Expressivity in Modern Poetry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1683931181 ISBN 13: 9781683931188

Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2019

Expressivity in Modern Poetry explores three interrelated subjects. The first is a general exposition of the radical or deeply realistic aspects of the poetry and visual arts of the modem period. The focus is on the works of Ezra Pound as understood through a prism of postmodern thought. The second subject is the poetry and poetics of Charles Olson, a pivotal figure during the transition from modernism to postmodemism. The third subject is contemporary innovative poetry with special attention to transcultural, neobarroco, and language-centered aspects of composition. The grounding for this section is found in the works of William Carlos Williams, Aime Cesaire, and Jose Lezama Lima. A reversal of the relation between the center and periphery-decentering the New York-to-Paris vector-is crucial for understanding the Caribbean as a seedbed for both innovative and identity-based poetics. Wellman's purpose is to amplify the cultural importance of expressivity in a field where critical discussion is often dominated by constructivism and conceptualism. Expressivity in Modern Poetry offers a new reading of the relation between twentieth-century modernism and contemporary poetic practice.

About the Author:

Donald Wellman is an independent scholar, poet, and translator.

Review:

Immanence and expressivity are Donald Wellman’s watchwords in this bold and exhilarating account of literary modernism and its legacies. Indeed, the book’s intellectual range permits an “opening of the field” that reveals what Wellman calls after Deleuze and Guattari a “universe of multiple planes” and “emergent hybridities”—a literary universe, that is, which Pound, Williams, and Olson now share with major poets and writers from the Caribbean and Latin America. The sheer sweep and brio of Wellman’s book make it an indispensable addition to modern literature studies. (Peter Nicholls)

Don Wellman’s brilliant and sure-to-be controversial Expressivity in Modern Poetry is necessary reading for anyone concerned with modern poetry. In this landmark analysis, Wellman charts a unique map of how expressivity and subjectivity are key elements in poetic discourse, and argues persuasively that we must read modern and contemporary work in the contexts of language, culture, otherness and history. Editor, translator, poet and critic, Wellman has the depth and breadth of knowledge of poetry, poetics and literary discourse to take on the ambitious task of unraveling a diverse number of poetic strands, then weaving them back together in a coherent and revealing fashion. Expressivity in Modern Poetry is a major contribution to the field of both poetry and criticism. (Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno)