Poetic Culture: Contemporary American Poetry between Community and Institution (Avant-Garde & Modernism Studies) - Hardcover

Beach, Christopher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0810116774 ISBN 13: 9780810116771

Publisher: Northwestern University Press, 1999

Synopsis

In Poetic Culture, Christopher Beach questions the cultural significance of poetry, both as a canonical system and as a contemporary practice. By analyzing issues such as poetry's loss of audience, the "anthology wars" of the 1950s and early 1960s, the academic and institutional orientation of current poetry, the poetry slam scene, and the efforts to use television as a medium for presenting poetry to a wider audience, Beach presents a sociocultural framework that is fundamental to an understanding of the poetic medium. While calling for new critical methods that allow us to examine poetry beyond the limits of the accepted contemporary canon, and beyond the terms in which canonical poetry is generally discussed and evaluated, Beach also makes a compelling case for poetry and its continued vitality both as an aesthetic form and as a site for the creation of community and value.

About this title

About the Author:

Christopher Beach is Adjunct Assistant Professor at Claremont Graduate University. He is the author of several books in the field of American poetry and one book on American cinema. His most recent books are Poetic Culture: Contemporary American Poetry and Institution and Class, Language, and American Film Comedy. He is also the editor of Artifice and Indeterminacy: An Anthology of New Poetics.

About this edition

• Publisher: Northwestern University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0810116774
• ISBN 13: 9780810116771
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240