Experimentalism as Reciprocal Communication in Contemporary American Poetry
John Ashbery, Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman
| University of Turku
The poems of John Ashbery, Lyn Hejinian and Ron Silliman may seem to offer endless small details of expression, observation, thought and narrative which fail to hang together even from one line to the next. But as Elina Siltanen shows here, this extraordinary flow of uncoordinated detail can stimulate readers to join the poets in a delightful exploration of ordinary language. When readers take a poem in this spirit, they actually begin to read as members of a community: the community not only of themselves and other readers, but also including the poet and other poets, plus all the speakers of the language in which the poem is written. For all these different parties, that language is indeed a shared resource, and the way for readers to get started is simply by recalling or imagining some of the numerous kinds of context in which the given poem’s words-phrases-sentences could, or could not, be successfully used. The rewards for such proactive readers are on the one hand a heightened sense of the subtle interweavings of language and life, and on the other hand a freshly empowered self-confidence. The point being that, within the community of contemporary experimental poetry, poets have no more authority than readers. Rejecting older cultural hierarchies, they present themselves as teasing out the idiomatic serendipities of their own poems together with their readers.
[FILLM Studies in Languages and Literatures, 4] 2016. x, 210 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
Series editor’s preface
|
vii–viii
|
Acknowledgements
|
ix–x
|
1. Introduction
|
1–28
|
2. “What makes you think this is a voice?”: Reading presence and the self
|
29–76
|
3. “Do you see how it posits you the reader?”: Reading in a community
|
77–114
|
4. “What of a poem that told you what it did…?”: Consciousness of poetry
|
115–148
|
5. “Pending panic of sense”: Reading everyday communication
in experimental poetry
|
149–186
|
6. Afterword: Reading writing as a shared encounter
|
187–194
|
References
|
195–206
|
Index
|
207–210
|
References
References
Primary sources
Allen, Donald
Bök, Christian
Davidson, Michael, Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman and Barrett Watten
Dworkin, Craig, and Kenneth Goldsmith
Ginsberg, Allen
Hall, Donald, Robert Pack, and Louis Simpson
Hejinian, Lyn
(1979) 2006 “Reading from My Life at San Francisco State University”, PennSound, http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Hejinian/Hejinian-Lyn_from-My-Life_SFSU_1979.mp3
O’Hara, Frank
Pearson, Ted, Bob Perelman, Kit Robinson, Lyn Hejinian, Carla Harryman, Steve Benson, Rae Armantrout, Ron Silliman, Tom Mandel, and Barrett Watten
Rich, Adrienne
Shakespeare, William
2012 “Ketjak Shadow Text.” [Reading for the Kelly Writers House Fellows Program, March 19, 2012.] PennSound. http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Silliman/Fellows-2012/Silliman-7085Ron_06_Ketjak-Shadow-Text_Fellows_KWH-UPenn_3-19-12.mp3.
Silliman, Ron, Barrett Watten, Steve Benson, Lyn Hejinian, Charles Bernstein and Bob Perelman
Smith, Dave, and David Bottoms
Secondary sources
Altieri, Charles
Andrews, Bruce
1980 “Misrepresentation (A text for The Tennis Court Oath of John Ashbery).” L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E 12: n.p. [1-8], http://eclipsearchive.org/projects/LANGUAGE/language.html.
Andrews, Bruce and Charles Bernstein
(eds) 1979 Non-Poetry. L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E 7: n.p. [18-29], http://eclipsearchive.org/projects/LANGUAGE/language.html.
Arnold, David
Ash, John
[1985] 2013 “In Conversation with John Ashbery.” PN Review 46, vol. 2 (2), http://www.pnreview.co.uk/cgi-bin/scribe?item_id=5781.
Ashbery, John, and Peter Stitt
[1983] 2013 “John Ashbery: The Art of Poetry No. 33.” Paris Review 33 1983, http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3014/the-art-of-poetry-no-33-john-ashbery.
Ashbery, John and Erica Wright
2008 “Houses at Night: An Interview with John Ashbery.” Guernica, February 2008, http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/507/houses_at_night/.
Ashton, Jennifer
Bakhtin, M.M.
Bakhtin, Mikhail
Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich
Beach, Christopher
Benson, Steve
1978 “
Ketjak in San Francisco.” L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E 8: n.p. [22-24], http://eclipsearchive.org/projects/LANGUAGE/language.html.
Benveniste, Émile
Bernstein, Charles
Bertens, Hans
Blanchot, Maurice
Blasing, Mutlu Konuk
Boon, Carl J.
2007 Parataxis and Possibility: Ron Silliman’s Alphabet. PhD diss., Ohio University. Athens, OH: Ohio University, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1178035006.
Breslin, Paul
Brito, Manuel
Brooks, Cleanth
Bruns, Gerald L.
Caleshu, Anthony
Cavell, Stanley
Cohen, Keith
Connor, Steve
Conte, Joseph M.
Costello, Bonnie
Culler, Jonathan
Davidson, Michael
Deleuze, Gilles
Derrida, Jacques
DuPlessis, Rachel Blau
2009b “Considering the Long Poem: Genre Problems.” Readings: Response and Reactions to Poetics 4. http://www.bbk.ac.uk/readings/issues/issue4/duplessis_on_Consideringthelongpoemgenreproblems.
Edmond, Jacob
2012 “Conceptual Writing: Community and Anti-community [conference presentation].” Poetry Communities and Individual Talent, University of Pennsylvania, April 13-14, 2012. PennSound. http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Poetry-Communities.php.
Epstein, Andrew
Fish, Stanley
Fredman, Stephen
Golding, Alan
Goldsmith, Kenneth
Greer, Michael
Grenier, Robert
Gudmundsdóttir, Gunnthórunn
Hartley, George
Hinton, Laura
2002 “Postmodern Romance and the Descriptive Fetish of Vision in Fanny Howe’s The Lives of a Spirit and Lyn Hejinian’s My Life
.” In We Who Love to Be Astonished: Experimental Women’s Writing and Performance Poetics. Laura Hinton and Cynthia Hogue (eds), 140-151. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
Hoagland, Tony
Holden, Jonathan
Huntsperger, David
Iser, Wolfgang
Ivry, Jonathan
Izenberg, Oren
Jameson, Fredric
Jenkins, G. Matthew
Kalaidjian, Walter
Kantola, Janna
Koethe, John
Lavender, William
Lazer, Hank
Lefebvre, Henri
Lehman, David
Lehto, Leevi
Lejeune, Guillaume
Lejeune, Philippe
Marshall, Thomas C.
Mayer, Bernadette
1980 “Mayer on Hejinian.” L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E 13: n.p. [16-17], http://eclipsearchive.org/projects/LANGUAGE/language.html.
Mazur, Krystyna
McGann, Jerome J.
McHale, Brian
Meadows, Sara
Mill, John Stuart
[1833] 2003 “Thoughts on Poetry and its Varieties, section 1.” CUWS. http://www.laits.utexas.edu/poltheory/jsmill/diss-disc/poetry/poetry.html.
Mohanty, S.P., and Jonathan Monroe
Molesworth, Charles
Moramarco, Fred
Myers, John Bernard
Nealon, Jeffrey T.
Nelson, Maggie
Nesme, Axel
2006 “Canonical Agon in Post-World War II American Poetry Anthologies.” Revue française d’études américaines 4 (110): 42-60, http://www.cairn.info/revue-francaise-d-etudes-americaines-2006-4-page-42.htm.

Nicholls, Peter
Norton, Jody
O’Hara, Frank
Olson, Charles
Ostriker, Alicia
Packard, William
Parsons, Marnie
Perelman, Bob
1980 “The First Person.” Hills 6/7: 147-165, http://eclipsearchive.org/projects/HILLS/hills.html.
Perkins, David
Perloff, Marjorie
[2005] 2015 “‘Moving Information’: On Kenneth Goldsmith’s The Weather”, MarjoriePerloff.com, originally published in Open Letter, Kenneth Goldsmith and Conceptual Poetics, 2005, http://marjorieperloff.com/stein-duchamp-picasso/goldsmith-weather/.
Popescu, Carmen
Rand, Richard
Rankine, Claudia
2006 “Some Thoughts on Lyn Hejinian’s Happily.” Poets.org. http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19303.
Rasula, Jed
Reed, Brian M.
Reinfeld, Linda
Robinson, Marilynne
Russell, Charles
Samuels, Lisa
Schultz, Susan M.
Searle, John
Sell, Roger D.
Sell, Roger D., Adam Borch, and Inna Lindgren
Serres, Michel
Sherry, James
Shoptaw, John
Silliman, Ron
Silliman’s Blog. http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/.
Silliman, Ron, Carla Harryman, Lyn Hejinian, Steve Benson, Bob Perelman, and Barrett Watten
Silliman, Ron, Thomas C. Marshall, and Thomas A. Vogler
Silliman, Ron and Stephen Ross
2011 “An Interview with Ron Silliman.” Wave Composition 2. http://www.wavecomposition.com/article/issue-2/.
Siltanen, Elina
2009a “‘Other Ways of Looking Out over Wide Things’: Polyphonic Criticism of the Present Moment in John Ashbery’s ‘Litany’.” In Tracks to Mastering English, vol. 1. Lydia Kokkola (ed.), 211-234. Turku: Turku University English Department, http://www.doria.fi/handle/10024/45385. 
2009b “That You Too Were the I”: Forms of Polyphonic Communication in John Ashbery’s Poetry. Turku: University of Turku, http://oa.doria.fi/handle/10024/43653.
Smith, Dave and David Bottoms
Sontag, Susan
Spahr, Juliana
Steedman, Carolyn
Valovirta, Elina
Vanderborg, Susan
Vendler, Helen
Vickery, Ann
Vincent, John Emil
Wallenstein, James
2007 “Reality Show: Ninnies and the Critics [online].” Jacket 33, http://jacketmagazine.com/33/wallenstein-ninnies.shtml.
Watkin, William
Watten, Barrett
Wellek, René, and Austin Warren
Wordsworth, William
[1800] 2001 “Preface to Lyrical Ballads.” In Prefaces and Prologues. Vol. XXXIX. The Harvard Classics. New York: Bartleby.com, http://www.bartleby.com/39/36.html.
Cited by
Cited by 4 other publications
No author info given
Gunilla Hermansson & Jens Lohfert Jørgensen
Severskaya, Olga Igorevna
Siltanen, Elina
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 01 march 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
Subjects
Literature & Literary Studies
BIC Subject: DSC – Literary studies: poetry & poets
BISAC Subject: LIT014000 – LITERARY CRITICISM / Poetry