The University of Alabama Press
Two new books in the Modern and Contemporary Poetry Series
40% Discount on Newest MCP Titles
Radical Poetics and Secular Jewish Culture
edited by Daniel Morris and Stephen Paul Miller
retail price: $39.95 paper | discounted price:$23.97
"What have I in common with Jews? I hardly have anything in common with myself!"
--Franz Kafka
Kafka's quip--paradoxical, self-questioning, ironic--highlights vividly some of the key issues of identity and self-representation for Jewish writers in the 20th century. No group of writers better represents the problems of Jewish identity than Jewish poets writing in the American modernist tradition--specifically secular Jews: those disdainful or suspicious of organized religion, yet forever shaped by those traditions.
This collection of essays is the first to address this often obscured dimension of modern and contemporary poetry: the secular Jewish dimension. Editors Daniel Morris and Stephen Paul Miller asked their contributors to address what constitutes radical poetry written by Jews defined as "secular," and whether or not there is a Jewish component or dimension to radical and modernist poetic practice in general. These poets and critics address these questions by exploring the legacy of those poets who preceded and influenced them--Stein, Zukofsky, Reznikoff, Oppen, and Ginsberg, among others.
While there is no easy answer for these writers about what it means to be a Jew, in their responses there is a rich sense of how being Jewish reflects on their aesthetics and practices as poets, and how the tradition of the avant-garde informs their identities as Jews. Fragmented identities, irony, skepticism, a sense of self as "other" or "outsider," distrust of the literal, and belief in a tradition that questions rather than answers--these are some of the qualities these poets see as common to themselves, the poetry they make, and the tradition they work within.
&
Thinking Poetics: Essays on George Oppen
edited and with an introduction by Steve Shoemaker
retail price: $34.95 paper | discounted price: $20.97
George Oppen, a crucial figure in the founding of the Objectivist poetry movement, is considered by many critics and poets to be one of the foremost innovators of 20th-century American poetry. Oppen's Of Being Numerous won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1969, and his influence on subsequent generations of poets has been profound.
The contributors to this unique collection of essays are both poets and critics who adopt a variety of critical stances. Some write as fellow poets who knew Oppen well during his lifetime and who have been deeply influenced by his example in their own work. Others write as poet-critics affiliated with the Language Poetry movement and bring to Oppen's work a keen appreciation for its relevance to contemporary avant-garde poetics. Still others come to Oppen as members of a younger generation of readers and writers working to articulate a new stage in Oppen's reception. The result is a rich and productive critical dialogue, touching on many of the most significant facets of Oppen's life and work. Thinking Poetics is a testament to Oppen's place in 20th and 21st-century poetic culture and an essential volume for anyone interested in Oppen's life or poetry.
To purchase a copy of either of these titles at the 40% discout offer, good through January 31, 2010, just call our warehouse in Chicago tollfree at (800) 6212736 or locally at (773) 7027000 and mention sales code MCPRS02.
As always, we invite you to forward this email to any of your colleagues who you think might be interested, or suggest names and addresses to which we should send future mailings. If you have any questions, please contact me directly at rminder -- AT --uapress.ua.edu or 205.348.156.
All prices are in U.S. Dollars / Canada residents add 7% GST Domestic shipping: $5.00 for the first book and $1.00 for each additional book International shipping: $9.50 for the first book and $5.00 for each additional book
Offer expires January 31, 2010 Sales Code: MCPRS02
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Radical Poetics and Secular Jewish Culture
edited by Daniel Morris and Stephen Paul Miller
Contents
Meet the Preface
Stephen Paul Miller xiii
Introduction
Daniel Morris 1
Radical Jewish Culture / Secular Jewish Practice
Charles Bernstein 12
Who or What Is a Jewish American Poet, with Specifi c Reference to David Antin,
Charles Bernstein, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, and Jerome Rothenberg
Hank Lazer 18
The House of Jews: Experimental Modernism and Traditional Jewish Practice
Jerome Rothenberg 32
Zukofsky at 100: Zukofsky as a Body of Work
Bob Perelman 40
Addendum: On “The Jewish Question”: Three Perspectives
Bob Perelman 49
Light(silence)word
Norman Fischer 60
On Yiddish Poetry and Translation of Yiddish Poetry
Kathryn Hellerstein 71
An “Exotic” on East Broadway: Mikhl Likht and the Paradoxes of Yiddish
Modernist Poetry
Merle Bachman 79
Revisiting Charles Reznikoff ’s Urban Poetics of Diaspora and Contingency
Ranen Omer- Sherman 103
Looking at Louis Zukofsky’s Poetics through Spinozist Glasses
Joshua Schuster 127
“Can a jew be wild”: The Radical Jewish Grammar of Gertrude Stein’s
Voices Poems
Amy Feinstein 151
Remains of the Diaspora: A Personal Meditation
Michael Heller 170
Secular and Sacred: Returning (to) the Repressed
Alicia Ostriker 184
Midrashic Sensibilities: Secular Judaism and Radical Poetics (A personal essay in
several chapters)
Rachel Blau DuPlessis 199
Secular Jewish Culture and Its Radical Poetic Discontents
Norman Finkelstein 225
Radical Relation: Jewish Identity and the Power of Contradictions in the Poetics
of Muriel Rukeyser and George Oppen
Meg Schoerke 245
“Yes and No, Not Either/Or”: Aesthetics, Identity, and Marjorie Perloff ’s
Vienna Paradox
Daniel Morris 274
“Sound Scraps, Vision Scraps”: Paul Celan’s Poetic Practice
Marjorie Perloff 287
Language in the Dark: The Legacy of Walter Benjamin in the Opera Shadowtime
Charlie Bertsch 310
Danger, Skepticism, and Democratic Longing: Five Contemporary Secular Jewish
American Poets
Thomas Fink 323
Relentlessly Going On and On: How Jews Remade Modern Poetry without
Even Trying
Stephen Paul Miller 343
Azoy Toot a Yid: Secular Poetics and “The Jewish Way”
Eric Murphy Selinger 354
A Jew in New York
Bob Holman 378
Imp/penetrable Archive: Adeena Karasick’s Wall of Sound
Maria Damon 379
In the Shadow of Desire: Charles Bernstein’s Shadowtime and Its Kabbalistic
Trajectories
Adeena Karasick 397
Hijacking Language: Kabbalistic Trajectories
Adeena Karasick 409
Letter to the Romans
Benjamin Friedlander 418
White
Paul Auster 439
=========================
Thinking Poetics
Essays on George Oppen
edited and with an introduction by Steve Shoemaker
Contents
Preface: Meaning a Life vii
Introduction: Thinking Poetics 1
Steve Shoemaker
I. Working Papers / The Mind Thinking
1. Palimtexts: Postmodern Poetry and the Material Text
Michael Davidson 23
II. On Discrete Series / Of the World, Weather- Swept
2. Preliminary to a Close Reading of George Oppen’s
Discrete Series
Lyn Hejinian 47
3. Discrete Series and the Posthuman City
Steve Shoemaker 62
III. Among the Philosophers
4. Oppen’s Heidegger
Peter Nicholls 91
5. Finding the Phenomenal Oppen
Forrest Gander 120
IV. Two Wars
6. One among Rubble: George Oppen and World War II
Kristin Prevallet 131
7. “The Air of Atrocity”: “Of Being Numerous”
and the Vietnam War
John Lowney 143
V. Receptions
8. Third- Phase Objectivism
Ron Silliman 163
9. George Oppen and the Anthologies
John Taggart 170
10. Conviction’s Net of Branches
Michael Heller 184
11. Hinge Picture (on George Oppen)
Charles Bernstein 197
12. “Uncannily in the Open”: In Light of Oppen
Rachel Blau DuPlessis 203
13. George Oppen: A Radical Practice (excerpt)
Susan Thackrey 228
14. if it fails—
Theodore Enslin 255
15. Excerpts from “‘Because the Known and the Unknown
Touch’: A Reading of Oppen’s ‘Of Being Numerous’”
Henry Weinfield 259
