Marjorie Perloff writes in her preface to Poetics in a New Key that when she learned David Jonathan Y. Bayot wanted to publish a collection of her interviews and essays, she was “at once honored and mystified.”  But to Perloff’s surprise and her readers’ delight, the resulting assembly not only presents an accessible and provocative introduction to Perloff’s critical thought, but also highlights the wide range of her interests, and the energetic reassessments and new takes that have marked her academic career. 

The fourteen interviews in Poetics in a New Key—conducted by scholars, poets, and critics from the United States, Denmark, Norway, France, and Poland, including Charles Bernstein, Hélène Aji, and Peter Nicholls—cover a broad spectrum of topics in the study of poetry: its nature as a literary genre, its current state, and its relationship to art, politics, language, theory, and technology. Also featured in the collection are three pieces by Perloff herself: an academic memoir, an exploration of poetry pedagogy, and an essay on twenty-first-century intellectuals. But across all the interviews and essays, Perloff’s distinctive personality and approach to reading and talking resound, making this new collection an inspiring resource for scholars both of poetry and writing.

Marjorie Perloff is professor of English emerita at Stanford University and the author or editor of many books, including, most recently, Unoriginal Genius: Poetry by Other Means in the New Century, also published by the University of Chicago Press. David Jonathan Y. Bayot is associate professor of literature at De La Salle University-Manila, Philippines.

— Charles Bernstein, University of Pennsylvania, author of "Recalculating"

— Jahan Ramazani, University of Virginia, author of "Poetry and Its Others: News, Prayer, Song, and the Dialogue of Genres"

— Brian M. Reed, University of Washington, author of "Nobody’s Business: Twenty-First Century Avant-Garde Poetics"

— Rona Cran, Times Literary Supplement