Irwin - Monster: distortion, abstraction, and originality in contemporary American poetry

Studies in Modern Poetry

Peter Baker
General Editor

Vol. 21

This book is a volume in a Peter Lang monograph series.
Every title is peer reviewed and meets
the highest quality standards for content and production.

Mark Irwin

Monster

Distortion, Abstraction,
and Originality
in Contemporary
American Poetry

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Irwin, Mark, author.
Title: Monster: distortion, abstraction, and originality in contemporary American poetry / Mark Irwin.
Other titles: Distortion, abstraction, and originality in contemporary American poetry
Description: New York: Peter Lang, 2017.
Series: Studies in modern poetry; vol. 21 | ISSN 1069-4145
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016031292 | ISBN 978-1-4331-3405-0 (hardcover: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4539-1874-6 (ebook pdf) | ISBN 978-1-4331-4011-2 (epub)
ISBN 978-1-4331-4012-9 (mobi)
Subjects: LCSH: American poetry21st centuryHistory and criticism.
American poetry20th centuryHistory and criticism.
Experimental poetry, AmericanHistory and criticism. | Literature and technology.
PoeticsHistory. | Originality in literature. | Abstraction in literature.
Classification: LCC PS326 .I79 2017 | DDC 811/.609dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016031292
DOI 10.3726/978-1-4539-1874-6

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.

Cover image: Swimmer to Orange, 1986 (Oil, watercolor, mixed media, intaglio on paper), Cassill, H. Carroll (19282008). Private collection of Mark Irwin and reprinted with permission of Jean Kubota Cassill.

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Mark Irwin received his PhD in English/comparative literature from Case Western Reserve University and his MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. He is the author of nine collections of poetry, including American Urn: New & Selected Poems (19872014). He has also translated two volumes of poetry. Recognition for his work includes The Nation/Discovery Award, two Colorado Book Awards, four Pushcart Prizes, the James Wright Poetry Award, and fellowships from the Fulbright, Lilly, NEA, and Wurlitzer Foundations. He is Associate Professor in the PhD in Creative Writing & Literature Program at the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles and Colorado.

Monster: Distortion, Abstraction, and Originality in Contemporary American Poetry argues that memorable and resonant poetry often distorts form, image, concept, and notions of truth and metaphor. Discussing how changes in electronic communication and artificial notions of landscape have impacted form and content in poetry, Monster redefines the idea of what is memorable and original through a broad range of poets including John Ashbery, Anne Carson, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Forrest Gander, Peter Gizzi, Jorie Graham, Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, Laura Kasischke, W. S. Merwin, Srikanth Reddy, Donald Revell, Mary Ruefle, David St. John, Arthur Sze, and James Tate.

This important work of literary and cultural criticism probes the essential issues of poetry today. For example, distortion in poetry may now be necessary to its truthfunction, a broken language for a broken world. Are we so distracted by the buzz of electronic media that lyric silence, along with nature, has receded into the past? Is anything real or, as it often seems, a virtual creation? Quoting Alfred Jarry, I call Monster all original and inexhaustible beauty, Irwin reminds us that monstrosity is inherent in the new. Every great work of art, from Picassos Guernica to W.C. Williams plainspoken objectivism, emerges as a monster. As the author writes in his wonderful essay, The Emergency of Poetry: Poetry is born of crisis or will seek it, often beginning in medias resthe middle where the danger is. It is then a question if art can heal or does the cultural wound lie open. My response to reading this book was immediate. It made me want to write something.

Paul Hoover, Editor, Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology

In these essays Mark Irwin moves among poems like an ecstatic bee in pollen season. No one more zealous at placing both particulars and compositions under the strong light of a concept, whether distortion, transition, abtraction, or time.

Calvin Bedient, Author, He Do the Police in Different Voices: The Waste Land and Its Protagonist

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

| vii

: Cassill, Carroll H.: Swimmer to Orange, 1986.

: De Kooning, Willem: Woman V, 195253.

: Fischl, Eric: Best Western, 1983.

: Francesca, Piero della: Madonna del Parto, 1467.

: Mapplethorpe, Robert: Apollo, 1988.

: Pollock, Jackson: Autumn Rhythm # 30, 1950.

: Kiefer, Anselm: Lots Wife, 1989.

| ix

Thanks to the editors of the following magazines where the essays originally appeared: