Radical Artifice: Writing Poetry in the Age of Media [Paperback]

Marjorie Perloff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 25, 1994 | ISBN-10: 0226657345 | ISBN-13: 978-0226657349

How the negotiation between poetic and media discourses takes place is the subject of Marjorie Perloff's groundbreaking study. Radical Artifice considers what happens when the "natural speech" model inherited from the great Modernist poets comes up against the "natural speech" of the Donahue "talk show," or again, how visual poetics and verse forms are responding to the languages of billboards and sound bytes. Among the many poets whose works are discussed are John Ashbery, George Oppen, Susan Howe, Clark Coolidge, Lyn Hejinian, Leslie Scalapino, Charles Bernstein, Johanna Drucker, and Steve McCaffery. But the strongest presence in Perloff's book is John Cage, a "poet" better known as a composer, a philosopher, a printmaker, and one who understood, almost half a century ago, that from now on no word, musical note, painted surface, or theoretical statement could ever again escape "contamination" from the media landscape in which we live. It is under his sign that Radical Artifice was composed.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Perloff here explores electronic/mediaspeak avant-garde art, looking for poetic meaning among the paradoxes of high art conflated with popular culture. Composer and polymath John Cage argues that poetry finds its true context in the media that "occupy a large part of our verbal, visual, and acoustic space." The "hyperreal" imagery of John Ashbery and Charles Bernstein as well as Phil Donahue's talk show and ads for Nissan Infiniti "challenge poetic discourse to deconstruct rather than to duplicate" reality. In the face of a "coming to awareness of the mind in the face of the endless information glut," Perloff greets the "changing face of common intercourse" with sensitive readings of difficult texts. Amid impenetrable "anagram, paragram, collage, overprint . . . and mesostic text," Perloff is determined to remain sane. Recommended for specialized collections.
- Frank Allen, West Virginia State Coll., Institute
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (June 25, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226657345
• ISBN-13: 978-0226657349
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #945,368 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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