In the Air: Essays on the Poetry of Peter Gizzi

331 Pages·2018·4.161 MB·English

by  Anthony Caleshu (ed.)

In the Air

I N T H E A I R
Essays on the Poetry of Peter Gizzi
Edited by Anthony Caleshu
Wesleyan University Press | Middletown, Connecticut
Wesleyan University Press
Middletown CT 06459
www.wesleyan.edu/wespress
© 2018 Anthony Caleshu
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Designed by April Leidig
Typeset in Garamond by Copperline Book Services
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Caleshu, Anthony, editor.
Title: In the air: essays on the poetry of Peter Gizzi /
edited by Anthony Caleshu.
Description: Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan
University Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical
references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2017018704 (print) |
LCCN 2017019569 (ebook) | ISBN 9780819577481 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780819577467 (cloth: alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780819577474 (pbk.: alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Gizzi, Peter—Criticism and interpretation.
Classification: LCC PS3557.I94 (ebook) |
LCC PS3557.I94 Z67 2017 (print) | DDC 811/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017018704
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of Source Abbreviations xi
Introduction | Anthony Caleshu
In the Air: The Poetry of Peter Gizzi xiii
Part I | Tradition and Intertextuality
1 | Michael D. Snediker
Gizzi’s Romantic Exportance 3
2 | Charles Altieri
Gesture and Philosophical Reflection in the
Poetry of Peter Gizzi 15
3 | Kacper Bartczak
The Artifice of Personhood and the Poetics
of Plenitude in Peter Gizzi’s Archeophonics 34
4 | Marjorie Perloff
Peter Gizzi’s Poetics of Contingency 44
5 | Hannah Brooks-Motl
Gathering the Poem: On Peter Gizzi’s
“A Telescope Protects Its View” 57
6 | Sara Crangle
“Tradition & the Indivisible Talent” 66
7 | Jeremy Noel-Tod
“To Speak in This Place”:
Peter Gizzi, W. S. Graham, and English Poetry 78
Part II | Lyrics and Ethics
8 | Olivier Brossard
Peter Gizzi’s Hypothetical Lyricism 97
9 | David Herd
The Lyric Voice as Ethical Medium:
Peter Gizzi and the Contemporary Polis 119
10 | Ruth Jennison
The Outernationale:
Only Transition! or, the Poetics of Unfreedom 140
11 | Lytton Smith
The Bewilderment of Peter Gizzi’s “Plural Noises”:
Toward a Poetics of Citizenship 151
12 | Nerys Williams
“This further sound, scratch of pen
to parchment in a flight of democracy”:
Reading Peter Gizzi’s “Some Values
of Landscape and Weather” 166
13 | Peter Middleton
Peter Gizzi’s Radical Irony 179
14 | Philip Coleman
“turning words to return a world”:
On Peter Gizzi’s “Pierced” 193
Part III | Affect and Allusion
15 | Lee Upton
Recognition, Affect, Resistance: The Poetry of Peter Gizzi 207
16 | Daniel Katz
Peter Gizzi’s Emotion Machine 220
17 | Dan Beachy-Quick
To Arrive in Zeno’s Thought: Reverie On, Thinking In, Peter Gizzi’s “A
Panic That Can Still Come Upon Me” 232
18 | Anthony Caleshu
Divine Allusion and Refraction: Beginning, Ecstasy, and the Dead in the
Poetry of Peter Gizzi 244
19 | Aaron Kunin
Love at Both Ends of the Western World 263
20 | Graham Foust
“Trembling my standard returned”: Two Versions of “Hard as Ash” 271
21 | Ben Lerner
From Seeing to Saying: On Peter Gizzi’s “It Was Raining in Delft” 284
Afterword | Cole Swensen
“Sonic Sense” 289
About the Contributors 297
Index 301

Acknowledgments
The idea for this collection of essays came about during the “Poets and Crit-
ics” symposium dedicated to the study of Peter Gizzi’s work that took place
on the weekend of May 28–30, 2012, at Universités Paris Est Marne- la- Vallée,
Paris 7 & 8, and Institut Universitaire de France. I’m grateful to the organiz-
ers, Olivier Brossard and Vincent Broqua, and to the symposium contributors,
particularly David Herd and Daniel Katz, who have been generous in con-
versation and scholarship over these past five years. Additional enablers of my
thoughts and writing about Gizzi include Edward Clarke and Philip Coleman;
I remain especially grateful to Philip for supporting my residency at Trinity
Long Room Hub (Trinity College, Dublin), where my own chapter herein was
redrafted. Once the idea for a volume of essays was in the air, the poets and
critics approached were enthusiastic, and I’m grateful to the contributors who
made time to write so meaningfully about Gizzi’s work. It must be an awkward
position to be the subject of a book, and great thanks are due to Peter Gizzi,
himself, for his clarification of certain points as well as his willingness to be in-
terviewed several times over these past few years. Thank you to the publishing
team at Wesleyan University Press, particularly Suzanna Tamminen, for her
invaluable support of contemporary poets and poetry. Thank you to my own
institution, University of Plymouth, for research time and funding, enabling
various trips in the UK, USA, Ireland, and France, as well as for supporting the
hosting of conferences dedicated to contemporary poetry at our home campus:
Poetry and Public Language (May 18–20, 2012), and Contemporary Poetry:
Thinking and Feeling (May 20–22, 2016). And finally, an acknowledgment
to my family, Ciara, Parker, and Caleb, for always giving me reason to “love
this ball I’m riding on . . . around my loves and my loving” (to use the words of
Peter Gizzi).
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