Bob Perelman - Modernism the morning after

Modernism the Morning After has taken a while. Its two-decade gestation is now inexorably woven into the book. An unambiguous benefit of such a long writing period is that it allows for a parallax view. Fixed stars move, et cetera.

Back in the twentieth century, after my first two critical books, I started a project on poetic fakes, but my interest in making a book out of it evaporated (though some of the original impetus shows up here in chapter 14). Meanwhile, there was writing, teaching, ad hoc critical activity: talks, articles, essay-poems; and poems like Iflife that were also poem-essays. And I had a title, Modernism the Morning After, which suggested a perspective but kept mum about particulars. It became talismanic, an open-ended phrase that had room for whatever I was doing.

Now that the book is finally out, its time to get more objective about what you will find here.

As writing, Modernism the Morning After dates from 19952016, particularly 20152016. Some chapters trace back to the nineties; some are new; but much of what you will read here comes from the last two years, as I wrote and reworked these pieces.

The title can evoke a wild party / regret scenario: modernism the exciting situation where wonderful things were said... but the morning after... totalitarianism, masculinism, otherism... what a splitting headache!

But there is no regret in Modernism the Morning After. While my skepticism about modernist dogmas (as well as about innovative ones) should be clear throughout, I am not privileging the moment of clear-eyed disenchantment. In what follows here, modernism and the morning after are interwoven: both are ongoing situations.

As I wrote and rewrote these pieces, I wanted to articulate a more capacious model of modernism, stretching back to Whitman, Dickinson, and Dunbar and extending to the present moments of writing and reception.

In Modernism the Morning After I am writing as a poet, teacher, and critic, addressing peers and beginners without choosing between them.

I owe the most basic thanks to Charles Bernstein and Hank Lazer, who pushed me to get this book done.