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Unoriginal Genius: Poetry by Other Means in the New Century

Unoriginal Genius: Poetry by Other Means in the New Century

by Marjorie Perloff (Author)

  • New

    Paperback 2012

    $25.88

  • New

    Hardcover 2010

    $91.32
Synopsis

In "Unoriginal Genius" Marjorie Perloff explores a new development in contemporary poetry: the repurposing of other people's words in order to make new works, by framing, citing, and recycling already existing phrases, sentences, and even full texts. Paradoxically, she argues, this 'unoriginal' poetry is more accessible and, in a sense, 'personal' than the hermetic poetry of the 1980s and '90s. Perloff traces this poetics of "Unoriginal Genius" from one of its paradigmatic works, Walter Benjamin's encyclopedic "Arcades Project", a book largely made up of citations. She discusses the processes of choice, framing, and reconfiguration in the work of Brazilian Concretism and Oulipo, two movements now understood to be precursors of such hybrid citational texts as Charles Bernstein's opera libretto "Shadowtime" and Susan Howe's documentary lyric sequence "The Midnight". "Unoriginal Genius" concludes with a discussion of Kenneth Goldsmith's conceptualist book "Traffic" - a seemingly "pure" transcript of one holiday weekend's worth of radio traffic reports. In these instances and many others, Perloff reveals 'poetry by other means' of great ingenuity, wit, and complexity.

$25.88

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 232
 Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 15 Apr 2012
ISBN 10: 0226660621
ISBN 13: 9780226660622

Media Reviews
When The Poetics of Indeterminacy appeared, our view of twentieth-century poetry was reconceived and reborn. Since then Perloff established herself as the pre-eminent scholar and critic of the Modern/Postmodern epoch, whose continuities she was the first to grasp. Of her work one wants to say, recalling Marianne Moore, it is a privilege to see so much profusion. Another wonderment, Unoriginal Genius circumnavigates the poetic world of the past 75 years, touching at strategic ports of call and eager to mix with many languages, cultures, and aesthetic media. The book starts in the theatre of Benjamin's Second Empire and finishes with a study of the Edgar Poe des nos jours, Kenny Goldsmith-aptly finishes, since Perloff's underlying story, though she never says this and though nearly everyone has forgotten it, began-as Baudelaire knew-with Poe, the first of our great poetic theatricians. -Jerome McGann, University of Virginia

Unoriginal Genius showcases, yet again, why Marjorie Perloff is the most respected expositor for the avant-garde in poetry. She demonstrates why lauded, modern poets (many of whom have questioned the values of both ''the original'' and ''the creative'') might prefer instead to ''cheat'' on their assignments by handing in poems that steal words and remix lines, verbatim, from the databases of the deja dit . I recommend that every genius read this omnibus--then copy its poetics. --Christian Bok, author of Eunoia
--Christian Bok
Author Bio
Marjorie Perloff is professor emerita of English at Stanford University and the author or editor of many books, including Wittgenstein's Ladder: Poetic Language and the Strangeness of the Ordinary and The Sound of Poetry / The Poetry of Sound, both published by the University of Chicago Press.