Poetics of emptiness : transformations of Asian thought in American poetry / Jonathan Stalling.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stalling, Jonathan.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American poetry--Chinese influences.

American poetry.

Emptiness (Philosophy).

Philosophy--East Asia.

Philosophy.

Poetics.

East Asia.

Physical Description:

xiii, 267 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Fordham University Press, 2010.

Summary:

Poetics of Emptiness traces the historically specific, intertextual pathways of a single, if polyvalent, philosophical term, emptiness, as it is transformed within twentieth-century American poetry and poetics. This conceptual migration is detailed in two sections. The first, focusing on "transpacific Buddhist poetics," discusses Ernest Fenollosa's "The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry" as an expression of Fenollosa's Buddhist poetics, explores classical Chinese poetics as it was known by Fenollosa, and talks about the role of emptiness in Gary Snyder. The second half, on "transpacific Daoist poetics," explores the career of poet/translator/critic Wai-lim Yip and engages the weave of poststructural thought and Daoist and shamanistic discourses in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha.

Formulating interpretive frames as hybrid as the texts being read, this book unveils one of the most important yet still largely unknown stories of American poetry and poetics. Book jacket.

Contents:

Buddhist imaginaries. Emptiness in flux: the Buddhist poetics of Ernest Fenollosa's "The Chinese written character as a medium for poetry"

Patterned harmony: Buddhism, sound, and Ernest Fenollosa's poetics of correlative cosmology

Teaching the law: Gary Snyder's poetics of emptiness

Daoist imaginaries. Language of emptiness: Wai-lim Yip's Daoist project

Pacing the void: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictée.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780823231447

0823231445

OCLC:

326418437