Synopses & Reviews
Literary Nonfiction.. Poetics. Poetry. THE PUBLIC WORLD/SYNTACTICALLY IMPERMANENCE is a brilliant consideration of the strategies of poetry, and the similarities between early Zen thought and some American avant-garde writings that counter the "language of determinateness," or conventions of perception. The theme of the essays is poetic language which critiques itself, recognizing its own conceptual formations of private and social, the form or syntax of the language being "syntactically impermanence." Whether writing reflexively on her own poetry or looking closely at the writing of her peers, Leslie Scalapino makes us aware of the split between commentary (discourse and interpretation) and interior experience. The "poetry" in the collection is both commentary and interior experience at once. She argues that poetry is perhaps most deeply political when it is an expression that is not recognized or readily comprehensible as discourse.
Synopsis
The Public World / Syntactically Impermanence is a brilliant consideration of the strategies of poetry, and the similarities between early Zen thought and some American avant-garde writings that counter the "language of determinateness," or conventions of perception. The theme of the essays is poetic language which critiques itself, recognizing its own conceptual formations of private and social, the form or syntax of the language being "syntactically impermanence."
Whether writing reflexively on her own poetry or looking closely at the writing of her peers, Leslie Scalapino makes us aware of the split between commentary (discourse and interpretation) and interior experience. The "poetry" in the collection is both commentary and interior experience at once. She argues that poetry is perhaps most deeply political when it is an expression that is not recognized or readily comprehensible as discourse.
Synopsis
A new collection of essays and poetry from the poet Library Journal called "one of the most unique and powerful writers at the forefront of American literature." The Public World / Syntactically Impermanence is a brilliant consideration of the strategies of poetry, and the similarities between early Zen thought and some American avant-garde writings that counter the "language of determinateness," or conventions of perception. The theme of the essays is poetic language which critiques itself, recognizing its own conceptual formations of private and social, the form or syntax of the language being "syntactically impermanence."
Whether writing reflexively on her own poetry or looking closely at the writing of her peers, Leslie Scalapino makes us aware of the split between commentary (discourse and interpretation) and interior experience. The "poetry" in the collection is both commentary and interior experience at once. She argues that poetry is perhaps most deeply political when it is an expression that is not recognized or readily comprehensible as discourse.
Synopsis
Cultural Writng. Poetics. Poetry. The essays of THE PUBLIC WORLD / SYNTACTICALLY IMPERMANENCE are brilliant considerations of the strategies of poetry. They investigate the similarities between early Zen thought and some American avant-garde writings that counter the language of determinateness, or conventions of perception. Scalapino's work is at the forefront of American poetry today -- Charles Bernstein. Activity is the only community. The conservative gesture, always a constant (any ordering, institutional and societal) is to view both activity and time per se as a condition of tradition. As such, both time and activity are a 'lost mass' at any time (The Radical Nature of Experience).
About the Author
Leslie Scalapino is the author of thirty books of poetry, prose inter-genre-fiction, plays, and essays. Granary Book just published a collaborative book by artist Kiki Smith and Leslie Scalapino, titled The Animal is in the World like Water in Water. Scalapino's It's go in horizontal/Selected Poems, 1974-2006 was published by University of California Press at Berkeley in 2008. Other books of Scalapino's poetry include DAY OCEAN STATE OF STARS' NIGHT (Green Integer), a collection of eight years; ZITHER and AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Wesleyan University Press), The Tango (Granary Press), ORCHID JETSAM (Tuumba), Dahlia's Iris—Secret Autobiography and Fiction (FC2 Publishers); a reprint of the prose work DEFOE by Green Integer; and IT'S GO IN/ QUIET ILLUMINED GRASS/ LAND (The Post-Apollo Press).