Epicurean Poetics before Philodemus

This chapter summarizes the evidence for discussion of poetry and poetics by Epicureans from Epicurus to the Epicureans who are contemporary with Philodemus. It turns out that, in all likelihood, the first generation of Epicureans developed an account of poetry and how it works, and that we should attribute this theory to Metrodorus and his On Poems. As is well known, Epicurus himself was concerned to deny a role in education to poetry (only his philosophy is truly educational), but he did not ban the writing or enjoyment of poetry. This allowed Metrodorus to write an On Poems, which probably served as the standard Epicurean account. Later Epicureans reflect that account, but do not add much to our own understanding, except for Demetrius Laco, who shows interest in less theoretical topics, such as defining features of genres and rhetorical/poetic tropes.

Against the Monist Model of Tang Poetics

In recent decades, a significant amount of Western scholarship on traditional Chinese poetry and poetics has either proposed or assumed a vision of the art underwritten by the supposed “monism,” “nonduality,” and “immanence” of traditional Chinese worldviews. This essay argues that although these were important ideas in certain periods and contexts, they cannot be taken as unproblematically defining the world of thought in which poetry operated during the Tang dynasty. Instead, Tang writers more routinely drew in their discussions of art upon the epistemological tensions and discontinuities posited by medieval intellectual and religious traditions. For this reason, they often outlined models of poetry very different from those most common in contemporary criticism.

Editor's Note

Charles Bernstein is a major crossing point for poetry and poetics. His art and discussion of poetry exploit and develop the vernaculars of language as they echo across time and international borders and national languages.

Charles Bernstein: Against the Idea of Poetry

This text is Leevi Lehto's introduction to his Finnish translation of Charles Bernstein's work, both poetry and poetics. Lehto argues that Bernstein's poems are interventions into various constellations, or power relations, in the field of poetry, always reacting to something, always against a particular idealization—among them the idea of interventionism as such.

Engendering Biopoetics of Testimony: Louise Dupré, Chus Pato, and Erín Moure

The act of bearing witness to the remnants of Auschwitz strains poetry and poetics. To examine manifestations of this disarray, this article first establishes a dialogue between philosophy and poetry by discussing Giorgio Agamben’s conception of testimony and Jacques Derrida’s reflection on the shibboleth. It goes on to consider writings by Louise Dupré, Chus Pato, and Erín Moure, who write as inheritors of necropolitical violence, yet at a remove from the Shoah. Although their writing practices cross paths with Agamben’s and Derrida’s reflections, these poets generate a biopoetics of testimony that exceeds these reflections by engendering a tension between dispossession and regeneration.L’acte de témoigner des vestiges d’Auschwitz met à mal la poésie et la poétique. Pour examiner les manifestations de ce désarroi, cet article établit d’abord un dialogue entre philosophie et poésie en abordant la conception du témoignage de Giorgio Agamben et la réflexion de Jacques Derrida sur le shibboleth. Il se penche ensuite sur les écrits de Louise Dupré, Chus Pato et Erín Moure, qui écrivent en héritiers de la violence nécropolitique, mais à distance de la Shoah. Bien que leurs pratiques d’écriture croisent les réflexions d’Agamben et de Derrida, ces poètes génèrent une biopoétique du témoignage qui dépasse ces réflexions en engendrant une tension entre dépossession et régénération.

The Cloud of Longing

The Cloud of Longing is a full-length study and translation of the great Sanskrit poet Kālidāsa’s famed Meghadūta (literally: The Cloud Messenger) with a focus on its interfacing of nature, feeling, figurative language, and mythic memory. While the Meghadūta has been translated a number of times, the last “almost academic” translation was published in 1976 (Leonard Nathan, The Transport of Love: The Meghadūta of Kālidāsa). Barbara Stoler Miller, my graduate mentor at Columbia University, oftentimes remarked that it was time for a new translation of the text. This volume, however, is more than an Indological translation. It is a study of the text in light of both classical Indian and contemporary Western literary theory, and it is aimed at lovers of poetry and poetics and students of world literature. It seeks to widen the arena of literary and poetic studies to include classic works of Asian traditions. It also looks at the poem’s imaginative portrayals of “nature” and “environment” from perspectives that have rarely been considered.

Starting a Conversation: The Effort, Effect and Affect of Trans Poetics

In the introduction to Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, editor TC Tolbert states that the cultural work of this anthology is, in part, “an attempt to expand the range of what is possible for trans and genderqueer poets and to acknowledge that there is no such thing as monolithic trans and genderqueer poetry” (10). Tolbert further notes that there are two dangers to producing an anthology that will, undoubtedly, shift literary culture: they are exclusion and isolation or confinement (11). Tolbert and fellow editor Trace Peterson are both aware, then, that as a burgeoning field of study and literary culture, transgender poetry and poetics simply cannot be defined, lest they perpetuate exclusion (a state with which trans writers are most familiar) and isolation (Tolbert here cites a “biographical frame [that] puts more emphasis on the author ... than the actual poems” - but the editors are also rightly concerned that only other trans people will be interested in trans poetics, meaning cisgender readers will overlook these works [11]).

Starting a Conversation: The Effort, Effect and Affect of Trans Poetics

In the introduction to Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, editor TC Tolbert states that the cultural work of this anthology is, in part, “an attempt to expand the range of what is possible for trans and genderqueer poets and to acknowledge that there is no such thing as monolithic trans and genderqueer poetry” (10). Tolbert further notes that there are two dangers to producing an anthology that will, undoubtedly, shift literary culture: they are exclusion and isolation or confinement (11). Tolbert and fellow editor Trace Peterson are both aware, then, that as a burgeoning field of study and literary culture, transgender poetry and poetics simply cannot be defined, lest they perpetuate exclusion (a state with which trans writers are most familiar) and isolation (Tolbert here cites a “biographical frame [that] puts more emphasis on the author ... than the actual poems” - but the editors are also rightly concerned that only other trans people will be interested in trans poetics, meaning cisgender readers will overlook these works [11]).