Jeffrey C. Robinson – författare

The previous two volumes of this acclaimed anthology set forth a globally decentered revision of twentieth-century poetry from the perspective of its many avant-gardes. Now editors Jerome Rothenberg and Jeffrey C. Robinson bring a radically new interpretation to the poetry of the preceding century, viewing the work of the romantic and post-romantic poets as an international, collective, often utopian enterprise that became the foundation of experimental modernism.Global in its range, volume three gathers selections from the poetry and manifestos of canonical poets, as well as the work of lesser-known but equally radical poets. Defining romanticism as experimental and visionary, Rothenberg and Robinson feature prose poetry, verbal-visual experiments, and sound poetry, along with more familiar forms seen here as if for the first time. The anthology also explores romanticism outside the European orbit and includes ethnopoetic and archaeological works outside the literary mainstream.The range of volume three and its skewing of the traditional canon illuminate the process by which romantics and post- romantics challenged nineteenth-century orthodoxies and propelled poetry to the experiments of a later modernism and avant-gardism.

Literary history generally locates the primary movement toward poetic innovation in twentieth-century modernism, an impulse carried out against a supposedly enervated “late-Romantic” poetry of the nineteenth century. The original essays in Active Romanticism challenge this interpretation by tracing the fundamental continuities between Romanticism’s poetic and political radicalism and the experimental movements in poetry from the late-nineteenth-century to the present day.According to editors July Carr and Jeffrey C. Robinson, “active romanticism” is a poetic response, direct or indirect, to pressing social issues and an attempt to redress forms of ideological repression; at its core, “active romanticism” champions democratic pluralism and confronts ideologies that suppress the evidence of pluralism. “Poetry fetter’d, fetters the human race,” declared poet William Blake at the beginning of the nineteenth century. No other statement from the era of the French Revolution marks with such terseness the challenge for poetry to participate in the liberation of human society from forms of inequality and invisibility. No other statement insists so vividly that a poetic event pushing for social progress demands the unfettering of traditional, customary poetic form and language.Bringing together work by well-known writers and critics, ranging from scholarly studies to poets’ testimonials, Active Romanticism shows Romantic poetry not to be the sclerotic corpse against which the avant-garde reacted but rather the well-spring from which it flowed.Offering a fundamental rethinking of the history of modern poetry, Carr and Robinson have grouped together in this collection a variety of essays that confirm the existence of Romanticism as an ongoing mode of poetic production that is innovative and dynamic, a continuation of the nineteenth-century Romantic tradition, and a form that reacts and renews itself at any given moment of perceived social crisis.

Poet and Romantics scholar Jeffrey C. Robinson eloquently argues that the principles of Romanticism are alive and well in the twenty-first century. Romantics scholar Jeffrey C. Robinson elaborates commentaries on one hundred “manifesto statements” taken from nineteenth-century texts to illustrate that radical principles of poetry emerge in and are central to Romanticism. When these principles have been addressed at all, literary history tends to disperse and disempower them; Romantic Manifestos Manifest brings them together in order to characterize Romanticism, at its core, as a radical poetic movement that “manifests” not only in the nineteenth century but in the centuries beyond. Throughout the text, which is ordered on alphabetical entries of the manifesto statements, Robinson persuasively argues that there is a vibrant continuity between the works and ideas of the Romantics and twenty-first-century experimental artists, writers, and thinkers. Twenty pieces of text art and visual poetry relating to specific manifesto statements further curate a dialogue between text, image, and idea. Robinson takes readers on a journey that shows how avant-garde poets in particular continue to engage with principles from the Romantic era and ultimately proves that Romanticism—far from being a thing of the past—is alive and well in our time.

Poet and Romantics scholar Jeffrey C. Robinson eloquently argues that the principles of Romanticism are alive and well in the twenty-first century. Romantics scholar Jeffrey C. Robinson elaborates commentaries on one hundred “manifesto statements” taken from nineteenth-century texts to illustrate that radical principles of poetry emerge in and are central to Romanticism. When these principles have been addressed at all, literary history tends to disperse and disempower them; Romantic Manifestos Manifest brings them together in order to characterize Romanticism, at its core, as a radical poetic movement that “manifests” not only in the nineteenth century but in the centuries beyond. Throughout the text, which is ordered on alphabetical entries of the manifesto statements, Robinson persuasively argues that there is a vibrant continuity between the works and ideas of the Romantics and twenty-first-century experimental artists, writers, and thinkers. Twenty pieces of text art and visual poetry relating to specific manifesto statements further curate a dialogue between text, image, and idea. Robinson takes readers on a journey that shows how avant-garde poets in particular continue to engage with principles from the Romantic era and ultimately proves that Romanticism—far from being a thing of the past—is alive and well in our time.