Search Results

Scientific American Poetry: Rae Armantrout, Jackson Mac Low, and Robert Duncan

Peter Middleton

in Physics Envy: American Poetry and Science in the Cold War and After

This chapter discusses how four poets made use, or may have done so, of specific articles from Scientific American, a magazine that deliberately set out to provide the public with sufficient ... More

This chapter discusses how four poets made use, or may have done so, of specific articles from Scientific American, a magazine that deliberately set out to provide the public with sufficient information about scientific developments to contribute to democracy. Sometimes a poet only later acknowledges it as a source, as in the case of Rae Armantrout’s poem “Natural History,” which critiques sociobiology. The chapter speculates whether Frank O’Hara’s famous poem about the sun was written in response to a specific Scientific American article and concludes that the circumstantial evidence is not strong enough. Jackson Mac Low’s poems in Stanzas for Iris Lezak make use of several articles from Scientific American. The chapter argues that his acrostic proceduralism is an original mode of inquiry by which he exposes hidden strata in scientific texts, and exposes norms of poetic communication. Robert Duncan explicitly cites a diagram in an article on human evolution in the Scientific American in his poem “Osiris and Set,” which is shown to be responsive not only to that passage in the article, but also to the general mood of an issue of the magazine full of advertisements for advanced nuclear weaponry.Less

Poetry and Song

Jahan Ramazani

in Poetry and Its Others: News, Prayer, Song, and the Dialogue of Genres

In homage to the long fellowship between poetry and song, modern and contemporary writers often title their poems “songs.” This book examines how they make use of song lyrics and song forms, quote ... More

In homage to the long fellowship between poetry and song, modern and contemporary writers often title their poems “songs.” This book examines how they make use of song lyrics and song forms, quote songs extensively, and even envy song’s collective performance and what Roland Barthes called the singer’s vocal grain. Poetry infuses itself with rock and roll, opera, the blues, jazz, rap, reggae, African praise song, and funeral dirges, among other forms. At the same time, it also distinguishes itself as literary verse— by virtue of its visual layout, self-critique, self-interruption, and semantic complexity. After exploring poetry and song in the work of postcolonial and black British poets such as Jean Binta Breeze and Patience Agbabi, the chapter turns to twenty-first-century American experimental poets such as Rae Armantrout, Michael Palmer, and Tracie Morris, and lyric poets such as Frank Bidart, Kevin Young, Terrance Hayes, and Paul Muldoon.Less

“A Wave of Detours”: From John Ashbery to Charles Bernstein and Rae Armantrout

Marjorie Perloff

in Infrathin: An Experiment in Micropoetics

This chapter is an experiment in defining precisely what the "infrathin" features are that make a John Ashbery poem tick. What formal devices, allusions, references, stylistic modes, make us ... More

This chapter is an experiment in defining precisely what the "infrathin" features are that make a John Ashbery poem tick. What formal devices, allusions, references, stylistic modes, make us recognize an Ashbery poem? Having analyzed the poem "Variant," the chapter then argues that the usual suspects, so far as influence goes (e.g., Douglas Crase), may not be Ashbery's truest heirs. The so-called "tribe of John" is probably the less important of his heirs; rather, the chapter shows, Ashbery's mode, his sense of humor, his particular irony, turn up again in the poetry of such unlikely successors as Charles Bernstein and Rae Armantrout. These Language poets are definitely in Ashbery's orbit: "Doggy Bag," for instance, has the same wry humor and "non-sense" as Ashbery's slightly earlier poems. The chapter ends with a discussion of the "anxiety of influence."Less

Verse Chronicle: Blah Blah Blah

William Logan

in Guilty Knowledge, Guilty Pleasure: The Dirty Art of Poetry

This chapter reviews Richard Wilbur's Anterooms, Yusef Komunyakaa's The Chameleon Couch, Carl Phillips' Double Shadow, Rae Armantrout's Money Shot, Les Murray's Taller When Prone, and Geoffrey Hill's ... More

This chapter reviews Richard Wilbur's Anterooms, Yusef Komunyakaa's The Chameleon Couch, Carl Phillips' Double Shadow, Rae Armantrout's Money Shot, Les Murray's Taller When Prone, and Geoffrey Hill's Oraclau ¦ Oracles. In Anterooms Wilbur has made a belated virtue of brevity and simplicity. The poems are at times so simple they could be mistaken for the linsey-woolsey of light verse, but at best they have the severity of memories long abided. Komunyakaa's populist strain has long fought with his love of classical literature and classical reserve; in The Chameleon Couch, the populist gets the upper hand. The poems in Phillips's Double Shadow offer experience both half-lit and melodramatic. Armantrout's poems are micro-dreams of sly vanity, their brute coyness typical of much late-generation avant-garde poetry. Murray's poems bear the stray anecdotes of life in exotic places, places that would have been beyond the means or stamina of a poor gypsy poet. The poems in Hill's Oraclau/Oracles are his border ballads for the misty marchlands beyond Offa's dike, partly the invocation of brute pastoral, partly self-inquisition over certainties long unquestioned.Less

Thought

Robert Von Hallberg

in Lyric Powers

This chapter addresses the question of whether poetry is a branch of knowledge, or just of rhetoric. Poets like William Bronk, John Koethe, Jorie Graham, Rae Armantrout, and Michael Palmer hold their ... More

This chapter addresses the question of whether poetry is a branch of knowledge, or just of rhetoric. Poets like William Bronk, John Koethe, Jorie Graham, Rae Armantrout, and Michael Palmer hold their poems especially close to the rational mode of expression that commonly counts as prose; the chapter focuses on that particular range of the art of poetry.Less

Verse Chronicle: Poems of Force

Peter Campion

in Radical as Reality: Form and Freedom in American Poetry

This chapter (comprising several book reviews) attends to collections of poems addressing war or civil conflict.