21st-Century Modernism: The "New" Poetics

by Marjorie Perloff

This revisionist narrative of poetic change in the twentieth century challenges the accepted notions of what poetry is and can be in the new century and makes the case for the seminal place of poetry in contemporary culture.

Genres: Poetry, Criticism, Literary Criticism

233 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 2002

Reviews

[Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

nice discussions of gertrude stein and marcel duchamp, and i like her defense of t.s. eliot and his pertinence to contemporary avant garde writing-- i agree. was a little disappointed by her discussion of poetry at the turn of the 21st century, but maybe that's partly because i was hoping for a good reading list and all i got were names i know

[Chad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good stuff on Duchamp and Stein, and her predictions of where poetry was headed (this was written in 2001) are surprisingly accurate. Not the best collection of essays I've read lately, but when she's on she's on, and when she's not, things feel a little sloppy.

[Ramzzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This year, poetry lost one of its rare heralds of the avant-garde, Marjorie Perloff. There is not much word, except that a loss is a L=O=S=S.

How severed, time and again, poetry is from the possibilities of going beyond the experimentations of post-modernism and into the excellence of “New” Modernism.

[Christopher Flynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes it's refreshing to read a theoretically uninterested critic. I like Perloff's readings in this one. She does a good job of making the avant garde sound more interesting than I usually find it. I'm in the middle of a "crisis of poetics" - which has to be in quotations because it's too pretentious for uninverted, uninflected notation. Perloff is on one side, against the too easy irony and soft word and image choice of post-Modernist (not necessarily Postmodernist) American poetry. But I don't feel the poetry she praises the way I would need to for them to be useful models or even suggestions. Gertrude Stein, Marcel DuChamp rethought as a poet, interesting, but not felt.

Against this I'm reading David Mamet's Three Uses of the Knife, which is right on the feeling, but not so satisfying with its often repeated diversions into notions of the universal, human nature, the human condition, all of those things I find suspect as concepts.

[Gary Norris · Rating 3 out of 5]

worth reading and working through for many reasons. my problem is that perloff works so hard to relate everything to TS Eliot. it takes some doing, you know. i don't know if i buy it.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

not as useful as I had hoped, but still, long-awaited by me