North of Intention: Critical Writings 1973–1986

by Steve McCaffery

Co-published with Nightwood Editions, Toronto, North of Intention is the definitive collection of Steve McCaffery's critical writing, spanning the years in which he solidified his reputation as English Canada's most accomplished experimental writer. It is a must for any serious student of contemporary poetry and poetics and a testament to McCaffery's persistent refusal to barter with NAFTA-like terms of traditional exegesis. " North of Intention is a panoramic, erotic, anti-accumulative collectionof essays centering on the formally investigative North American poetryof the 1970s and 1980s. McCaffery's high-theoretical performances reclaimliterary theory for engaged literary practices."--Charles Bernstein Nonfiction. Literary Criticism. Second Edition.

Genres: Poetry

239 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 1986

About the author

Steve McCaffery is the author of over twenty-five books of poetry and criticism. He has twice been awarded the Gertrude Stein Award for innovative poetry and twice shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award. His poems have been published in more than a dozen countries. A long-time resident of Toronto, he is currently the David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters, University at Buffalo.

Reviews

[17CECO]

Its time to let some disappointments go. Which is why I'm writing about books here for awhile. A little bee that was in the old comb called me. Anyway, its time to let some disappointments go--with Steve and who he was when I was in grad school: acerbic, reactionary, dogmatic, with fits of generosity and warmth. Anyway, I was really surprised when a friend asked me to read this alongside her. After all, weren't we all supposed to be done with the extravagant promises of Language poetry? But I slipped into the it, again, the cascade of cerebral marxist riff on the economy of language--and realized that, in the hindsight of 2016, "Diminished Reference and the Model Reader," written in 1977, is an exceptionally lucid account of the philosophical givens and utopic horizons of Language poetry, written as the movement discovered itself but still from McCaffery's cooler distance. And there it was: I could file the essay under POETICS, LANGUAGE and close that file, not worry about any other account of it. I had other things to do. Then I talked to my friend, who was right: 70s, 80s S.M. had a humble view of what Language Poetry and its avant cousins could do. I like the mode of 70s, 80s S.M.--the one not in polemical stance, proclaiming the death of the subject and the evils of representation. And though I tried to kill my friend's buzz by pointing out how troublingly unqualified/unelaborated some of the terms and conceptual categories SM's thoughts rest on, how its always capital L Language and not languages the books believes we can have an experience in, or how I thought that the concept of a totally commodified language could only make sense in a DeBordian Society of the Spectacle media model which doesn't make sense any more, my friend was still fizzy with the potentialities of the dense agglomerations of abstractions Steve puts together, particularly when waxing poetic on medium. She was localizing and positionalizing like crazy: exactly the kind of collaborator needed by that this kind of text and semantically opaque/crazy poems it looks at. She served up a more optimistic, politically and aesthetically vibrant Steve than I'd ever known. And that was good. I left the bar wondering if I should write poems anymore and hoping Shay does.

[Caitlin Conlon]

A text I’ll have to revisit with time. A lot of the concepts were a bit over my head, but it was certainly an interesting and well-written book!

[Onur · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read "Writing as a General Economy" p201-207 (up until "The Paragram") and p216 (starting with "As an example...") to 221.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Somewhere in the paratext, McCaffery mentions (and I paraphrase liberally) that while some of his words have been revised, he sees this text as a historic document. As I read, I could discern that some of his thoughts were (and are) a chronicle of a certain moment in time in North American literary theory and culture (a moment that coincides with literary theory's arrival in N. Am.), whereas some of his writings truly stand the test of time (or transcend time); that this is foregrounded is very helpful and is also the reason for the five star rating.

Knowing that McCaffery was (and is) an important figure in the field of cultural production addressed by his writing adds significant dimension to this text.