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 | | Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word by Charles Bernstein (Editor) ISBN-10: 9780195109917 ISBN-10: 0-19-510991-0 ISBN-13: 9780195109917 ISBN-13: 978-0-19-510991-7 Hardcover 1998-04-30 Oxford University Press, USA Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description Close Listening and the Performed Word brings together seventeen strikingly original essays, especially written for this volume, on the poetry reading, the sounds of poetry, and the visual performance of poetry. While the performance of poetry is as old as poetry itself, critical attention to modern and postmodern poetry performance has been negligible. This collection opens many new avenues for the critical discussion of the sound and performance of poetry, with special attention to innovative work. More important, the essays collected here offer brilliant and wide-ranging elucidations of how twentieth-century poetry has been practiced as a performance art. The contributors--including Marjorie Perloff, Susan Stewart, Johanna Drucker, Dennis Tedlock, and Susan Howe--cover topics that range from the performance styles of individual poets and types of poetry to the relation of sound to meaning, from historical and social approaches to poetry readings and to new imaginations of prosody. Such approaches are intended to encourage new forms of "close listenings"--not only to the printed text of poems, but also to tapes, performances, and other expressions of the sounded word. With readings and "spoken word" events gaining an increasing audience for poetry, Close Listening provides an indispensable critical groundwork for understanding the importance of language in--and as--performance. | ||
Reviews | ||
Listen to this book What do poetry slams have in common with traditional poetry readings? More than one may think. Close Listening, edited by Charles Bernstein, offers 17 perspectives on how contemporary poetry has been practiced as a performance art. Nearly ten years after its initial publication, this book remains fresh and stimulating. Much literary criticism has neglected the auditory and performance aspects of the poem, Bernstein writes. But a poem's sound and its meaning are aspects of each other, neither prior, neither independent. This collection of essays argues against the assumption that a poem's text is primary, while a poet's performance of the poem is secondary, and fundamentally inconsequential to the "poem itself." Bernstein observes that, in a poetry performance, explicit value is placed almost exclusively on the acoustic production of a single unaccompanied speaking voice. Contributors include Bruce Andrews, Marjorie Perloff, Ron Silliman, Susan Howe, and others; some performers in their own right. | ||
Publisher's summary of contents * From the publisher: Close Listening and the Performed Word brings together seventeen essays, especially written for this volume, on the poetry reading, the sounds of poetry, and the visual performance of poetry. While the performance of poetry is as old as poetry itself, critical attention to modern and postmodern poetry performance has been negligible. This collection opens many new avenues for the critical discussion of the sound and performance of poetry, with special attention to innovative work. More important, the essays collected here offer wide-ranging elucidations of how twentieth-century poetry has been practiced as a performance art. The contributors cover topics that range from the performance styles of individual poets and types of poetry to the relation of sound to meaning, from historical and social approaches to poetry readings and to new imaginations of prosody. Such approaches are intended to encourage new forms of "close listenings"--not only to the printed text of poems, but also to tapes, performances, and other expressions of the sounded word. With readings and "spoken word" events gaining an increasing audience for poetry, Close Listening provides an indispensable critical groundwork for understanding the importance of language in--and as--performance. Contents: Charles Bernstein, Introduction Sound's Measures Susan Stewart, Letter on Sound Nick Piombino, The Aural Ellipsis and the Nature of Listening in Contemporary Poetry Bruce Andrews, Praxis: A Political Economy of Noise and Informalism Marjorie Perloff, After Free-Verse: The New Non-Linear Poetries Susan Howe, Either/Ether Performing Words Johanna Drucker, Visual Performance of the Poetic Text Steve McCaffery, Voice in Extremis Dennis Tedlock, Toward a Poetics of Polyphony and Translatability Bob Perelman, Speech Effects: The Talk as Genre Peter Quartermain, Sound Reading Close Hearings / Historical Settings Jed Rasula, Understanding the Sound of Not Understanding Peter Middleton, The Contemporary Poetry Reading Lorenzo Thomas, Neon Griot: The Functional Role of Poetry Readings in the Black Arts Movement Maria Damon, Was that "Different," "Dissident" or "Dissonant"? Poetry (n) the Public Speak: Slams, Open Readings and Dissident Traditions Susan Schultz, Local Vocals: Hawai'i's Pidgin Literature, Performance, and Postcoloniality Afterword Ron Silliman, Who Speaks: Ventriloquism and the Self in the Poetry Reading | ||