Afterrimages (Wesleyan Poetry Series) - Softcover

Retallack, Joan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0819512230 ISBN 13: 9780819512239

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press, 1995

Synopsis

Retallack's book draws readers into a meditative experience of time, space and language.

Joan Retallack offers a book of forms, like the medieval Book of Hours, intended to draw readers into a meditative experience of time, space, language, the many humors of chance and design, as they intersect and leave their traces on the page. All of civilization to date, all of history is after all aftermath, afterthought, afterimage. The language graphics of AFTERRIMAGES lay claim to the fragility―the gift, the terror, and the whimsy―of the remnant that all images are. Their playful nature is born of the conviction that the present tense―tense, tensile with immanent futurity―must extend itself toward the unintelligible and unknown. This is the frontier where the image hovers on the edge of its own transfiguration, the threshold where poetry can take place.

About this title

About the Author

JOAN RETALLACK is the author of eight books of poetry, the most recent of which―Procedural Elegies / Western Civ Cont'd /―was named a best book of 2010 by Artforum. In addition to Afterrimages, other titles include Memnoir, How To Do Things With Words, and Errata 5uite―chosen by Robert Creeley for the 1994 Columbia Book Award. She is co-author with John Cage, of MUSICAGE: CAGE MUSES on Words, Art, Music. Retallack is the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Humanities at Bard College.

From the Back Cover

The language graphics of 'Afterrimages' lay claim to the fragility--the gift, the terror, and the whimsy--of the remnant that all images are. Their playful nature is born of the conviction that the present tense--tense, tensile with immanent futurity--must extend itself toward the unintelligible and unknown. This frontier where the image hovers on the edge of its own transfiguration, the threshold where poetry can take place.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0819512230
• ISBN 13: 9780819512239
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 115