by Marjorie Perloff edited by David Jonathan Y. Bayot
University of Chicago Press, 2014 Paper: 978-0-226-19941-2 | eISBN: 978-0-226-19955-9 Library of Congress Classification PS29.P47A3 2014 Dewey Decimal Classification 810.9
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
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.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
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.
REVIEWS
“A compelling work, enthralling to read and filled with profound insight, provocations, and an awe-inspiring range of engagements and knowledge. Poetics in a New Key is the perfect companion to Perloff’s many books, but, more than that, it is an ideal introduction to her thought.”
— Charles Bernstein, University of Pennsylvania, author of "Recalculating"
“Lively, engaging, and energetic. Perloff is the English-speaking world’s preeminent advocate for the poetic avant-garde, and in this book, she vigorously argues for the new and the innovative, and blasts the boring and conventional. Because of her exceptional candor and clarity, because of the depth of her convictions and knowledge, this book has unusual force. She cogently advances her positions, mixing firebrand assertion with robust humor. As an interviewee, she is charmingly aggressive, unflinchingly polemical, and disarmingly frank. Her confidence in her opinions is unwavering. These riveting pages are full of axioms, provocations, and manifesto-like pronouncements. Funny, robust, cantankerous, pointed, and amazingly vivid interviews and essays.”
— Jahan Ramazani, University of Virginia, author of "Poetry and Its Others: News, Prayer, Song, and the Dialogue of Genres"
“Perloff is a superlative speaker and conversationalist; her off-the-cuff comments are powerfully insightful and energizing, and she is superb in a roundtable setting, where she can respond dynamically to others’ ideas and arguments. Poetics in a New Key will finally give a wider audience access to Perloff as a thinker and critic who excels in these more casual and spontaneous settings. Its interviews make for absorbing, even compulsive reading.”
— Brian M. Reed, University of Washington, author of "Nobody’s Business: Twenty-First Century Avant-Garde Poetics"
“This book is a dynamic introduction to the avant-garde of the past 150 years, as well as to Perloff’s work. Bayot’s judicious selections include discussions of manifestos, conceptualism, language and translation, Robert Lowell, poetry and pedagogy, futurism, conflicting traditions, and the practice of criticism. Perloff quotes writers she admires with ease (particularly Ezra Pound, Frank O’Hara, and David Antin). Favourite axioms (‘do not re-tell in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose’) recur, giving the reader a clear understanding of the thought that has influenced her. The collection reveals Perloff at her best, as she ‘debates the role of various poetic movements and poets, as well as the larger relationship of poetry to culture.’ She is a gifted conversationalist with a remarkable awareness of her lifetime’s work, and a gratifying willingness continually to reassess her own ideas.”
— Rona Cran, Times Literary Supplement
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Preface Marjorie Perloff
Part I: The Critic
1 Becoming a Critic: An Academic Memoir
2 A Critic of the Other Tradition Interview with Hélène Aji and Antoine Cazé
3 Marjorie Perloff On & Off the Page of Poetry Interview with Kristine Samson and Nikolaj Rønhede
Part II: A Poetics
4 The Alter(ed) Ground of Poetry and Pedagogy Conversation with Charles Bernstein
5 Mapping the New Interview with Rain Taxi Review of Books
6 Modernism / Postmodernism? Will the Real Avant-garde Please Stand Up! Interview with Jeffrey Side
7 (Un)Framing the other Tradition: On Ashbery and Others Interview with Grzegorz Jankowicz
8 Robert Lowell, Now and Then Conversation with David Wojahn
9 Futurism and Schism: Close Listening with Marjorie Perloff Interview with Charles Bernstein
10 The Challenge of Language Interview with Enrique Mallen
11 Conceptual Writing: A Modernist Issue Interview with Peter Nicholls
12 Still Making It New: Marjorie Perloff in Manifesto Mode Interview with Ellef Prestsæter
Part III: To Praxis
13 What is Poetry? Interview with Fulcrum
14 On Evaluation in Poetry Dialogue with Robert von Hallberg
15 Teaching Poetry in Translation: The Case for Bilingualism
16 The Internet Moment in the Life of Publishing Interview with Front Porch Magazine
17 The Intellectual in the 21st Century
Afterword
David Jonathan Y. Bayot
Interviewers
Index of Names
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
by Marjorie Perloff edited by David Jonathan Y. Bayot
University of Chicago Press, 2014 Paper: 978-0-226-19941-2 eISBN: 978-0-226-19955-9
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.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
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.
REVIEWS
“A compelling work, enthralling to read and filled with profound insight, provocations, and an awe-inspiring range of engagements and knowledge. Poetics in a New Key is the perfect companion to Perloff’s many books, but, more than that, it is an ideal introduction to her thought.”
— Charles Bernstein, University of Pennsylvania, author of "Recalculating"
“Lively, engaging, and energetic. Perloff is the English-speaking world’s preeminent advocate for the poetic avant-garde, and in this book, she vigorously argues for the new and the innovative, and blasts the boring and conventional. Because of her exceptional candor and clarity, because of the depth of her convictions and knowledge, this book has unusual force. She cogently advances her positions, mixing firebrand assertion with robust humor. As an interviewee, she is charmingly aggressive, unflinchingly polemical, and disarmingly frank. Her confidence in her opinions is unwavering. These riveting pages are full of axioms, provocations, and manifesto-like pronouncements. Funny, robust, cantankerous, pointed, and amazingly vivid interviews and essays.”
— Jahan Ramazani, University of Virginia, author of "Poetry and Its Others: News, Prayer, Song, and the Dialogue of Genres"
“Perloff is a superlative speaker and conversationalist; her off-the-cuff comments are powerfully insightful and energizing, and she is superb in a roundtable setting, where she can respond dynamically to others’ ideas and arguments. Poetics in a New Key will finally give a wider audience access to Perloff as a thinker and critic who excels in these more casual and spontaneous settings. Its interviews make for absorbing, even compulsive reading.”
— Brian M. Reed, University of Washington, author of "Nobody’s Business: Twenty-First Century Avant-Garde Poetics"
“This book is a dynamic introduction to the avant-garde of the past 150 years, as well as to Perloff’s work. Bayot’s judicious selections include discussions of manifestos, conceptualism, language and translation, Robert Lowell, poetry and pedagogy, futurism, conflicting traditions, and the practice of criticism. Perloff quotes writers she admires with ease (particularly Ezra Pound, Frank O’Hara, and David Antin). Favourite axioms (‘do not re-tell in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose’) recur, giving the reader a clear understanding of the thought that has influenced her. The collection reveals Perloff at her best, as she ‘debates the role of various poetic movements and poets, as well as the larger relationship of poetry to culture.’ She is a gifted conversationalist with a remarkable awareness of her lifetime’s work, and a gratifying willingness continually to reassess her own ideas.”
— Rona Cran, Times Literary Supplement
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Preface Marjorie Perloff
Part I: The Critic
1 Becoming a Critic: An Academic Memoir
2 A Critic of the Other Tradition Interview with Hélène Aji and Antoine Cazé
3 Marjorie Perloff On & Off the Page of Poetry Interview with Kristine Samson and Nikolaj Rønhede
Part II: A Poetics
4 The Alter(ed) Ground of Poetry and Pedagogy Conversation with Charles Bernstein
5 Mapping the New Interview with Rain Taxi Review of Books
6 Modernism / Postmodernism? Will the Real Avant-garde Please Stand Up! Interview with Jeffrey Side
7 (Un)Framing the other Tradition: On Ashbery and Others Interview with Grzegorz Jankowicz
8 Robert Lowell, Now and Then Conversation with David Wojahn
9 Futurism and Schism: Close Listening with Marjorie Perloff Interview with Charles Bernstein
10 The Challenge of Language Interview with Enrique Mallen
11 Conceptual Writing: A Modernist Issue Interview with Peter Nicholls
12 Still Making It New: Marjorie Perloff in Manifesto Mode Interview with Ellef Prestsæter
Part III: To Praxis
13 What is Poetry? Interview with Fulcrum
14 On Evaluation in Poetry Dialogue with Robert von Hallberg
15 Teaching Poetry in Translation: The Case for Bilingualism
16 The Internet Moment in the Life of Publishing Interview with Front Porch Magazine
17 The Intellectual in the 21st Century
Afterword
David Jonathan Y. Bayot
Interviewers
Index of Names
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE