The embattled lyric : essays and conversations in poetics and anthropology / Nathaniel Tarn.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tarn, Nathaniel.

Series:

Verbal art

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Poetry, Modern--20th century--History and criticism.

Poetry, Modern.

Literature and anthropology.

Physical Description:

viii, 271 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 2007.

Summary:

This book has two main subjects which are interwoven: (1) the attitudes of selected poets (Neruda, Rilke, Breton, Celan, Artaud, Huidobro, Leiris, Paz, etc.) to the "primitive" and the "archaic," looked at from an anthropologist's viewpoint; (2) a model of the processes whereby poetry is produced and received built on Tarn's being in the very rare situation of having full careers as both poet and anthropologist. The book includes detailed biographical information about how Tarn went from being a French to an English to an American poet. It also reveals the effect of a double career and of these moves on a unique body of poetry and theoretical work. An extremely substantial interview, serving also as an introduction to, and discussion of, the essays, demonstrates that there is nothing like this work in our literature.

Contents:

Section 1 Toward Any America Whatsoever

Toward Any Geography/Toward Any America Whatsoever 3

Child as Father to Man in the American Uni-Verse or Dr. Jekyll, the Anthropologist, Emerges and Marches into the Notebook of Mr. Hyde, the Poet 9

Section 2 Auto-Anthropology

Andre Breton, Anthropology, and the Limits of Culture 49

Newly Saying the Already Said: An Attached Comment in Honor of Keiji Nishitani 55

Pablo Neruda and Indigenous Culture 61

On Paul Celan 67

Vicente Huidobro: Some Notes among Altazors 73

Michel Leiris, Timor Mortis, and the Peopled Self: A Reading of L 'Afrique Fantome as Auto-Anthropology 77

The Search for the "Primitive" Outside and Inside: The Ethnopoetics of Antonin Artaud, with Notes on William Carlos Williams 90

Translation/Antitranslation // Culture/Multiculture: Some Contradictions? 102

Octavio Paz, Anthropology, and the Future of Poetry 115

Section 3 Exile out of Silence into Cunning

Initiation and the Paradox of Power: A Sociological Approach 125

The Heraldic Vision: Some Cognitive Models for Comparative Aesthetics 132

Archaeology, Elegy, Architecture: A Poet's Program for Lyric 157

The Choral Voice: A Diptych re Anthropology and Poetry 179

Exile out of Silence into Cunning: Being Notes on Elsewhere and the Myths of Presence 187

Regarding the Issue of "New Forms" 193

On Refining a Model of Poetic Production 205

Section 4 Critical Study and Interview / Shamoon Zamir

On Anthropology & Poetry: An Interview with Nathaniel Tarn / Shamoon Zamir 221.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

080475053X

9780804750530

0804750548

9780804750547

OCLC:

71223210