contested records
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Contemporary
north ameriCan
poetry SerieS
Alan Golding, Lynn Keller,
and Adalaide Morris,
series editors
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Michael Leong
contested
records
The Turn to Documents in
Contemporary North American
Poetry
UniverSity of iowa preSS
Iowa City
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University of Iowa Press, Iowa City 52242
Copyright 2020 by the University of Iowa Press
www.uipress.uiowa.edu
Printed in the United States of America
Design by Richard Hendel
No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. All reasonable steps have been taken to contact copyright holders of material used in this book. The publisher would be pleased to make suitable arrangements with any whom it has not been possible to reach.
Printed on acid- free paper
A version of chapter 4 was published as Conceptualisms in Crisis: The Fate of Late Conceptual Poetry in Journal of Modern Literature 41, no. 3 (Spring 2018): 10931. No part of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or distributed in any form, by any means, electronic, mechanical, photographic, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Indiana University Press. For education reuse, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center, www.copyright.com. For all other permissions, contact Indiana University Press at iupress.indiana.edu/rights.
Other excerpts from this book appeared in different incarnations in Jacket2; Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture; and Tarpaulin Sky.
The lines from Part XIII (Dedications) from An Atlas of the Difficult World.
Copyright 2016 by the Adrienne Rich Literary Trust. Copyright 1991 by Adrienne Rich, from COLLECTED POEMS: 19502012 by Adrienne Rich. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
CIP data to come
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For Cacao
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Contents
Acknowledgments
ix
introdUCtion: Documental Poetics
1 It Matters What You Call a Thing 34
Documentary, Investigative, Conceptual, Documental
2 Documentation, Paranoia, and Aspiration 71
On Amiri Baraka and R. B. Kitaj
3 Work Itself Is Given a Voice 106
Labor, Deskilling, and Reskilling
in Kenneth Goldsmith and Mark Nowak
4 The Fate of Late Conceptualism 142
5 Meta- Publicity and the Public Sphere 165
On Claudia Rankine and Kenneth Goldsmith
afterword: Whither Poetry?
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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Acknowledgments
Thanks goes to the various poets under discussion in these pages for having the boldness to leave their mark, which enabled me, in turn, to leave my own.
I would also like to extend a warm personal thanks to all who gener-ously engaged with portions of this work, at various states of completion, whether in the capacity of mentor, editor, intellectual role model, colleague, or some combination thereof: Harriet Davidson, Evie Shockley, Brent Edwards, Dee Morris, Eric Keenaghan, Derik Smith, Erica Fretwell, Wendy Roberts, Phil Metres, Lou Bury, Stefania Heim, Walter Lew, Shira Dentz, Alan Clinton, Rachel Blau Duplessis, and Divya Victor. Im grateful for the enthusiastic encouragement, wise suggestions, and spirited dialogue; I hope to pay it all back in some way. A stimulating conversation with Tisa Bryant, Gabrielle Civil, and Brian Evenson helped sharpen my thinking about the politics of appropriation and prompted a small but important revision to this work.
Thanks to my students who took seriously the challenging texts I put in front of them. Thanks to my mom, who was my first teacher, and to all my past teachers whose presences necessarily ghost this writing in ways that cant be adequately articulated in this short space.
Id like to acknowledge some events, which were instrumental in the development of my argumentation. Thanks to Paolo Javier for inviting me to talk about the long poem at Poets House as part of its 201819
Epic Voices Series. Thanks to Jennifer Greiman for giving me space in the 201516 English Department Research Symposium Series at the University at Albany, SUNY. Thanks to Judith Goldman for including me in the Conceptualism / Postconceptualism Seminar as part of the Poetics: (The Next) 25 Years Conference at University at Buffalo, SUNY in April 2016; thanks also goes to the seminar members who attended. Im grateful for the University at Albany Faculty Research Awards Program, which aided in the preparation of this text. Grateful acknowledgement also goes to the School of Critical Studies at the California Institute of the Arts and the David L. Kalstone Memorial Fund at Rutgers University for covering a portion of the production costs.
Thanks to Lynn Keller and Alan Golding, series editors, for their trust ix
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in this project and their sage and supportive advice; Dee Morris deserves a second mention here for believing in the potential of my thought at a very early stage. I couldnt have asked for better editors, and its an honor to be included in their Contemporary North American Poetry Series. Indeed, Ive learned a lot from the CNAP books that came before mine. I appreciate the conscientious commentary from the two anonymous press readers; Im lucky to have such peers in the field, and the field is lucky to have such contributors. Meredith Stabel deserves recognition for her un-flagging assistance. Thanks goes to Ann DeVita for her help in polishing the manuscript into its final form.
Finally, I want to express profound gratitude to Cacao Daz, who was present for every keystroke, who was witness to all the vicissitudesthe maddening accelerations and discouraging decelerationsof spacebar and backspace; without her love, patience, and intelligence I wouldnt have been able to make it to the final period.
S
GMENT
CKNOWLEDA
x
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Introduction
Documental Poetics
Leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to seethat our papers are in order.Michel Foucault
The cracy of bureaucracy is mysterious and hard to study,but the bureau is something that can be empirically studied,
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