Peter Quartermain - Böcker

A landmark in the publication of twentieth-century American poetry, this first volume of the long-awaited collected poetry, non-critical prose, and plays of Robert Duncan gathers all of Duncan's books and magazine publications up to and including "Letters: Poems 1953-1956". Deftly edited, it thoroughly documents the first phase of Duncan's distinguished life in writing, making it possible to trace the poet's development as he approaches the brilliant work of his middle period. This volume includes the celebrated works "Medieval Scenes" and "The Venice Poem", all of Duncan's long unavailable major ventures into drama, his extensive "imitations" of Gertrude Stein, and the remarkable poems written in "Majorca" as responses to a series of collaged paste-ups by Duncan's life-long partner, the painter Jess. Books appear in chronological order of publication, with uncollected periodical and other publications arranged chronologically, following each book. The introduction includes a biographical commentary on Duncan's early life and works, and clears an initial path through the textual complexities of his early writing. Notes offer brief commentaries on each book and on many of the poems.The volume to follow, "The Collected Later Poetry and Plays", will include "The Opening of the Field" (1960), "Roots and Branches" (1964), "Bending the Bow" (1968), "Ground Work" (1984), and "Ground Work II" (1987).

Profoundly original yet insistent on the derivative quality of his work, transgressive yet affirmative of tradition, Robert Duncan (1919-1988) was a generative force among American poets, and his poetry and poetics establish him as a major figure in mid- and late- 20th-century American letters. This second volume of Robert Duncan's collected poetry and plays presents authoritative annotated texts of both collected and uncollected work from his middle and late writing years (1958-1988), with commentaries on each of the five books from this period: The Opening of the Field, Roots and Branches, Bending the Bow, and the two volumes of Ground Work. The biographical and critical introduction discusses Duncan as a late Romantic and postmodern American writer; his formulation of a homosexual poetics; his development of the serial poem; the notation and centrality of sound as organizing principle; his relations with such fellow poets as Robin Blaser, Charles Olson, and Jack Spicer; his indebtedness to Alfred North Whitehead; and his collaborations with the painter Jess Collins, his lifelong partner.Texts include his anti-war poems of the 1960s and 70s, his homages to Dante and other canonical poets, and his translations from the French of Gerard de Nerval, as well as the complete Structure of Rime and Passages series.

A landmark in the publication of twentieth-century American poetry, this first volume of the long-awaited collected poetry, non-critical prose, and plays of Robert Duncan gathers all of Duncan’s books and magazine publications up to and including Letters: Poems 1953–1956. Deftly edited, it thoroughly documents the first phase of Duncan’s distinguished life in writing, making it possible to trace the poet’s development as he approaches the brilliant work of his middle period. This volume includes the celebrated works Medieval Scenes and The Venice Poem, all of Duncan’s long unavailable major ventures into drama, his extensive “imitations” of Gertrude Stein, and the remarkable poems written in Majorca as responses to a series of collaged paste-ups by Duncan’s life-long partner, the painter Jess. Books appear in chronological order of publication, with uncollected periodical and other publications arranged chronologically, following each book. The introduction includes a biographical commentary on Duncan’s early life and works, and clears an initial path through the textual complexities of his early writing. Notes offer brief commentaries on each book and on many of the poems.The volume to follow, The Collected Later Poetry and Plays, will include The Opening of the Field (1960), Roots and Branches (1964), Bending the Bow (1968), Ground Work (1984), and Ground Work II (1987).

Profoundly original yet insistent on the derivative quality of his work, transgressive yet affirmative of tradition, Robert Duncan (1919-1988) was a generative force among American poets, and his poetry and poetics establish him as a major figure in mid- and late- 20th-century American letters. This second volume of Robert Duncan’s collected poetry and plays presents authoritative annotated texts of both collected and uncollected work from his middle and late writing years (1958-1988), with commentaries on each of the five books from this period: The Opening of the Field, Roots and Branches, Bending the Bow, and the two volumes of Ground Work.The biographical and critical introduction discusses Duncan as a late Romantic and postmodern American writer; his formulation of a homosexual poetics; his development of the serial poem; the notation and centrality of sound as organizing principle; his relations with such fellow poets as Robin Blaser, Charles Olson, and Jack Spicer; his indebtedness to Alfred North Whitehead; and his collaborations with the painter Jess Collins, his lifelong partner. Texts include his anti-war poems of the 1960s and 70s, his homages to Dante and other canonical poets, and his translations from the French of Gérard de Nerval, as well as the complete Structure of Rime and Passages series.

Disjunctive Poetics examines some of the most interesting and experimental contemporary writers whose work forms a counterpoint to the mainstream writing of our time. Peter Quartermain suggests that the explosion of non-canonical modern writing is linked to the severe political, social and economic dislocation of non-English-speaking immigrants who, bringing alternative culture with them as they passed through Ellis Island in their hundreds of thousands at the turn of the century, found themselves uprooted from their traditions and dissociated from their cultures. The line of American poetry that runs from Gertrude Stein through Louis Zukofsky and the Objectivists to the Language Writers, Quartermain contends, is not the constructive but the deconstructive aspect, which emphasises the materiality and ambiguity of the linguistic medium and the arbitrariness and openness of the creative process. Providing close reading of Gertrude Stein, Louis Zukofsky, Robert Creeley, Basil Bunting, Guy Davenport, Robert Duncan and Susan Howe, the book explains how these writers describe the modern experience in a multicultural world by displacing commonly accepted cultural icons and by loading their language with multiple potential meanings.

Disjunctive Poetics examines some of the most interesting and experimental contemporary writers whose work forms a counterpoint to the mainstream writing of our time. Peter Quartermain suggests that the explosion of non-canonical modern writing is linked to the severe political, social and economic dislocation of non-English-speaking immigrants who, bringing alternative culture with them as they passed through Ellis Island in their hundreds of thousands at the turn of the century, found themselves uprooted from their traditions and dissociated from their cultures. The line of American poetry that runs from Gertrude Stein through Louis Zukofsky and the Objectivists to the Language Writers, Quartermain contends, is not the constructive but the deconstructive aspect, which emphasises the materiality and ambiguity of the linguistic medium and the arbitrariness and openness of the creative process. Providing close reading of Gertrude Stein, Louis Zukofsky, Robert Creeley, Basil Bunting, Guy Davenport, Robert Duncan and Susan Howe, the book explains how these writers describe the modern experience in a multicultural world by displacing commonly accepted cultural icons and by loading their language with multiple potential meanings.

This volume presents cultural readings of the objectivist poets, a group characterized by a historical, realist, antimythological view. The essays analyze and evaluate objectivist politics, and focus on the ethical, spiritual, and religious issues raised by objectivist affiliations with Judaism.

Stubborn Poetries is a study of poets whose work, because of its difficulty, apparent obduracy, or simple resistance to conventional explication, remains more-or-less firmly outside the canon.The focus of the essays in Stubborn Poetries by Peter Quartermain is on nonmainstream poets--often unknown, unstudied, and neglected writers whose work bucks preconceived notions of what constitutes the avant-garde. “Canonical Strategies and the Question of Authority: T.S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams” opens the collection and sounds a central theme: Quartermain argues that Williams, especially in his early work, sought noncanonical status, in contrast to Eliot, who rapidly identified his work with a literary and critical establishment. As is well known, Eliot attracted early critical and academic attention; Williams did not. Williams’s insistence that the personal and individual constituted his sole authority is echoed again and again in the work of the writers examined in the subsequent essays.In considering the question “What makes the poems the way they are?” most of the essays offer close readings (etymological, social, linguistic, and even political) of linguistically innovative twentieth-century poets. Linguistic innovation, as Marjorie Perloff and many other critics have shown, shows no reverence for national boundaries; two of the poets discussed are British (Basil Bunting and Richard Caddel) and two Canadian (Robin Blaser and Steve McCaffery). The last four essays in the book consider more general topics: the shape and nature of the book, the nature of poetic fact, the performance of the poem (is it possible to read a poem aloud well?), and--closing the book--an excursus (via the Greek myth of Io and the typography of Geofroy Tory) on the alphabet.

When most Americans think of contemporary British poetry, they think of such mainstream poets as Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin, and Geoffrey Hill. Yet there is a vibrant, diverse alternative poetry movement in the UK, inspired in large measure by the work of such significant mentors as Basil Bunting and J. H. Prynne. There is growing interest in this work in the United States - as alternative American poetries express increasingly transnational concerns - and yet almost none of it is available here.OTHER is a highly focused anthology bringing together several important strands of English-language poetry that are not otherwise so readily accessible. It includes work by 55 poets, among them Cris Cheek, Brian Coffey, Fred d'Aguiar, Allen Fisher, Ulli Freer, Randolph Healy, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Wendy Mulford, Tom Raworth, Denise Riley, Catherine Walsh; a critical introduction addressing such topics as the interaction of British and American poetic traditions; and brief biographical and bibliographical notes on each poet.