Long Poems about Everything: Dictionary as Subject and Model for Poem, 1974–2016

Author(s):  
Giles Goodland

This chapter discusses the use of dictionaries and books of reference as a motif and a formal device in American poetry, particularly in the avant-garde stream, from Zukofsky to the Language poets, with special reference to the work of Ron Silliman and Tina Darragh. It distinguishes long poems in the Whitman tradition, which attempt to comprehend the world in the form of lists and extended descriptions, often using alphabetical orderings or other kinds of organisation similar to dictionaries, and smaller works of visual poetry able to subvert the notion of definition in a dictionary.

Author(s):  
Oren Izenberg

This book offers a new way to understand the divisions that organize twentieth-century poetry. It argues that the most important conflict is not between styles or aesthetic politics, but between poets who seek to preserve or produce the incommensurable particularity of experience by making powerful objects, and poets whose radical commitment to abstract personhood seems altogether incompatible with experience—and with poems. Reading across the apparent gulf that separates traditional and avant-garde poets, the book reveals the common philosophical urgency that lies behind diverse forms of poetic difficulty—from William Butler Yeats's esoteric symbolism and George Oppen's minimalism and silence to Frank O'Hara's joyful slightness and the Language poets' rejection of traditional aesthetic satisfactions. For these poets, what begins as a practical question about the conduct of literary life—what distinguishes a poet or group of poets?—ends up as an ontological inquiry about social life: What is a person and how is a community possible? In the face of the violence and dislocation of the twentieth century, these poets resist their will to mastery, shy away from the sensual richness of their strongest work, and undermine the particularity of their imaginative and moral visions—all in an effort to allow personhood itself to emerge as an undeniable fact making an unrefusable claim.


Author(s):  
Jonathan N. Barron

American poetic realism still remains a largely unknown and untold story. Although it came to American poetry relatively late by comparison with fiction, the typical American realist poem has a distinctive nexus combining theme, diction, and style. Chief among the first American realists are Robert Frost, Edgar Lee Masters, Carl Sandburg, and Sara Teasdale. Specifically, realist poetry expresses a pragmatic philosophy rejecting the individual’s location in the world as something knowable, fixed, and stable. Realist poets reject as amoral and quietist the commitment to beauty for the sake of beauty and tend toward virtues associated with masculinity. Their poetry rejects generic nouns in favor of particulars and depicts recognizable contemporary landscapes and, above all, contemporary American cities such as Chicago, Boston, or New York. It emphasizes the interior space of the self as revealed by the new science of psychology. It also focuses on the living idiom of talk and speech rather than a “literary” language.


Author(s):  
Astrid Skjerven

Living in an era of globalization, the capability of communicating identity has become of greater importance than ever. This has increased our estimation of the vernacular, which represents an expression of a national or local identity. In Norway the vernacular tradition in silver jewelry is particularly strong. It has played an important role not only locally, but also in the constantly changing relation with the outside world, in accordance with the societal situation. It should therefore constitute a reliable indicator of how our country relates to the present process of globalization. The aim of the paper is to throw light on the relation between Norway’s role on the global scene and the use of the vernacular tradition in the development of jewelry design in general. It consists of a historical exploration that leads up to a discussion the present and future situation. Today there is a cleft between consumer behavior and avant-garde practice. In accordance with the global situation and Norway’s geopolitical situation of existing in the outskirts of political and economic decisions, the situation is characterized by a variety of practices, and by a slow acceptance of the vernacular values in the world of avant-garde practitioners.


1975 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 268-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
W P Feistritzer

In this short article the author indicates the present stages of development of variety evaluation, testing, certification, production and marketing of quality seed—of cereals, industrial crops, pasture plants and vegetables—in major geographical regions of the world and draws attention to some of the underlying problems which must be faced in the future if further progress is to be made.


1970 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 338-348
Author(s):  
N. H. G. Robinson

The purpose of this paper is to take account of the contribution to religious thought of Professor Nels F. S. Ferré with special reference to two fairly recent books, Reason in Religion and The Living God of Nowhere and Nothing. For more than a quarter of a century Dr Ferré has occupied a prominent place in the field of theological education in the United States, first at Andover Newton Theological School and for the last few years at Parsons College; and by articles and books he has proved himself a most prolific writer. By and large, moreover, he has persistently evinced an evangelical concern to be faithful to the fulness of the Christian Gospel, so that if by chance, at this point or that, he is deemed to have fallen short, that has certainly happened, not by intention, but in spite of it, by the logical development of his presuppositions. In a much earlier book he offered his readers a choice, ‘either a staggering faith beyond our wildest imagination, centred in God, or else the darkness of description, explaining nothing’ and there is no doubt which alternative he himself preferred. ‘Feeding back modern man his own thoughts and feelings will not nourish him. He must be helped to see and to accept the truth that saves.’ ‘Unless “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself” in a historically factual way, without all cavil or equivocation, I know no Gospel for mankind.’


2005 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-317
Author(s):  
Kurt Wurmli

Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata are recognized as the most influential creators of the contemporary Japanese dance form known today as butoh. Since its wild and avant-garde beginnings in the late 1950s, butoh has evolved into an established and appreciated art form throughout the world. Despite its popularity and strong influences on the international modern dance world, butoh only recently became an accepted subject for academic research in Japan as well as in the West. With the new opening of butoh research centers and archives—such as the Ohno Dance Studio Archives at BANK ART 1929 in Yokohama, the Kazuo Ohno Archives at Bologna University in Italy, and the Hijikata Tatsumi Archives at Keio University in Tokyo—serious scholarly attention has been given to the art of butoh's founders. However, the lack of firsthand sources by butoh artists reflecting their own work still poses great limitations for a deep understanding of the art form. Kazuo Ohno's World from Without and Within is not only the first full-length book in English about the master's life and work, but also offers a rare inside view of butoh.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Klengel

The radical aesthetic of the historical avant-garde movements has often been explained as a reaction to the catastrophic experience of the First World War and a denouncement of the bourgeoisie’s responsibility for its horrors. This article explores a blind spot in these familiar interpretations of the international avant-garde. Not only the violence of the World War but also the experience of a worldwide deadly pandemic, the Spanish flu, have moulded the literary and artistic production of the 1920s. In this paper, I explore this hypothesis through the example of Mário de Andrade’s famous book of poetry Pauliceia desvairada (1922), which I reinterpret in the light of historical studies on the Spanish flu in São Paulo. An in-depth examination of all parts of this important early opus of the Brazilian Modernism shows that Mário de Andrade’s poetic images of urban coexistence simultaneously aim at a radical renewal of language and at a melancholic coming to terms with a traumatic pandemic past.


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