Andrews addresses - from a poet's perspective on how to understand and make use of contemporary practice - poetics and its role as a choreographer of discussions and theorizing about meaning. By focusing on the ways in which meaning is produced and challenged in contemporary literary work, Andrews grounds his work in cross-disciplinary theory. He analyzes poetics and the production of meaning; alternative traditions and canons and stylistic resources as a signpost for writing; and innovative contemporary poetry and its break with many of the premises and constraints of even the most forward-looking modernisms. The book combines a parallel sequence of interviews and symposia responses with shorter pieces on a variety of postwar English-language poets (from Oppen, Ashbery, and Howe to younger contemporaries). From a foundation in the specifics of current practice that more overarching theory often ignores, Andrews challenges and extends the limitations of traditional literary criticism.
Position: Index; Text and context; Writing, social work and political practice; Constitution/writing, politics, language, the body; Total equals what: Poetics and praxis; Poetry as explanation, poetry as praxis (and discussion). Verb: Inter-view - (Marjorie Perloff questions); Poetics interview - (Kootenay School of Writing questions); Symposium on/with language poets - (Andrew Ross questions), with Charles Bernstein; American poetries; Lines linear how to mean; We are embodiments of circumstance; Be careful now you know sugar melts in water; Italian poetics today: Discussant response; Revolution only fact confected - A talk transcript. Body: Misrepresentation (on Ashbery); Surface explanation (on Oppen); Proof (on Wieners); Signification (Silliman); Politics of scoring (Robson); Encyclopedia (Mandel); The ham of words (Waldrop); Self writing (Lally); Code words (Barthes); Idealism and illusion (Gidal/Barthes); Social topography; Equals what?; Talks about reading; Self/ideology - Corpses that devour their own flesh (Silliman); Solicitations/keyboards (on/with Bromige); These are not my words (Davidson); Suture - and the absence of the social (Howe); Beyond suture (Howe); Under erasure (Watten); Transatlantic (British poetry); Paradise and method - A transcript.
