Active romanticism : the radical impulse in nineteenth-century and contemporary poetic practice

285 Pages·1.491 MB·English

by  Nigel Leask & Jennifer Moxley & Bob Perelman & Jerome Rothenberg & Elizabeth Willis & Heriberto Yepez

Active Romanticism

Active Romanticism
The Radical Impulse in Nineteenth- Century
and Contemporary Poetic Practice
Edited by Julie Carr and Jeffrey C. Robinson
The University of Alab ama Press
Tuscaloosa
The University of Ala bama Press
Tuscaloosa, Ala bama 35487–0380
uapress.ua.edu
Copyright © 2015 by the University of Ala bama Press
All rights reserved.
Inquiries about reproducing material from this work should be addressed to the Uni-
versity of Ala bama Press.
Typeface: Minion and Goudy Sans
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cover design: Gary Gore
∞
The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Active romanticism : the radical impulse in nineteenth-century and contemporary
poetic practice / edited by Julie Carr and Jeffrey C. Robinson. — First edition.
pages cm. — (Modern & contemporary poetics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8173-5784-9 (paperback) — ISBN 978-0-8173-8785-3 (e book) 1. Poetry,
Modern —History and criticism. 2. Romanticism —Influence. 3. Poetics. I. Carr, Julie,
1966– editor. II. Robinson, Jeffrey Cane, 1943– editor.
PN1161.A28 2015
809.1 —dc 3
2014019863
Contents
Introduction: Active Romanticism
Julie Carr and Jeἀrey C. Robinson 1
1. Bright Ellipses: The Botanic Garden, Meteoric Flowers, and Leaves of Grass
Elizabeth Willis 18
2. “The Oracular Tree Acquiring”: On Romanticism as Radical Praxis
Dan Beachy- Quick 31
3. Singing Schools and “Mental Equality”: An Essay in Three Parts
Rachel Blau DuPlessis 47
4. A Deeper, Older O: The Oral (Sex) Tradition (in Poetry)
Jennifer Moxley 70
5. The Construction of Poems for the Millennium, Volume Three and the
Poems It Engendered
Jerome Rothenberg 91
6. Copying Whitman
Bob Perelman 99
7. “A Spark o’ Nature’s Fire”: Robert Burns and the Vernacular Muse
Nigel Leask 108
8. Hyper- Pindaric: The Greater Irregular Lyric from Cowley to
Keston Sutherland
Simon Jarvis 127
9. Dysachrony: Temporalities and Their Discontents, in New and
Old Romanticisms
Judith Goldman 145
vi Contents
10. The Influence of Shelley on Twentieth- and Twenty-F irst- Century Avant-
Garde Poetry: A Survey
Jeἀrey C. Robinson 176
11. The Dialectic of Romantic and Postromantic Ethopoetics (after Certain
Hispano- Ameri can Visual Poetries)
Heriberto Yépez, translated by Jen Hofer 197
12. The Sublime Is Now Again
Julie Carr 212
13. Beyond Romanticism
Jacques Darras 228
14. Accident over N: Lines of Flight in the Philosophical Notebooks of Novalis
Andrew Joron 234
Bibliography 249
Contributors 265
Index 271
Active Romanticism

Introduction
Active Romanticism
Julie Carr and Jeἀrey C. Robinson
Action, the only activity that goes on directly between men without the
intermediary of things or matter, corresponds to the human condition
of plurality, to the fact that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit
the world. While all aspects of the human condition are somehow
related to politics, this plurality is specifically the condition—not only
the conditio sine qua non, but the conditio per quam—of all po liti cal
life. In antiquity, speech and action were considered to be coeval and
coequal, of the same rank and the same kind; and this origin ally meant
not only that most po liti cal action, in so far as it remained outside the
sphere of violence, is transacted in words, but more fundamentally
that finding the right words at the right moment, quite apart from the
information or communication they may convey, is action.
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition
The criti cal texts of the English and German Romantics were true
revolutionary manifestos, and established a tradition which continues
today. . . . But in 1800, as again in 1920, what was new was not so
much that poets were speculating in prose about poetry, but that this
speculation overflowed the limits of the old poetics, proclaiming that
the new poetry was also a way of feeling and living.
Octavio Paz
The writer sees himself in the Revolution. It attracts him because it is
the time during which literature becomes history. It is his truth. Any
writer who is not induced by the very fact of writing to think, “I am the
revolution, only free dom allows me to write,” is not really writing.
Maurice Blanchot (on Sade), “The Gaze of Orpheus”
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
William Blake
In Active Romanticism fourteen poets and critics bear witness to the effects
of Romantic poetry and poetics on modern and contemporary innovative
poetry. By “active Romanticism” we refer to a poetic response, either direct