Questions of Poetics : Language Writing and Consequences / by Barrett Watten.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Watten, Barrett.

Series:

Contemporary North American poetry series.

Contemporary North American poetry series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Language poetry--History and criticism.

Language poetry.

American poetry--20th century--History and criticism--Theory, etc.

American poetry.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (309 p.)

Place of Publication:

Iowa City : University of Iowa Press, [2016]

Summary:

Questions of Poetics is Barrett Watten's major reassessment of the political history, social formation, and literary genealogy of Language writing. A key participant in the emergent bicoastal poetic avant-garde as poet, editor, and publisher, Watten has developed, over three decades of writing in poetics, a sustained account of its theory and practice. The present volume represents the core of Watten's critical writing and public lecturing since the millennium, taking up the historical origins and continuity of Language writing, from its beginnings to the present.Each chapter is a theoretical inquiry into an aspect of poetics in an expanded sense-from the relation of experimental poetry to cultural logics of liberation and political economy, to questions of community and the politics of the avant-garde, to the cultural contexts where it is produced and intervenes. Each serves as a kind of thought experiment that theorizes and assesses the consequences of Language writing in expanded fields of meaning that include history, political theory, art history, and narrative theory. While all are grounded in a series of baseline questions of poetics, they also polemically address the currently turbulent debates on the politics of the avant-garde, especially Language writing, among emerging communities of poets.In manifold ways, Watten masterfully demonstrates the aesthetic and political aims of Language writing, its influence on emerging literary schools, and its present aesthetic, critical, and political horizons. Questions of Poetics will be a major point of reference in continuing debates on poetry and literary history, a critical reexamination for already familiar readers and a clearly presented introduction for new ones.

Contents:

Contents; Acknowledgments and Permissions; Introduction; Questioning Poetics; Language Writing; Material Practices; Periodizing Language; Constructing Frames; Formal Agency; Coda: Consequences; Chapter 1: The Turn to Language and the 1960s; Continuing the 1960s; Poetry as Political Speech; Emancipating Enlightenment; Fiat Lux; Hari Om Namo Shivaya; Impossibility as Politics; The Turn to Language in Poetry; Constructivist Poetics; Chapter 2: Late Capitalism and Language Writing; Late Capitalism; Language Writing; Radical Particulars; Headless Heads; Serial Transgressions

Chapter 3: Collective Autobiography: The Grand Piano and the Politics of CommunityPiano; Forte; Beginnings; Middles; Ends; Coda; Chapter 4: Periodizing the Present: Language Writing, Conceptual Art, and Conceptual Writing; Writing the Present; The Conceptual Date; Conceptual Writing; Chapter 5: On the Advantages of Negativity: Avant-Garde Poetry, New Music, Postindustrial Art; Negativity; Performative Poetics; New Music; Postindustrial Art; Critical Agency; Chapter 6: The Expanded Object of the Poetic Field: Or, What Is a Poet/Critic?; Object Lessons; Subject Formations; Notes; Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781609384319

1609384318

OCLC:

957156924