Table Of ContentDifferentials
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Modern and Contemporary Poetics
Series Editors
Charles Bernstein
Hank Lazer
Series Advisory Board
Maria Damon
Rachel Blau DuPlessis
Alan Golding
Susan Howe
Nathaniel Mackey
Jerome McGann
Harryette Mullen
Aldon Nielsen
Marjorie Perloff
Joan Retallack
Ron Silliman
Lorenzo Thomas
Jerry Ward
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Differentials
Poetry, Poetics, Pedagogy
Marjorie Perloff
The University of Alabama Press
Tuscaloosa
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Copyright © 2004
The University of Alabama Press
Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Typeface: Minion
∞
The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Science-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Perloff, Marjorie.
Differentials : poetry, poetics, pedagogy / Marjorie Perloff.
p. cm. — (Modern and contemporary poetics)
Chie®y essays previously published in various sources.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8173-1421-0 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8173-5128-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Literature, Modern—History and criticism. 2. Poetics. I. Title. II. Series.
PN511.P47 2004
809′.04—dc22
2004001811
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Differential Reading xi
1. Crisis in the Humanities? Recon¤guring Literary Study for the
Twenty-¤rst Century 1
2. Cunning Passages and Contrived Corridors: Rereading
Eliot’s “Gerontion” 20
3. The Search for “Prime Words”: Pound, Duchamp, and
the Nominalist Ethos 39
4. “But isn’t the same at least the same?” Wittgenstein on
Translation 60
5. “Logocinéma of the Frontiersman”: Eugene Jolas’s Multilingual
Poetics and Its Legacies 82
6. “The Silence that is not Silence”: Acoustic Art in Samuel Beckett’s
Radio Plays 102
7. Language Poetry and the Lyric Subject: Ron Silliman’s Albany,
Susan Howe’s Buffalo 129
8. After Language Poetry: Innovation and Its Theoretical
Discontents 155
9. The Invention of “Concrete Prose”: Haroldo de Campos’s
Galaxias and After 175
10. Songs of the Earth: Ronald Johnson’s Verbivocovisuals 194
11. The Oulipo Factor: The Procedural Poetics of Christian Bök
and Caroline Bergvall 205
12. Filling the Space with Trace: Tom Raworth’s “Letters
from Yaddo” 227
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vi contents
13. Teaching the “New” Poetries: The Case of Rae Armantrout 243
14. Writing Poetry/Writing about Poetry: Some Problems
of Af¤liation 258
Notes 269
Index 299
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Acknowledgments
The following essays appeared, most in different form, in the following pub-
lications and are reprinted here by permission:
“Crisis in the Humanities? Recon¤guring Literary Study for the Twenty-¤rst
Century,” as “In Defense of Poetry: Put the Literary Back in Literature,”
Boston Review 24: 6 (Dec.–Jan. 1999–2000): 22–26.
“The Search for ‘Prime Words’: Ezra Pound as Nominalist,” Paideuma: Stud-
ies in American and British Modernist Poetry 32, Numbers 1–3 (fall 2003),
205–28.
“‘But isn’t the same at least the same?’ Wittgenstein on Translation,” in The
Literary Wittgenstein, ed. John Gibson and Wolfgang Huemer (London:
Routledge, 2004), 34–54. In an earlier version, this essay appeared in Jacket,
http://www.jacketmagazine.com/14/perl-witt.html, and in Salt 14: The
Jacket Issue, ed. John Tranter (2003): 17–43.
“‘Logocinéma of the Frontiersman’: Eugene Jolas’s Multilingual Poetics and
Its Legacies,” Kunapipi 20 (1999): 145–63.
“‘The Silence that is not Silence’: Acoustic Art in Samuel Beckett’s Radio
Plays,” in Samuel Beckett and the Arts: Music, Visual Arts, and Non-Print
Media, ed. Lois Oppenheim (New York: Garland, 1999), 247–68. “The
Beckett/Feldman Radio Collaboration: Words and Music as Hörspiel,”
Beckett Circle 26, no. 2 (fall 2003), 7–10. Used by permission of Routledge/
Taylor & Francis Books Inc.
“Language Poetry and the Lyric Subject: Ron Silliman’s Albany, Susan Howe’s
Buffalo,” Critical Inquiry 25 (spring 1999), 405–34.
“After Language Poetry: Innovation and Its Theoretical Discontents,” in The
World in Time and Space: Towards a History of Innovative American Poetry,
1970–2000, ed. Joseph Donahue and Edward Foster (Talisman House Press,
2000), 333–55.
“The Invention of ‘Concrete Prose’: Haroldo de Campos’s Galaxias and Af-
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viii Acknowledgments
ter,” Contemporary Literature, special issue: American Poetry of the 1990s,
ed. Thomas Gardner, 42, 2 (summer 2001): 270–93.
“The Oulipo Factor: The Procedural Poetics of Christian Bök and Caroline
Bergvall,” Textual Poetics, 17.3 (winter 2003).
“Filling the Space with Trace: Tom Raworth’s Letters from Yaddo,” The Gig,
ed. Nate Dorward, 13–14 (May 2003): 130–44.
“Teaching the ‘New’ Poetries: The Case of Rae Armantrout,” Kiosk: A Journal
of Poetry, Poetics, and Experimental Prose, 1 (2002): 235–60.
“Writing Poetry/Writing about Poetry: Some Problems of Af¤liation,” Sym-
ploke 7: 2 (2000): 21–29; rpt. in Af¤liations: Identity in Academic Culture,
ed. Jeffrey R. Di Leo (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), 133–43.
The author gratefully acknowledges permission to reprint excerpts from the
following sources:
Rae Armantrout, The Pretext (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2001). Used by per-
mission of Sun & Moon Press.
Christian Bök, Eunoia (Toronto: Coach House Books, 2001). Used by permis-
sion of Coach House Books.
Jorie Graham, “Evolution,” in Never (New York: Ecco/HarperCollins, 2002),
copyright © 2002 Jorie Graham. Used by permission of HarperCollins
Publishers Inc.
Susan Howe, “Secret History of the Dividing Line,” in Frame Structures:
Early Poems, 1974–1979 (New York: New Directions, 1996), copyright ©
1974, 1975, 1978, 1979, 1996 Susan Howe. Used by permission of New Di-
rections Publishing Corporation.
Harryette Mullen, Muse & Drudge (Philadelphia: Singing Horse Press, 1995).
Frank O’Hara, “Lana Turner Has Collapsed!” in The Collected Poems of Frank
O’Hara, ed. Donald Allen (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California
Press, 1995), copyright © Frank O’Hara. Used by permission of City Lights
Books.
Ezra Pound, “Canto LXVIII,” in The Cantos (New York: New Directions,
1993), copyright © 1934, 1937, 1948, 1956, 1959, 1962, 1963, 1966, and 1968
Ezra Pound. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corpora-
tion.
Tom Raworth, Collected Poems (Manchester, Eng.: Carcanet Press, 2003).
Used by permission of Carcanet Press, Ltd.
Joan Retallack, How to Do Things with Words (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon,
1998). Used by permission of Sun & Moon Press.
Jacques Roubaud, Quelque chose noir (Paris: Gallimard, 1986). Used by per-
You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press.
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Acknowledgments ix
mission of Gallimard; and Rosmarie Waldrop, trans., some thing black
[from “Unlikeness,” a section of her translation of Quelque chose noir]
(Elmwood Park, IL: Dalkey Archive, 1990). Used by permission of Dalkey
Archive.
Ron Silliman, “Albany,” in ABC (Berkeley, CA: Tuumba Press, 1983); and
“Under Albany” (Detroit: Gale Research Center, 1997, in Contemporary
Authors Autobiography Series, vol. 29, ed. Joyce Nakamura, Gale Research,
Detroit, MI, 1998). Used by permission of Ron Silliman.
William Carlos Williams, “The Young Housewife,” in The Collected Poems
of William Carlos Williams, vol. 1, 1909–1939, ed. A. Walton Litz and
Christopher MacGowan (New York: New Directions, 1986), copyright ©
1938 New Directions Publishing Corporation. Used by permission of New
Directions Publishing Corporation.
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