Pierre Lagayette

Publications

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Strategies of Difference in Modern Poetry:
Case Studies in Poetic Composition,
Cranbury, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1998.


Présentation

This volume consists of a collection of essays, mostly by European scholars, on the ways modern poets have dealt with the crucial concept of "difference" in their practice of poetic composition. This is not just another variation of the conventional discourse about the exceptionality of the poetic medium. What is examined here, through the works of Stevens, Roethke, Yeats, Pound, Ammons, Graham, Laviera, Reznikoff, and Kinsella is the range of strategies used in poetry to convey a sense of disruption, estrangement, disturbance, indeterm-inacy. The aim is to track down the many kinds of "difference" that these poets’ works illustrate and the challenges they pose to the critic.
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Contents

- Pierre Lagayette (Paris IV-Sorbonne) : Introduction

- Charles Altieri (University of California, Berkeley) : Lyric Form and Lyric Force: Yeats and the Limits of the Expressivist Tradition.

- Gudrun M. Grabher (University of Innsbruck) : Epistemological Empathy: A.R. Ammons and Jorie Graham.

- Alain Suberchicot (Lyon III) : Lyrical Variation of Tone in Stevens’s Poetry.

- Anne Luyat-Moore (Avignon) : Wallace Stevens and Jean Wahl.

- Axel Nesme (Lyon II) (Dys)functionings of Difference: The Intertext at Work in Theodore Roethke’s "Four for Sir Jones Davies".

- Massimo Bacigalupo (Univesity of Genoa) : The Author as Explicator in Wallace Stevens and Ezra Pound.

- Geneviève Cohen-Cheminet (Paris IV-Sorbonne) : Charles Reznikoff: New World Poetics.

- Véronique Rauline (Paris X) & Tato Laviera (New York) : Tato Laviera’s Nuyorican Poetry: The Choice of Bilingualism.

Taffy Martin (Poitiers) : Thomas Kinsella and the Poetry of Irish Difference.

Reviews (excerpts)

"Observing the modern espousal of plurality, this book brings essays on ‘minority’ poetic voices, heretofore unheeded in the poetic discourse. Thus Pierre Lagayette has succeeded in foregrounding difference as a necessary part of the process of poetic creation, a positive state of dynamic flux to be explored differently by each poet, rendering, if successful, unique results. The present collection of essays enriches our critical understanding of the role difference plays in the works of several modern to postmodern poets." European Association for American Studies Newsletter, N°43, September 1999.

"Cet ouvrage collectif présente l’intérêt d’offrir une approche transatlantique du concept de différence en poésie. D’éminents spécialistes américains et européens (au sein desquels, on notera la présence d’une majorité d’universitaires français) s’attachent à mettre en lumière la spécificité du langage poétique... La relève de Charles Altieri et de Massimo Bacigalupo, qui apportent leur caution à cet ouvrage commun, semble assurée, preuve s’il en est que l’étude de la poésie anglophone a de beaux jours devant elle de ce côté-ci de l’Atlantique." Revue Française d’Etudes Américaines, N°82, Octobre 1999.

"With difference as their working principle, the readers represented in the volume provide nine "case studies in poetic composition," primarily of American poetry...
With the difference of a better understanding of the European critical tradition than their American or English counterparts, these readers provide a refreshing reading of modern and contemporary American poetry... Whereas some studies concentrate on the "likeness between poet’s works," the writers here "postulate difference as constitutive of poetic composition"(20).

Lagayette reminds the readers of these essays that it is the dynamism of poetry that allows poetry to provide "the greatest realm of discussion of difference..."(23)."
Etudes Anglaises, T.53, N°1, January-March 2000.