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The first comprehensive exploration of the poetry of Peter Gizzi
This first critical book of essays on the poetry of Peter Gizzi shows how his work extends the traditions of nineteenth- and twentieth-century modernism while also reclaiming the living presence of the "lyric" in its capacity to sing of the human predicament. Gizzi is author of seven critically acclaimed books of poetry, including most recently Threshold Songs and Archeophonics, a finalist for the National Book Award in 2016. Lauded contributors, including Ben Lerner, Michael Snediker, Marjorie Perloff, and Charles Altieri, explore Gizzi's poetry for its embodiment of an American tradition—extending the poetics of Whitman, Dickinson, and Stevens, amongst others—while also exhibiting a twenty-first-century sensibility, perpetuating a new grammar and syntax to capture our place in the world today. Each essayist, in turn, works through close-readings of some of the most important poems of our times, enriching our understanding of a poetry of the mind which never loses track of what it means to feel.
Hardcover is un-jacketed.
Acknowledgments
Introduction: In the Air: The Poetry of Peter Gizzi by Anthony Caleshu
TRADITION AND INTERTEXTUALITY
"Snow Globe": Gizzi's Romantic Exportance—Michael Snediker
Gesture and Philosophical Reflection in the Poetry of Peter Gizzi—Charles Altieri
The Artifice of Personhood and the Poetics of Plenitude in Peter Gizzi's Archeophonics—Kacper Bartczak
Peter Gizzi's Poetics of Contingency—Marjorie Perloff
Gathering the Poem: On Peter Gizzi's "A Telescope Protects Its View"—Hannah Brooks-Motl
"Tradition & the Indivisible Talent"—Sara Crangle
"To Speak in This Place": Peter Gizzi, W. S. Graham, and English Poetry—Jeremy Noel-Tod
LYRICS AND ETHICS
Peter Gizzi's Hypothetical Lyricism—Olivier Brossard
The Lyric Voice as Ethical Medium: Peter Gizzi and the Contemporary Polis—David Herd
The Outernationale: Only Transition! or, the Poetics of Unfreedom—Ruth Jennison
The Bewilderment of Peter Gizzi's "Plural Noises": Toward a Poetics of Citizenship—Lytton Smith
"This further sound, scratch of pen to parchment in a flight of democracy": Reading Peter Gizzi's "Some Values of Landscape and Weather"—Nerys Williams
Peter Gizzi's Radical Irony—Peter Middleton
"turning words to return a world": On Peter Gizzi's "Pierced"—Philip Coleman
AFFECT AND ALLUSION
Recognition, Affect, Resistance: The Poetry of Peter Gizzi—Lee Upton
Peter Gizzi's Emotion Machine—Daniel Katz
To Arrive in Zeno's Thought: Reverie On, Thinking In, Peter Gizzi's "A Panic That Can Still Come Upon Me"—Dan Beachy-Quick
Divine Allusion and Refraction: Beginning, Ecstasy, and the Dead in the Poetry of Peter Gizzi—Anthony Caleshu
Love at Both Ends of the Western World—Aaron Kunin
"Trembling my standard returned": Two Versions of "Hard As Ash"—Graham Foust
From Seeing to Saying: On Peter Gizzi's "It Was Raining in Delft"—Ben Lerner
Afterword: "Sonic Sense"—Cole Swensen
About the Contributors
Index
ANTHONY CALESHU is author of three collections of poetry and two books of criticism. He is professor of poetry at Plymouth University in England, and founder and editor of the small press Periplum.
"Peter Gizzi is one of America's most significant contributors to contemporary poetry. As an acclaimed poet, editor, and teacher, his work is influencing many younger writers in the US and Europe. Anyone interested in the current condition of poetry will learn from the wide variety of essays here."
~Susan Howe, The Birth Mark
"There are few poets as devoted to poetry as Peter Gizzi. He's a reader even when he's a writer. And he's besotted with tradition, devoted to the openings that language can make in our world, generous with his poetry. These essays recognize and respect that devotion as they explain the importance of Gizzi's work (so far). It is a collection that is full of loving attention, to both Gizzi's work and to poetry's ability to shape our world, its relationship to the politics of the moment, its possible inclusions."
~Juliana Spahr
"Peter Gizzi is one of the most distinctive and gifted poets of his generation. This collection, in its insight and capaciousness, will be definitive for decades to come. Its breadth, variety and authority will make it invaluable for all readers of contemporary poetry."
~Ben Hickman, Center for Modern Poetry
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