A New Theory for American Poetry : Democracy, the Environment, and the Future of Imagination

Rating:
Summary: "Description" here means "visionary speculation"/poesis ...
Review: Quirky, non-systematic, provoking US poesy to pastoral bliss...

I am here in mongrel-theory Santa Cruz reading and pondering the new Angus Fletcher over-view of US poetry as 'new theory' itself, and it is fully quirky, non-systematic, digressive, but always prodding and interesting; some of the footnotes are little polemical cum formalist works of art and genuine global/regional speculation. While the turn to a broad-brush US 'environmentalism' after the post-Emersonian pastoralism of Laurence Buell may turn regressive and evasive in its return to a whiter shade of ecological 'description' and visionary assertion, and simply thus be another way to rescue the American pastoralism of nature as re-tooled for the era of global ecology needs and (yes) liberal sublimations at home and abroad, still, this beloved master literary-critic of embedded allegory and poesis always makes the terms provocative. He reads poetry actively, with a fresh and renewed focus on the workings of phrase, syntax, the whole poetics and politics of 'description.' I have always admired the proletarian humbled poetics of John Clare as some kind of poet of the occluded earth-labors, and am glad to see his work brought to the fore; and the sublime postmodernist Ashbery too still a god of US poesy to me as is the enduring Whit-manic line of poetic thinking as such. Nonetheless, a whole range of poetics and poetries (from Tuckerman to Silliman et al and, say, Juliana Spahr and Theresa Cha) are left out cold and John Hollander, Mark Strand (workshop poesy of perpetual absence and irrelevance wrought to tiny perfectionism), and William Cullen Bryant (yes, he of the Cummington woods) are gently brought in. Ok, this is work coming up from the Ivy-covered ground of the Northeast still claiming a kind of Venderlian hegemony-via-sublime-ideas over the crusty land of Bush II regime, "Hartford as Seen By a Purple Light" as it were...But Flethcher turns away from the Mommy/Daddy/Me romance of anxeity and belated whiteness that is Harold Bloom's project of canonical pathos. Here on the coastal regions of Jeffers and Everson and the Addison Street poetics project, let peace reign amid the shock-and-awe of the techno-weaponry we make, "all watched over by machines of loving grace" as Richard Brautigan wrote in a poem once by the Pacific coast, facing west to Asia's shores for some transcultural input and challenge to the war-machines of our security-state US environmental homeland. "America" is coming undone along poetic lines of flight, from Jack Spicer to Juliana Spahr, and someday Mark Strand will be gone with the Yalie winds.

Rating:
Summary: Facing west from Ithaca's shores and the Whit-manic...
Review: Quirky, non-systematic, provoking US poesy to pastoral bliss...

I am here in mongrel-theory Mission Santa Cruz reading and pondering the new Angus Fletcher over-view of US poetry as 'new theory' itself, and it is fully quirky, non-systematic, digressive, but always prodding and interesting; some of the footnotes are little polemical cum formalist works of art and genuine global/regional speculation. While the turn to a broad-brush US 'environmentalism' after the post-Emersonian pastoralism of Laurence Buell may turn regressive and evasive, and simply be another way to rescue the American pastoralism of nature as re-tooled for the era of global ecology needs and (yes) liberal sublimations at home and abroad, still, this beloved master literary-critic of embedded allegory and poesis always makes the terms provocative with a fresh and renewed focus on the workings of phrase, syntax, the whole poetics and politics of 'description.' I always admired the proletarian humbled poetics of John Clare, and am glad to see his work brought to the fore; Ashbery too still a god of US poesy to me as is the enduring Whit-manic line of poetic thinking. A whole range of poetics and poetries (from Tuckerman to Silliman et al and, say, Juliana Spahr and Theresa Cha) are left out cold and John Hollander, Mark Strand, and William Cullen Bryant are gently brought in, but hey this is work coming up from the Ivy-covered ground of the Northeast still claiming hegemony-via-sublime-ideas over the crusty land of Bush II regime, "Hartford as Seen By a Purple Light" as it were...let peace reign amid the shock-and-awe of the techno-weaponry we make, "all watched over by machines of loving grace" as Richard Brautigan wrote in a poem once by the Pacific coast and facing west to Asia's shores for some new input and challenge to the war-machines of our security-state US environmental homeland.