Writing in Real Time: Emergent Poetics from Whitman to the Digital (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture, Series Number 163)

From Walt Whitman to the contemporary period, the long poem has been one of the more dynamic, intricate, and yet challenging literary practices of modernity. Addressing those challenges, Writing in Real Time combines systems theory, literary history, and recent debates in poetics to interpret a broad range of American long poems as emergent systems, capable of adaptation and transformation in response to environmental change. Due to these emergent properties, the long poem performs essential cultural work, offering a unique experience of history that remains valuable for our rapidly transforming digital age. Moving across a broad range of literary and theoretical texts, Writing in Real Time demonstrates that the study of emergence can enhance literary scholarship, just as literature provides unique insights into emergent properties, making this book a key resource for scholars, graduate students, and undergraduate students alike.

Paul Jaussen is an Assistant Professor of Literature at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan. His research covers nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, with a particular focus on poetics and literary theory. His essays and reviews have appeared in New Literary History, Contemporary Literature, the Journal of Modern Literature, William Carlos Williams Review, Jacket2, and The Volta.