The poetic imperative
Subtitle: a speculative aesthetics
By: Johanna Skibsrud
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: 2020
Place of publication: Montreal; Chicago
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9780228003069; 9780228003052
Subjects: Modern Poetry; History and criticism; Poetics; Self in literature; Poétique; Moi (Psychologie) dans la littérature
Description: "This book aims to expand our sense of poetry's reach and potential impact. It is an effort at recouping the poetic imperative buried within the first taxonomic description of human being: "nosce te ipsum," or "know yourself." Johanna Skibsrud explores both poetry and human being not as fixed categories but as active processes of self-reflection and considers the way that human being is constantly activated within and through language and thinking. By examining a range of modern and contemporary poets including Wallace Stevens, M. NourbeSe Philip, and Anne Carson, all with an interest in playfully disrupting sense and logic and eliciting unexpected connections, The Poetic Imperative highlights the relationship between the practice of writing and reading and a broad tradition of speculative thought. It also seeks to demonstrate that the imperative "know yourself" functions not only as a command to speak and listen, but also as a call to action and feeling. The book argues that poetic modes of knowing--though central to poetry understood as a genre--are also at the root of any conscious effort to move beyond the subjective limits of language and selfhood in the hopes of touching upon the unknown. Engaging and erudite, The Poetic Imperative is an invitation to direct our attention simultaneously to the finite and embodied limits of selfhood, as well as to what those limits touch: the infinite, the Other, and truth itself."--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Cover; title: The Poetic Imperative; title: Title; title: Copyright; title: Dedication; title: Contents; title: Acknowledgments; title: Introduction; title: 1 "The Bees Come Booming": A Poetics of "As If"; title: 2 "One Kind of Knowledge": Poetry and Belief; title: 3 "Un coup de dés": The Secret History of Poetry; title: and Its Imaginary Future; title: 4 The Vanishing Point of Meaning: "Making Sense" of the Fugal Past; title: 5 "To Undo the Creature": The Paradox of Writing; title: 6 Praxis and Poiesis: The Subversive Structures of Poetry and Human Being; title: 7 The Future Library and the Xenotext: Poetry and the Futurism of the Present; title: Notes; title: References