Poetics of Impasse in Modern and Contemporary American Poetry

A noted critic addresses the problem of silence in contemporary experimental poetry. Silence, as Susan M. Schultz argues here, is an intellectual and aesthetic force, largely unacknowledged, that is a characteristic feature of much avant-garde poetry, from Hart Crane to Susan Howe; a strategy deployed by various poetic, academic, and aesthetic partisans in efforts to quell competing discourse; and also a potent aesthetic strategy in itself. Through the essays in this collection, Schultz offers an extended meditation on the precarious balance among competing forces of formalism, professionalism, gender, and voice in understanding and liberating poetic discourse from the realms of silence and the impasses it creates. Susan M. Schultz is Professor of English at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa and Publisher of the literary press Tinfish which specializes in experimental poetry from the Pacific. Editor of The Tribe of John: Ashbery and Contemporary Poetry, her own work has appeared in An Anthology of New American Poets and three collections, most recently And Then Something Happened. "This book is tantalizing, informed, and insightful; written with appealing geniality (and at times an equally appealing rancor)."--Jed Rasula, author of Syncopations: The Stress of Innovation in Contemporary American PoetrySchultz, Susan M. is the author of 'Poetics of Impasse in Modern and Contemporary American Poetry', published 2005 under ISBN 9780817351984 and ISBN 0817351981.