Billitteri, Carla (Olson, Charles et al.)

Language and the Renewal of Society in Walt Whitman, Laura (Riding) Jackson and Charles Olson

ISBN: 9780230608368
New York, NY, USA: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. First Edition. Hardcover. “This book starts from the assumption that poetics are enabling discourses that support intellectual projects in which poetry as such is not always the horizon. For the three poets I discuss in these pages, Walt Whitman, Laura (Riding) Jackson, and Charles Olson, poetry is a means to an end; that end includes the utopian prospect of a renewal of society. In conceiving of poetics as enabling discourses, I mean, then, to discuss the inaccuracies, faulty reasoning, and fantasies of accomplishment that one finds in such writing in terms of the poetry they help to produce and the projects they help to support rather than as weaknesses to be identified, problems to be critiqued, or contradictions to be resolved…”--Carla Billitteri, Language and the Renewal of Society in Walt Whitman, Laura (Riding) Jackson, and Charles Olson, pgs. 1-2. Carla Billitteri was born and educated in Italy, and holds a Ph.D. from the Poetics Program at the University of Buffalo. She is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Maine and a member of the editorial collective of the National Poetry Foundation. She has been active as a translator of contemporary Italian poetry since 1995, with work in Aufgabe, Boundary2, How2, Fascicle, and Rif/t. An edition of her translations from Alda Merini’s aphorisms, I Am a Furious Little Bee, was published by Hooke Press in 2008. Offered today is the 2009 work Language and the Renewal of Society in Walt Whitman, Laura (Riding) Jackson, and Charles Olson, a masterwork of literary criticism. Billitteri moves gracefully in her exploration of the three poets, engaging heavily with both literary theory and cultural history, in an attempt to define the central core of the American poetic tradition. She analyzes in both the macro and microscopic sense the hermeneutic and material imminence of language and the construction of meaning. From back cover of book: “This book takes up the utopian desire for a perfect language of words giving direct expression to the real, known in Western thought as Cratylism, and its impact on the social visions and poetic projects of three of the most intellectually ambitious of American writers: Walt Whitman, Laura (Riding) Jackson, and Charles Olson. A coda looks at the work of the Language writers, who carry forward this tradition in surprising ways. Based on closed readings of theoretical and poetic texts, and drawing on archival research, this book makes two basic claims: that belief in an intrinsic relationship between words and things is linked in American poetry to utopian social projects; and that poets with a deep understanding of how language operates are nonetheless attracted to this belief–despite recognizing its fantastic elements–because it allows them to articulate a social mandate for poetry.” From the collection of Albert Glover (b. 1942), the great American scholar, bibliographer, author & publisher who is the foremost living authority on literary giant Charles Olson (1910-1970; our favorite Maximus Obscurantist), with whom we're honored to be acquainted. Hardcover. First edition (without dust jacket as issued) as stated at copyright page, first printing as indicated by number sequence thereon. In very fine condition with only slight wear to fine edges, and light smudging to front and back covers. Interior very fine. Very Fine. [Item #8329]

Price: $60.00