The Commons

Collis, Stephen

ISBN 10: 088922580X / ISBN 13: 9780889225800

Published by Talonbooks, 2008

About this Item

Most items will be dispatched the same or the next working day. A copy that has been read but remains in clean condition. All of the pages are intact and the cover is intact and the spine may show signs of wear. The book may have minor markings which are not specifically mentioned.

Seller Inventory # rev1124500237

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Commons
• Publisher: Talonbooks
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 088922580X
• ISBN 13: 9780889225800
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Good
• Weight: 226.8 grams

About this title

Synopsis

In The Commons we wander the English countryside with the so-called mad peasant poet John Clare, just escaped from an Essex asylum, walking the more than eighty miles to his home in Helpston; we pick wild fruit with anarchist Henry David Thoreau, also newly escaped from jail (for not paying his poll tax); and we comb the English Lake District, undermining William Wordsworth’s proprietary claim upon it, with a host of authors of Romantic Guides and Tours.

Tearing down (intellectual) property’s fencing, The Commons veers in and out of history to find spaces of linguistic hope. What we call, in less inspired moments, “allusion,” “borrowing,” or even (pretentiously) “intertextuality” is just this fact that poetry proves again and again: our languages are common. Shared. Un-enclosable.

About the Author

Stephen Collis is a poet, critic and scholar. Author of two previous books of poetry, Mine and Anarchive, his essays on contemporary poetry and poetics have appeared in many journals including The Capilano Review and The Chicago Review. He is the author of two book-length critical studies, Phyllis Webb and the Common Good and Through Words of Others: Susan Howe and Anarcho-Scholasticism.