Laughter and Knowledge in Contemporary Poetry

Mapping Intimacies ◽

10.1093/oso/9780192895714.003.0008 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 219-252

Author(s):

Rachel Trousdale

Keyword(s):

Contemporary Poetry ◽

Affective Responses ◽

First Century ◽

Other Minds ◽

Science And Literature ◽

Lucille Clifton ◽

Twenty First Century

Twenty-first-century poets use humor to examine and convey different kinds of knowledge—cultural, scientific, and emotional. Laughter in the work of poets like Raymond McDaniel, Stephanie Burt, Cathy Park Hong, Albert Goldbarth, Kim Rosenfield, Jamaal May, Patricia Lockwood, and Lucille Clifton prompts us to examine competing epistemologies. These poets examine how we exchange the material of laughter, and expose the ways that affective responses can determine what we think we know. They show how laughter can re-shape our sense of canons and render unfamiliar material accessible, expanding our literary knowledge and the sympathetic capacities that knowledge carries with it. They demonstrate how laughter breaks down categories like “science” and “literature,” expanding the kinds of knowledge that we value as “fact.” At the same time, they warn that laughter’s power to heal trauma or mediate other minds is limited, and that we should not trust humorous insights too far.

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Poetry Matters: Neoliberalism, Affect, and the Posthuman in Twenty-First Century North American Feminist PoeticsForms of a World: Contemporary Poetry and the Making of Globalization

American Literature ◽

10.1215/00029831-8878602 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Jeff Westover

Keyword(s):

North American ◽

Contemporary Poetry ◽

First Century ◽

Twenty First Century

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Coda

Forms of a World ◽

10.5422/fordham/9780823282227.003.0006 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 119-128

Author(s):

Walt Hunter

Keyword(s):

Middle East ◽

Iraq War ◽

Contemporary Poetry ◽

First Century ◽

Global English ◽

Military Occupations ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

Political Actions

The coda explores one of the tensions or problems for poets writing explicitly about globalization in English—namely, that the spread of English itself has been inseparable from the violence of the global and has abetted its propagation. In Look (2016), Solmaz Sharif writes about the Iran-Iraq War, the twenty-first century US invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the detainment of prisoners in Guatanamo Bay. She employs a particular kind of “global English,” one that is forged in US wars and military occupations in the Middle East. The coda concludes by reflecting on the ways that contemporary poetry has been engaged in remaking a politics of globalization and how poetry changes our sense of what ethical and political actions and subjectivities are possible under global capitalist regimes.

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Introduction

Kathleen Jamie ◽

10.3366/edinburgh/9780748696000.003.0001 ◽

2015 ◽

Author(s):

Rachel Falconer

Keyword(s):

Mixed Media ◽

Contemporary Poetry ◽

First Century ◽

Human Beings ◽

International Scale ◽

Artistic Vision ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

Media Work ◽

Poetry Collection ◽

The Way

Surveying the range of Kathleen Jamie's corpus to date, from the earliest collection of verse (Black Spiders, 1982) to her poetry collection The Overhaul (2012), her volume of nature essays, Sightlines (2012), and her mixed media work, Frissures (2013), this introduction assesses Kathleen Jamie’s contribution to contemporary poetry on a national and international scale. Restless, complex and intelligent, yet always lucid and clear, Jamie's imagination is of that rare kind that resonates with every kind of reader, from general readers to specialists. This introduction argues that Kathleen Jamie has emerged as a writer of singular originality, skill and artistic vision. Her vision casts light on the way we live in relation to non-human beings in the twenty-first century, and it stimulates us into imagining how we might live better, with a greater awareness, appreciation and responsiveness to our environment than we currently do.

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