Ingenious Pleasures
272 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
1 figs.
Paperback
Release Date:01 Jun 2023
ISBN:9780826364937
Ingenious Pleasures
An Anthology of Punk, Trash, and Camp in Twentieth-Century Poetry
Edited by Drew Gardner
University of New Mexico Press
By tracing the impulses of punk rock, trash film, and camp through poetry, Drew Gardner sheds light on a literary tendency that has been part of poetry's DNA all along: uncovering the poetic values hidden in unpoetic things. This unique anthology introduces readers to collage-driven poetry that embodies the sensibilities of punk, trash, and camp in a line of writing that cuts through received taxonomies of movements, influences, and styles. Moving through the twentieth century, the poetry focuses on the unexpected, the anarchic, the demotic, the absurd, the irreverent, the coarse, the rude, and the deliriously playful. It marks an alternative strain of modernism that stretches from one side of the century to the other and includes such diverse voices as Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Mina Loy, Russell Atkins, Sun Ra, and Bernadette Mayer, along with many other well-known and lesser-known poets. Readers of Ingenious Pleasures will delight in experiencing poetry as they never have before.
More indispensable than Wilson the Volleyball in Tom Hanks's Castaway, no desert island should be without a copy of this uniquely ingenious and wildly pleasurable tome of treasures. This anthology charts a new history and a new way forward for experimental poetics.' Paul Stephens, author of absence of clutter: minimal writing as art and literature
An antidote, a strident reply, a raspberry even to all those who talk about poetry as a genre of comfort, as a solace, as a High Art with no room for absurdity, anger, and insult. Also a rollicking fun read.' Juliana Spahr, author of Well Then There Now
Drew Gardner is a poet and musician living in New York City. His work has appeared in Poetry, the Nation, Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology, and elsewhere. His poetry books include Defender, Chomp Away, Petroleum Hat, and Sugar Pill.
