Phenomenal Reading
280 pages, 6 x 9
4 illus.
Paperback
Release Date:04 Apr 2012
ISBN:9780817356941
Phenomenal Reading
Essays on Modern and Contemporary Poetics
SERIES:
Modern and Contemporary Poetics
University of Alabama Press
The essays in Phenomenal Reading entice readers to cross accepted barriers, and highlight the work of poets who challenge language-as-usual in academia and the culture at large.
Phenomenal Reading is comprised of essays that are central to how best to read poetry. 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, using historical fact and the views of other key critics to clarify how particular literary works are constructed and how those constructions lead to specific effects.
Understanding that explication and contextualization do not always sufficiently harness the power of poetry, Reed pursues phenomenological methods that take into account each reader’s unique perception of the world. This collection of twelve essays values narrative as a tool for conveying the intricacy, contingency, and richness of poetic experience.
Brian M. Reed is the author of Hart Crane: After His Lights and coeditor of Situating El Lissitzky: Vitebsk, Berlin, Moscow.
Preface: How Reed Wrote Certain of His Essays---ix
I. Political Reading
1. Carl Sandburg and the Problem of Bad Political Poetry---3
2. Tom Raworth and Poetic Intuition---32
II. Sight and Sound
3. Ezra Pound's Utopia of the Eye---61
4. Gertrude Stein Speaks---69
5. The Baseness of Robert Grenier's Visual Poetics---78
6. Caroline Bergvall Begins Again---83
III. Writers Reading
7. Hart Crane and the Challenge of Akron---93
8. Robert Duncan and Gertrude Stein---110
9. Reginald Shepherd at Hart Crane's Grave---155
IV. Associative Reading
10. Rosmarie Waldrop Renews Collage---155
11. John Ashbery After All These Years---176
12. The ABCs of Substitutional Poetics---191
Notes---215
Works Cited---231
Index---243
Related Titles
Reading the Difficulties
Dialogues with Contemporary American Innovative Poetry
Edited by Thomas Fink and Judith Halden-Sullivan
