A noted critic addresses the problem of silence in contemporary experimental poetry.  Silence, as Susan M. Schultz argues here, is an intellectual and aesthetic force, largely unacknowledged, that is a characteristic feature of much avant-garde poetry, from Hart Crane to Susan Howe; a strategy deployed by various poetic, academic, and aesthetic partisans in efforts to quell competing discourse; and also a potent aesthetic strategy in itself.  In a collection of case studies, Schultz examines specific incidents of silence and the impasses it creates in the poetic and academic landscape.  She looks at the issue of professionalism, in both poetic practice and the academy, which has become the caretaker of much of modern and contemporary poetry and their competing values.  She explores clothing and fashion as central metaphors for this professionalism (what are the 'outfis' and intellectual fashions of the day?), especially the metaphor of language as clothing in the poetry of Laura Riding, Charles Bernstein, and Lois-Ann Yamanka.  Schultz further explores the problem of formalism in the work of Riding and Crane, whose extremity in experimentation led to their silencing by the poetic establishment, a problem later overcome by poets such as John Ashbery and Bernstein.  And she examines silence as an aesthetic strategy in itself, particulary in the work of Howe, who wresltes with the Puritan legacy of male "pro-fessors" in the clergy ministering to female "con-fessors." The result is an extended meditation on the precarious balance amoung competing forces-formalism, professionalism, gender, and voice-in understanding and liberationg poetic discourse from the realms of silence and the impasses it creates.   

A Poetics of Impasse in Modern and Contemporary American Poetry (Modern & Contemporary Poetics)

Literature & Fiction

Schultz, Susan M.

History & Criticism

University Alabama Press

A noted critic addresses the problem of silence in contemporary experimental poetry. Silence, as Susan M. Schultz argues here, is an intellectual and aesthetic force, largely unacknowledged, that is a characteristic feature of much avant-garde poetry, from Hart Crane to Susan Howe; a strategy deployed by various poetic, academic, and aesthetic partisans in efforts to quell competing discourse; and also a potent aesthetic strategy in itself. In a collection of case studies, Schultz examines specific incidents of silence and the impasses it creates in the poetic and academic landscape.  She looks at the issue of professionalism, in both poetic practice and the academy, which has become the caretaker of much of modern and contemporary poetry and their competing values.  She explores clothing and fashion as central metaphors for this professionalism (what are the 'outfis' and intellectual fashions of the day?), especially the metaphor of language as clothing in the poetry of Laura Riding, Charles Bernstein, and Lois-Ann Yamanka.  Schultz further explores the problem of formalism in the work of Riding and Crane, whose extremity in experimentation led to their silencing by the poetic establishment, a problem later overcome by poets such as John Ashbery and Bernstein.  And she examines silence as an aesthetic strategy in itself, particulary in the work of Howe, who wresltes with the Puritan legacy of male "pro-fessors" in the clergy ministering to female "con-fessors."The result is an extended meditation on the precarious balance amoung competing forces-formalism, professionalism, gender, and voice-in understanding and liberationg poetic discourse from the realms of silence and the impasses it creates.  

A Poetics of Impasse in Modern and Contemporary American Poetry (Modern and Contemporary Poetics)

Poetry. "Susan M. Schultz's DEMENTIA BLOG is as astonishing as it is tragic. Following the odd form of the blog, which is written forward in time but read backwards, it charts the fragmented disorienting progression (if this is the word) of her mother's dementia. Schultz sees through her family's personal tragedy to the profound social and philosophical implications of the unraveling of sense and soul: a deranged nation, so unmoored from coherence that it is unable to feel the difference between political rhetoric and the destructiveness of war. Full of intimate personal detail, DEMENTIA BLOG sweetly and sadly unwinds itself into timelessness"--Norman Fischer.

Dementia Blog

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Mental Health

Singing Horse Press

Poetry. "'What we do in saying,' Susan Schultz writes, 'is more than words allow us.' Thus her MEMORY CARDS: THOMAS TRAHERNE SERIES unfolds as resource that is both deep and expansive. Schultz makes poems that plumb the mundane with patience and honesty: in that way, this is difficult work, but also work that continuously opens recognitions for the reader ('Difficulty is invitation, after all.'). What emerges is all that poetry can be when attention and intelligence combine toward an ethics of empathy. Schultz listens truly, and such listening creates 'a politics of person, not idea, of love without absorption, of the simple word.'"—Elizabeth Robinson

Memory Cards: Thomas Traherne Series

Poetry

Talisman House, Publishers

Poetry. "The latest in Susan M. Schultz's ongoing, cumulative epic is as gorgeous, far out, and effective as anything she's written. I love her deep but lightly held learning, her big heart, and that she's quotidian and funny. Our great poet of grief, Schultz is the calm at the center of storms of sorrow, confusion, loss, politics. Her sentences are so good they can make you (me) cry: 'My response to the death of a poet is to imitate his sentences like Matt Morris throwing Darryl Kile's curve two days after Kile died. Style's a form of grieving, one that threads out like a shawl over bent shoulders.' This--like the whole book--has her distinctive smartness, precision, and just plain beautiful writing."--Elinor Nauen

I WANT TO WRITE AN HONEST SENTENCE

"Flash realism--this is what Susan Schultz presents in an album of vignette encounters: histories of 'ordinary pain'; social attentiveness during the extra-dramatic 2020-21; resonant, revealing comments; the micro-allegories of the detail. Where we lived and what ... provoked us, hurts concealed and yet palpable are made lucid in Schultz's languages of mixing empathy and annoying tests of equanimity. This humane book, interconnected with her dogged, personable companion, Lilith, investigates life's multifaceted and poignant zones."--Rachel Blau DuPlessis "Rousseau never really went solo. Flush was a camp feminist. The finest flaneurs didn't get too proud to beg don't let me be lonely. Same goes for Susan M. Schultz, taking tips while picking poops from alpha disobedient cutey, Lilith. Having long pricked her ears 'sussing out voices and angles of thinking,' Schultz here emulates (practices) peripatetic equanimity--whether one's most recent passerby brought sniffs, kisses, or snarls. With death striding seven times faster than they told us, but with a few musty bones still to dig, why not thrust one's schnoz through the ground cover? Why not pause, change directions, slip the harness when it counts? Maybe, some days, the rabid COVID-deniers carry tastier treats in their pouch, or take the most care picking stingers from paws. Maybe (as for we who live for pups) Lilith Walks can let us lap them up all the more."--Andy Fitch "In Lilith Walks, Susan Schultz celebrates the community where she lives and episodes of life of all sizes in tandem with this irreverent, cheery, 'strutting' pup. Dogs are not only good for thinking with--but for walking and seeing with, as Lilith demonstrates. You'll be glad to have met her--and you'd be lucky to walk with her."--Alexandra Horowitz, author of On looking: A walker's guide to the art of observation "I walk the path of this prose, its unique smells, politics and personalities. Some parts I will never see from Lilith's perspective. The poets discomforting run ins. Neighborly polemic rants and QAnon aside this too is my neighborhood. My country. Some of these jack ass characters; beloved fellow citizens.A few weeks ago an unassuming plain looking speculator slightly balding overweight white chap moved into the unit across from me with a $200k car. I am not sure how he fit in this car. It was so low to the ground. It was a virtually empty house with a car the value of a down-payment in front. He left about a week ago with a 'Open House For Sale' sign out front over the weekend. Lilith chased chickens there. Pooped just right around the back of his unit. Long live Lilith."--Kevin Chang is from the neighborhood. He is an attorney, musician and non-profit Executive Director at Kua'aina Ulu Auamo a network facilitation organization serving a movement in rural and Native Hawaiian communities to care for Hawai'i's environment from the grassroots. Poetry. Essay. Women's Studies.

Lilith Walks

Essays & Correspondence

BlazeVOX Books

Investigations of childhood from a philosophical perspective, asking how to reconcile childhood with suffering and as a real and imagined place, always subject to re-call. Writing out of the experience of adoption, Schultz uses language from her son's experience to think about ways in which "the political is personal."

And Then Something Happened

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Salt Run Pr

Poetry. Widely respected as a critic as well as a poet Susan Shultz is the editor of The Tribe of John and the journal "Tinfish." She is an associate professor of English at the University of Hawaii-Manoa. Her many publications as a poet include Another Childhood (Leave Books), Earthquake Dreams (Standing Stones), voice-overs (with John Kinsella, Tinfish Network), Addenda (Meow Press), and Aleatory Allegories (Folio). Saddlestapled.

Memory Cards

Jensen/Daniels

Multiformalisms: Postmodern Poetics of Form explores new directions in poetic form and theory. The “multi” in “multiformalisms” is nothing if not multifarious. This collection of essays by important poets and critics investigates traditional and exploratory forms, as well as the ways cultures and histories have come to shape them. Multiformalisms juxtaposes essays on traditional formalism and flarf; the American long poem and native Hawaiian poetry; rhyme in Paul Muldoon and textual variability in New Media poetry; Susan Howe and Lucinda Roy, jazz and Asian American poetics, and more. Scholars and students of poetry, prosody, and culture will find this a necessary and lively reference to contemporary currents in their fields.

Multiformalisms: Postmodern Poetics of Form

Finch, Annie

Textos Books

I and Eucalyptus

Lavender Ink

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Books by Schultz, Susan M.