Poetry and Language Writing: Objective and Surreal (LUP - Poetry and)

215 Pages·2008·3.33 MB·English

by  David Arnold

Poetry and Language Writing
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Poetry & …
Series Editors
Ralph Pite University of Cardiff
Deryn Rees-Jones University of Liverpool
Series Board
Peter Barry University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Neil Corcoran University of Liverpool
James Longenbach University of Rochester, USA
Jan Montefiore University of Kent
Barbara Page Vassar College, USA
Marjorie Perloff Stanford University, USA
Adam Piette University of Sheffield
Stan Smith Nottingham Trent University
Also in this series
Poetry and Displacement Stan Smith
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Poetry and
Language Writing
Objective and Surreal
David Arnold
LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS
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First published 2007 by
Liverpool University Press
4 Cambridge Street
Liverpool L69 7ZU
Copyright © 2007 David Arnold
The right of David Arnold to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or
by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data
A British Library CIP record is available
ISBN 978-1-84631-115-4 cased
Typeset in Stone Serif and Stone Sans by R. J. Footring Ltd, Derby
Printed and bound in the European Union by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn
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For my children, William and Frances
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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
List of permissions xi
1 The Scholarly Life of Language Writing 1
2 Surrealism: An Excommunicated Vessel? 19
3 Under the Sign of Negation: William Carlos Williams
and Surrealism 31
4 The Surreal-O-bjectivist Nexus 61
5 Michael Palmer’s Poetics of Witness 86
6 Scorch and Scan: The Writing of Susan Howe 112
7 ‘Just Rehashed Surrealism’? The Writing of Barrett Watten 138
Notes 166
Bibliography 190
Index 197
vii
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Acknowledgements
Like every piece of writing, this book has multiple points of origin, some
of which even now may be lying dormant and undisclosed. Nonetheless,
I thank without hesitation or reserve my first and inspirational tutor in
poetry, Professor John Henderson of King’s College, Cambridge. I also
thank Professor Peter Nicholls of the University of Sussex, for his patient
supervision of the doctoral dissertation from which the initial argument
of the book was derived, and my colleagues at the University of Worcester,
for their tolerance and support. I am also grateful to my home institu-
tion for granting me a period of research leave in which to complete the
manuscript. Professor Judith Elkin’s support has been invaluable in this
respect and I warmly thank her. I would also like to thank my readers
at LUP for their astute and supportive comments on the manuscript,
Dr Phillippa Bennett for handling the permissions, and Ralph Footring
for his meticulous scrutiny of the final draft.
Despite the rhetorical modes and formal conventions of scholarly dis-
course, literary criticism is a deeply personal business. In my case, the
connection between my critical voice and my personal voice lay so deep
that I missed it for years. It is in this context that I offer my heartfelt
thanks to Elizabeth Hewitt for helping me to bring that connection to
light. ‘Acknowledgement’ does not cover the breadth of my gratitude to
my partner, Jill, nor does it span the range of ways in which her generous
spirit has shaped this book and made it buoyant. Other words will do for
that, in other places.
ix
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