporary floral design. Infused with hand-drawn conceptual sketches and notes, and incorporating a wide breadth of techniques, forms, and materials, this warmly personal guide offers an intimate insight into the evolution of a professional floral arrangement. Perishable Poetics is a beautifully photographed artwork as well as a radiant, invaluable creative resource for those who work in, are inspired by, or are finding their voice in floral design.

Narrative Fiction

Narrative Fiction
Author: Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2003-12-16
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1134464975

What is a narrative? What is narrative fiction? How does it differ from other kinds of narrative? What featuers turn a discourse into a narrative text? Now widely acknowledged as one of the most significant volumes in its field, Narrative Fiction turns its attention to these and other questions. In contrast to many other studies, Narrative Fiction is organized arround issues - such as events, time, focalization, characterization, narration, the text and its reading - rather than individual theorists or approaches. Within this structure, Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan addresses key approaches to narrative fiction, including New Criticism, formalism, structuralism and phenomenology, but also offers views of the modifications to these theroies. While presenting an analysis of the system governing all fictional narratives, whether in the form of novel, short story or narrative poem, she also suggests how individual narratives can be studied against the background of this general system. A broad range of literary examples illustrate key aspects of the study. This edition is brought fully up-to-date with an invaluable new chapter, reflecting on recent developments in narratology. Readers are also directed to key recent works in the field. These additions to a classic text ensure that Narrative Fiction will remain the ideal starting point for anyone new to narrative theory.

Frank O'Hara

Frank O'Hara
Author: Lytle Shaw
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2006-06
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0877459843

Providing a synthesis of New York's artistic and literary worlds, this book uses social and philosophical problems involved in reading a coterie to propose a language for understanding the poet, art critic, and Museum of Modern Art curator, Frank O'Hara.

Epic Traditions in the Contemporary World

Epic Traditions in the Contemporary World
Author: Margaret Beissinger
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 338
Release: 1999-03-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780520210387

Fourteen essays on epic, oral and literary, from ancient to modern, from the Americas to India.

The Poetics of Fragmentation in Contemporary British and American Fiction

The Poetics of Fragmentation in Contemporary British and American Fiction
Author: Vanessa Guignery
Publisher: Vernon Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2019-12-02
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 162273646X

The last decades have seen a revival of fragmentation in British and American works of fiction that deny linearity, coherence and continuity in favour of disruption, gaps and fissures. Authors such as Ali Smith, David Mitchell and David Shields have sought new ways of representing our global, media-saturated contemporary experience which differ from modernist and postmodernist experimentations from which the writers nevertheless draw inspiration. This volume aims to investigate some of the most important contributions to fragmentary literature from British and American writers since the 1990s, with a particular emphasis on texts released in the twenty-first century. The chapters within examine whether contemporary forms of literary fragmentation constitute a return to the modernist episteme or the fragmented literature of exhaustion of the 1960s, mark a continuity with postmodernist aesthetics or signal a deviation from past models and an attempt to reflect today’s accelerated culture of social media and over-communication. Contributors theorise and classify literary fragments, examine the relationship between fragmentation and the Zeitgeist (influenced by globalisation, media saturation and social networks), analyse the mechanics of multimodal and multimedial fictions, and consider the capacity of literary fragmentation to represent personal or collective trauma and to address ethical concerns. They also investigate the ways in which the architecture of the printed book is destabilised and how aesthetic processes involving fragmentation, bricolage and/or collage raise ontological, ethical and epistemological questions about the globalised contemporary world we live in and its relation to the self and the other. Besides the aforementioned authors, the volume makes reference to the works of J. G. Ballard, Julian Barnes, Mark Z. Danielewski, David Markson, Jonathan Safran Foer, David Foster Wallace, Jeanette Winterson and several others.

Phenomenal Reading

Phenomenal Reading
Author: Brian M. Reed
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2012-04-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0817356940

"This book examines individually and collectively poets widely recognized as formal and linguistic innovators. Why do their words appear in unconventional orders? What end do these arrangements serve? Why are they striking? Brian Reed focuses on poetic form as a persistent puzzle, utilizing historical fact and the views of other critics to clarify how particular literary works are constructed and how those constructions lead to specific effects." -- Back cover.

Translingual Poetics

Translingual Poetics
Author: Sarah Dowling
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2018-12-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 160938606X

Since the 1980s, poets in Canada and the U.S. have increasingly turned away from the use of English, bringing multiple languages into dialogue—and into conflict—in their work. This growing but under-studied body of writing differs from previous forms of multilingual poetry. While modernist poets offered multilingual displays of literary refinement, contemporary translingual poetries speak to and are informed by feminist, anti-racist, immigrant rights, and Indigenous sovereignty movements. Although some translingual poems have entered Chicanx, Latinx, Asian American, and Indigenous literary canons, translingual poetry has not yet been studied as a cohesive body of writing. The first book-length study on the subject, Translingual Poetics argues for an urgent rethinking of Canada and the U.S.’s multiculturalist myths. Dowling demonstrates that rising multilingualism in both countries is understood as new and as an effect of cultural shifts toward multiculturalism and globalization. This view conceals the continent’s original Indigenous multilingualism and the ongoing violence of its dismantling. It also naturalizes English as traditional, proper, and, ironically, native. Reading a range of poets whose work contests this “settler monolingualism”—Jordan Abel, Layli Long Soldier, Myung Mi Kim, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, M. NourbeSe Philip, Rachel Zolf, Cecilia Vicuña, and others—Dowling argues that translingual poetry documents the flexible forms of racialization innovated by North American settler colonialisms. Combining deft close readings of poetry with innovative analyses of media, film, and government documents, Dowling shows that translingual poetry’s avoidance of authentic, personal speech reveals the differential forms of personhood and non-personhood imposed upon the settler, the native, and the alien.

A Field Guide to Contemporary Poetry and Poetics

A Field Guide to Contemporary Poetry and Poetics
Author: Stuart Friebert
Publisher: Field Editions
Total Pages: 360
Release: 1997
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN:

One of the hallmarks of FIELD magazine has always been its attention to what poets have to say about poetry. Many of these essays--by William Stafford, Denise Levertov, Gary Snyder, Adrienne Rich, Donald Hall, Robert Bly, and Sandra McPherson, among others--have become classics. This revised and expanded collection of essays from the magazine provides a rich and stimulating perspective on the state of contemporary poetry, as seen through the eyes of the poets themselves.