In "Unoriginal Genius" Marjorie Perloff explores a new development in contemporary poetry: the repurposing of other people's words in order to make new works, by framing, citing, and recycling already existing phrases, sentences, and even full texts. Paradoxically, she argues, this 'unoriginal' poetry is more accessible and, in a sense, 'personal' than the hermetic poetry of the 1980s and '90s. Perloff traces this poetics of "Unoriginal Genius" from one of its paradigmatic works, Walter Benjamin's encyclopedic "Arcades Project", a book largely made up of citations. She discusses the processes of choice, framing, and reconfiguration in the work of Brazilian Concretism and Oulipo, two movements now understood to be precursors of such hybrid citational texts as Charles Bernstein's opera libretto "Shadowtime" and Susan Howe's documentary lyric sequence "The Midnight". "Unoriginal Genius" concludes with a discussion of Kenneth Goldsmith's conceptualist book "Traffic" - a seemingly "pure" transcript of one holiday weekend's worth of radio traffic reports. In these instances and many others, Perloff reveals 'poetry by other means' of great ingenuity, wit, and complexity.

About the Author
Marjorie Perloff is professor emerita of English at Stanford University and the author or editor of many books, including Wittgenstein's Ladder: Poetic Language and the Strangeness of the Ordinary and The Sound of Poetry / The Poetry of Sound, both published by the University of Chicago Press.


Book Information
ISBN 9780226660622
Author Marjorie Perloff
Format Paperback
Page Count 232
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 425g
Dimensions(mm) 23mm * 15mm * 1mm