Rethinking the North American Long Poem

Ridvan Askin

ISBN 10: 0826367100 / ISBN 13: 9780826367105

Published by University of New Mexico Press, US, 2024

About this Item

For centuries, critics, poets, and philosophers have either openly proclaimed or tacitly assumed the long poem as the highest expression of literary ambition and excellence. Rethinking the North American Long Poem focuses on the North American variant of this notorious form - notorious because of its often forbidding and difficult character. The contributors scrutinize seminal works and more recent efforts that have redefined or, better still, reopened the case of the long poem. Taking the categories of form, matter, and experiment as frames of conceptual reference, the book examines the ways in which material and immaterial aspects of literary practice and the philosophically and politically inscribed duality of experience and experiment are negotiated in and by North American long poems from the nineteenth century to the present.

Seller Inventory # LU-9780826367105

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Rethinking the North American Long Poem
• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press, US
• Publication Date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0826367100
• ISBN 13: 9780826367105
• Binding: Hardback
• Condition: New
• Dimensions: 15.24W x 1.91H x 22.86D centimeters 15.24 centimeters width by 1.91 centimeters height by 22.86 centimeters depth
• Weight: 446 grams

About this title

Synopsis

For centuries, critics, poets, poet-scholars, and philosophers have either openly proclaimed or tacitly assumed the long poem as the highest expression of literary ambition and excellence. Rethinking the North American Long Poem focuses on the North American variant of this notorious form—notorious because of its often forbidding and difficult character, particularly with respect to the dialectics of content and form, aesthetics and politics, matter and genre. In nine essays and a contextual introduction, the editors and contributors scrutinize seminal long poems by North American writers, including Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, Muriel Rukeyser’s The Book of the Dead, and Charles Olson’s The Maximus Poems. They also explore recent efforts that have redefined or reopened the case of the long poem, including Rachel Blau DuPlessis’s Drafts, M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!, and Claudia Rankine’s Citizen. Taking the categories of form, matter, and experiment as frames of conceptual reference, the book examines the ways in which material and immaterial aspects of literary practice and the philosophically and politically inscribed duality of experience and experiment are negotiated in and by North American long poems from the nineteenth century to the present.

About the Author

Ridvan Askin teaches North American literature at the University of Basel in Switzerland. He is the author of Narrative and Becoming and the coeditor of several books, including New Directions in Philosophy and Literature.

Julius Greve is a research associate at the Institute for English and American Studies at the University of Oldenburg in Germany. He is the author of Shreds of Matter: Cormac McCarthy and the Concept of Nature.