Writing in Real Time: Emergent Poetics from Whitman to the Digital (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture)
Cambridge University Press, 7/3/2017
EAN 9781107195318, ISBN10: 1107195314
Hardcover, 280 pages, 23.5 x 15.8 x 1.7 cm
Language: English
From Walt Whitman to the contemporary period, the long poem has been one of the more dynamic, intricate, and yet challenging literary practices of modernity. Addressing those challenges, Writing in Real Time combines systems theory, literary history, and recent debates in poetics to interpret a broad range of American long poems as emergent systems, capable of adaptation and transformation in response to environmental change. Due to these emergent properties, the long poem performs essential cultural work, offering a unique experience of history that remains valuable for our rapidly transforming digital age. Moving across a broad range of literary and theoretical texts, Writing in Real Time demonstrates that the study of emergence can enhance literary scholarship, just as literature provides unique insights into emergent properties, making this book a key resource for scholars, graduate students, and undergraduate students alike.
1. Introduction
the poetry of emergence
2. Emergent America
Walt Whitman's enactive democracy
3. Emergent vocabulary
Ezra Pound's translation machine
4. Emergent history
Charles Olson's housekeeping
5. Emergent midrash
Rachel Blau DuPlessis glosses modernism
6. Emergent sounds
Nathanial Mackey's 'post-expectant futurity'
7. Conclusion
emergent poetics and the digital.