Writing into the Future
354 pages, 6 x 9
29 B&W Figures
Paperback
Release Date:13 Sep 2022
ISBN:9780817360498
Writing into the Future
New American Poetries from "The Dial" to the Digital
By Alan Golding
SERIES:
Modern and Contemporary Poetics
University of Alabama Press
A career-spanning collection of essays from a leading scholar of avant-garde poetry
Writing into the Future: New American Poetries from “The Dial” to the Digital collects Alan Golding’s essays on the futures (past and present) of poetry and poetics. Throughout the 13 essays gathered in this collection, Golding skillfully joins literary critique with a concern for history and a sociological inquiry into the creation of poetry. In Golding’s view, these are not disparate or even entirely distinct critical tasks. He is able to fruitfully interrogate canons and traditions, both on the page and in the politics of text, culture, and institution.
A central thread running through the chapters is a longstanding interest in how various versions of the “new” have been constructed, received, extended, recycled, resisted, and reanimated in American poetry since modernism. To chart the new, Golding contends with both the production and the reception of poetry, in addition to analyzing the poems themselves. In a generally chronological order, Golding reconsiders the meaning for contemporary poets of high modernists like Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, as well as the influential poetry venues The Dial and The Little Review, where less prominent but still vital poets contested what should come “next.” Subsequent essays track that contestation through The New American Poetry and later anthologies.
Mid-century major figures like Robert Creeley and George Oppen are discussed in their shared concern for the serial poem. Golding’s essays bring us all the way back to the present of the poetic future, with writing on active poets like Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Susan Howe, and Bruce Andrews and on the anticipation of digital poetics in the material texts of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E writing. Golding charts the work of defining poetry’s future and how we rewrite the past for an unfolding present.
Writing into the Future: New American Poetries from “The Dial” to the Digital collects Alan Golding’s essays on the futures (past and present) of poetry and poetics. Throughout the 13 essays gathered in this collection, Golding skillfully joins literary critique with a concern for history and a sociological inquiry into the creation of poetry. In Golding’s view, these are not disparate or even entirely distinct critical tasks. He is able to fruitfully interrogate canons and traditions, both on the page and in the politics of text, culture, and institution.
A central thread running through the chapters is a longstanding interest in how various versions of the “new” have been constructed, received, extended, recycled, resisted, and reanimated in American poetry since modernism. To chart the new, Golding contends with both the production and the reception of poetry, in addition to analyzing the poems themselves. In a generally chronological order, Golding reconsiders the meaning for contemporary poets of high modernists like Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, as well as the influential poetry venues The Dial and The Little Review, where less prominent but still vital poets contested what should come “next.” Subsequent essays track that contestation through The New American Poetry and later anthologies.
Mid-century major figures like Robert Creeley and George Oppen are discussed in their shared concern for the serial poem. Golding’s essays bring us all the way back to the present of the poetic future, with writing on active poets like Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Susan Howe, and Bruce Andrews and on the anticipation of digital poetics in the material texts of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E writing. Golding charts the work of defining poetry’s future and how we rewrite the past for an unfolding present.
Writing into the Future contains excellent, clearly written criticism by an acknowledged authority. Its explanatory power and the cogency of its arguments make it a valuable text for undergraduate and graduate students, and for anyone who wants to understand the major contributions of some of the key poets associated with Language writing.’
—Stephen Fredman, author of American Poetry as Transactional Art
'In this volume . . . the focus is on the achievement of a group of US poets as they have embodied and helped define various tendencies, especially experimental poetics, since the mid-20th century. Golding attends to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry and other page-space strategies, and he looks at the impact of advances in computer technology on poetry. He also considers the wider sociopolitical contexts, including race and gender. Throughout, there are references to previous decades of literary criticism and critical theory. His exemplar poets are George Oppen, Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, and Susan Howe, but he does not exclude the more famous names associated with high modernism: Pound, Eliot, and Williams. By the end of this engaging study, the reader will have gathered new insights into modern and contemporary US poetry. Recommended.' —CHOICE
Alan Golding is professor of English at the University of Louisville. He is author of From Outlaw to Classic: Canons in American Poetry.
