A Forest on Many Stems
Essays on The Poet's Novel
Published on 5. August 2021
Book
Paperback/Softback
560 pages
978-1-64362-025-1 (ISBN)
Description
A Forest on Many Stems: Essays on the Poet's Novel provides a unique entrance to the rare prose of many remarkable modern and contemporary poets including Etel Adnan, Renee Gladman, Langston Hughes, Kevin Killian, Alice Notley, Fernando Pessoa, Rainer Maria Rilke, Leslie Scalapino, Jack Spicer, and Jean Toomer, whose approaches to the novel defy conventions of plot, character, setting, and action.
Contributors: Brian Blanchfield, Anne Boyer, John Keene, Monica de la Torre, Cedar Sigo, and C. D. Wright bring a variety of insights, approaches, and writing styles to the subject with creative and often surprising
results.
Kazim Ali on Fanny Howe
Dan Beachy-Quick on W.G. Sebald
Edmund Berrigan on Ted Berrigan
Brian Blanchfield on Aaron Kunin
Rachel Blau DuPlessis on Gertrude Stein
Julia Bloch on Gwendolyn Brooks
Anne Boyer on Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Traci Brimhall on Hilda Hilst
Vincent Broqua on Stacy Doris
Brandon Brown on Kevin Killian
Lee Ann Brown on Carla Harryman
Angela Carr on Nicole Brossard
Julie Carr on Lyn Hejinian
Norma Cole on Emmanuel Hocquard
Brent Cunningham on Laura Moriarty
Monica de la Torre on Martin Adan
Marcella Durand on Robert Creeley
Patrick Durgin on Tan Lin & Pamela Lu
Norman Fischer on Phillip Whalen
C.S. Giscombe on Audre Lorde
Judith Goldman on Leslie Scalapino
Carla Harryman on Gail Scott
Jeanne Heuving on Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
Laura Hinton on Alice Notley
Daniel Katz on Jack Spicer
John Keene on Fernando Pessoa
Karla Kelsey on Barbara Guest
Aaron Kunin on Lewis Carroll
Sonnet L'Abbe on M. NourbeSe Philip
Abigail Lang on Jacques Roubaud
Kimberly Lyons on Mina Loy
W. Jason Miller on Langston Hughes
Mette Moestrup on Ingeborg Bachmann
Laura Moriarty on Keith Waldrop
Laura Mullen on Bhanu Kapil
Denise Newman on Inger Christensen
Aldon Lynn Nielsen on Amiri Baraka
Geoffrey G. O'Brien on John Ashbery & James Schuyler
Jena Osman on Thalia Field
Julie Patton on Jean Toomer
Elizabeth Robinson on Rosmarie Waldrop
Jennifer Scappettone on H.D.
Susan Scarlata on Forrest Gander
Brandon Shimoda on Etel Adnan
Cedar Sigo on Eileen Myles
Sasha Steensen on Anne Carson
Donna Stonecipher on Peter Waterhouse
Brian Teare on Rainer Maria Rilke
Tyrone Williams on Nathaniel Mackey
C.D. Wright on Michael Ondaatje
Lynn Xu on Ben Lerner
Rachel Zolf on Juliana Spahr
Contributors: Brian Blanchfield, Anne Boyer, John Keene, Monica de la Torre, Cedar Sigo, and C. D. Wright bring a variety of insights, approaches, and writing styles to the subject with creative and often surprising
results.
Kazim Ali on Fanny Howe
Dan Beachy-Quick on W.G. Sebald
Edmund Berrigan on Ted Berrigan
Brian Blanchfield on Aaron Kunin
Rachel Blau DuPlessis on Gertrude Stein
Julia Bloch on Gwendolyn Brooks
Anne Boyer on Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Traci Brimhall on Hilda Hilst
Vincent Broqua on Stacy Doris
Brandon Brown on Kevin Killian
Lee Ann Brown on Carla Harryman
Angela Carr on Nicole Brossard
Julie Carr on Lyn Hejinian
Norma Cole on Emmanuel Hocquard
Brent Cunningham on Laura Moriarty
Monica de la Torre on Martin Adan
Marcella Durand on Robert Creeley
Patrick Durgin on Tan Lin & Pamela Lu
Norman Fischer on Phillip Whalen
C.S. Giscombe on Audre Lorde
Judith Goldman on Leslie Scalapino
Carla Harryman on Gail Scott
Jeanne Heuving on Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
Laura Hinton on Alice Notley
Daniel Katz on Jack Spicer
John Keene on Fernando Pessoa
Karla Kelsey on Barbara Guest
Aaron Kunin on Lewis Carroll
Sonnet L'Abbe on M. NourbeSe Philip
Abigail Lang on Jacques Roubaud
Kimberly Lyons on Mina Loy
W. Jason Miller on Langston Hughes
Mette Moestrup on Ingeborg Bachmann
Laura Moriarty on Keith Waldrop
Laura Mullen on Bhanu Kapil
Denise Newman on Inger Christensen
Aldon Lynn Nielsen on Amiri Baraka
Geoffrey G. O'Brien on John Ashbery & James Schuyler
Jena Osman on Thalia Field
Julie Patton on Jean Toomer
Elizabeth Robinson on Rosmarie Waldrop
Jennifer Scappettone on H.D.
Susan Scarlata on Forrest Gander
Brandon Shimoda on Etel Adnan
Cedar Sigo on Eileen Myles
Sasha Steensen on Anne Carson
Donna Stonecipher on Peter Waterhouse
Brian Teare on Rainer Maria Rilke
Tyrone Williams on Nathaniel Mackey
C.D. Wright on Michael Ondaatje
Lynn Xu on Ben Lerner
Rachel Zolf on Juliana Spahr
Reviews / Votes
"This generous anthology will have a place on the shelves of literature professors and grad students."-Publishers Weekly"Whether engaged in close reading, philosophical discussion, literary discourse or theoretical deconstruction, this book articulates and extends that conversation. It is a challenging, focused and exciting read."-Tears in the Fence
"You thought you were aware of what poetry could mean to you, could do to you, then her poems did something new to you."-CAConrad
"Laynie Browne's You Envelop Me, written in the tradition of elegy, attempts to come to terms with the continuing presence of absence."-Claudia Rankine
"Laynie Browne has a knack for moving between worlds to channel an orchestra of animal, vegetable, and mineral voices."-Lisa Jarnot
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 224 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 40 mm
Weight
907 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-64362-025-1 (9781643620251)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Laynie Browne is a poet, prose writer, teacher and editor. She is author of thirteen collections of poems and three novels. Her most recent collections include a book of poems You Envelop Me (Omnidawn 2017), a novel Periodic Companions (Tinderbox 2018) and short fiction in two editions, one French, and one English in The Book of Moments (Presses universitaires de rouen et du havre, 2018). Her honors include a 2014 Pew Fellowship, the National Poetry Series Award (2007) for her collection The Scented Fox, and the Contemporary Poetry Series Award (2005) for her collection Drawing of a Swan Before Memory. Her poetry has been translated into French, Spanish, Chinese and Catalan. She teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and at Swarthmore College.
Content
CONTENTS:
Introduction- The Poet's Novel: A Form of Refusal
I . Verse Novel
"Poetry tells me I'm dead; prose pretends I'm not" - Alice Notley (39, Culture of One)
"You Cannot Count That You Should Weep For This Account:"
Aurora Leigh and the Problem of Math
by Anne Boyer
Cane in the Classroom: Jean Toomer's Classic
by Julie Patton
The Monster in the Rotunda: Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red
By Sasha Steensen
Muse X : Lyn Hejinian's Oxota: A Short Russian Novel
By Julie Carr
Down in the Dump: The Abject in Alice Notley's Culture of One
By Laura Hinton
II. Genre Mash-Ups
Composite, Cut-Ups, Review, Sci Fi, Writer as Detective
"The images set off down the road and yet they never get anywhere, they're simply lost, it's hopeless, says the voice-and the hunchback asks himself, hopeless for who?." (Bolano, Antwerp, 18)
The Cornucopia is Mapped with a Slipping Venn-Diagram and a Moebius Strip: William Carlos Williams and his The Great American Novel
by Sarah Vap
Friendship as Method in Ashbery & Schuyler's A Nest of Ninnies
By Geoffrey G. O'Brien
A Greater Greatness: Max Brand's Twenty Notches becomes Ted Berrigan's Clear the Range
By Edmund Berrigan
Lying in Wait: On Roberto Bolano's Antwerp as a Poet's Novel
By Joshua Marie Wilkinson
Obituary of the Many: Gail Scott
by Carla Harryman
Kevin Killian's Epic Poem of Happiness
By Brandon Brown
Dark Light: Paradox & Subversion in Laura Moriarty's Ultraviloeta
By Brent Cunningham
A Ghostlike Interference: Jack Spicer's Detective Novel
By Daniel Katz
III. Interior Lyric / Displacement/ Cartographic Time 146
"She wanted to climb through walls of no visible dimension"
- H.D. (Hermione, 7)
Hilda Hilst's The Obscene Madame D: A Derelict Reader's Guide
by Traci Brimhall
Narrating the Financialized Landscape: The Novels of Taylor Brady
By Rob Halpern
Structure as Philosophy in Inger Christensen's Azorno
By Denise Newman
The Point of Robert Creeley's The Island
By Marcella Durand
Attention and Attunement in Forrest Gander's As A Friend
By Susan Scarlatta
Out of Marsh and Bog: "H.D., Imagiste" and the Poeisis of HERmione Precisely
by Jenn Scappetone
Message in a Bottle: A Brief Introduction to Radical Love: 5 Novels by Fanny Howe
By Kazim Ali
The School of Fears: Rilke's Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
By Brian Teare
IV. Prose Poem / Concatenation / Novel Borders
"An ambulatory fig tree strolled down a street crowded with seminarians, streetwalkers, and geometry professors-a thousand aging gentlemen, dirty collars, sticky fingers." (Adan, 26)
Impressions of Martin Adan's The Cardboard House
By Monica de la Torre
"What Am I to Do with All of This Life": Gwendolyn Brooks's Maud Martha
by Julia Bloch
"A Book" and Other Fractured Pages: Nicole Brossard's Early Novels
by Angela Carr
To Seek Air: Barbara Guest's Inter-layered Fiction
By Karla Kelsey
Carnal Knowledge: Carla Harryman's Gardener of Stars: A Novel
by Lee Ann Brown
Rereading Emmanuel Hocquard's AEREA dans les forets de Manhattan
By Norma Cole
"The Greek Fragment": Irreal Salvation in Mina Loy's Gnostic Text Insel
By Kimberly Lyons
Gertrude Stein and the Poet's Novel, Thank You.
By Rachel Blau DuPlessis
Fidelity and Form: Rosmarie Waldrop and the Poet's Novel
By Elizabeth Robinson
V. Portrait / Documentary / Representation / Palimpsest 303
"I've read many stories of revenants and apparitions, but my ghosts merely disappear. I never see them." (Keith Waldrop, 11)
Etel Adnan's Paris, When It's Naked
by Brandon Shimoda
"Mme Wiener," the French Novelist and her Masks - Reading Stacy Doris's Two French Novels by Vincent Broqua
Thalia Field's Ululu (Clown Shrapnel): A series of detonations
by Jena Osman
Turning Poetry into Prose: Not Without Laughter and Langston Hughes
by W. Jason Miller
NourbeSe Philip by Sonnet L'Abbe
Coming through Slaughter, Michael Ondaatje's Buddy Book
by C.D. Wright
"Light" in Light While There Is Light: An American History
by Laura Moriarty
"I'M ALL IN THE DIRD AND ON FIRE OR SOMETHING, GET ME OUT OF HERE."
The novels of Phillip Whalen, You Didn't Even Try and Imaginary Speeches for a Brazen Head by Norman Fischer
VI. Metamorphic / Distance / Aural Address / Wandering
"Everything in the poem was in transition"
- Peter Waterhouse
Fernando Pessoa's Book of Disquiet
by John Keene
Malina, Murder
Death in Ingeborg Bachmann's Writing
by Mette Moestrup (translated from Danish by Mark Kline)
Two Sources of Poetry in Carroll's Writing
by Aaron Kunin
A Space for Bhanu Kapil
by Laura Mullen
Circumambulation: Cowrie Shells, Bottle Caps and Balloons in Nathaniel Mackey's From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate
by Tyronne Williams
"the equal instant space of action"
On Leslie Scalapino's Dihedrons Gazelle-Dihedrals Zoom (2010)
by Judith Goldman
The Tattered Labyrinth: On W. G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn
by Dan Beachy-Quick
"The Terrible I": On Peter Waterhouse 's Poem Novel
Language Death Night Outside
By Donna Stonecipher
VII. Identification / Dissolution / Polemic / Bildungsroman 459
"She says to herself if she were able to write she could continue to live."
-Cha (141)
"I Got This Under the Bridge" / Notes on Audre Lorde's Zami
by C.S. Giscombe
On Amiri Baraka's Six Plus One Persons "a longish poem about a dude"
by Aldon Lynn Nielsen
Thersa Cha's Eroticism
By Jeanne Hueving
A Fragmented Whole for Renee Gladman's Toaf
By Danielle Vogel
Three Ways to Sunday: The Mandarin by Aaron Kunin
by Brian Blanchfield
Romantic Substance: Reading Ben Lerner's
Leaving the Atocha Station with the Kuenstlerroman
by Lynn Xu
Stupendous Lore: Poet's Novels by Tan Lin & Pamela Lu
by Patrick Durgin
The Doors of Perception in Eileen Myles' Inferno
Cedar Sigo
Jacques Roubaud's poet's prose
By Abigail Lang
Juliana Spahr's The Transformation thinks wit(h)ness)
by Rachel Zolf
Introduction- The Poet's Novel: A Form of Refusal
I . Verse Novel
"Poetry tells me I'm dead; prose pretends I'm not" - Alice Notley (39, Culture of One)
"You Cannot Count That You Should Weep For This Account:"
Aurora Leigh and the Problem of Math
by Anne Boyer
Cane in the Classroom: Jean Toomer's Classic
by Julie Patton
The Monster in the Rotunda: Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red
By Sasha Steensen
Muse X : Lyn Hejinian's Oxota: A Short Russian Novel
By Julie Carr
Down in the Dump: The Abject in Alice Notley's Culture of One
By Laura Hinton
II. Genre Mash-Ups
Composite, Cut-Ups, Review, Sci Fi, Writer as Detective
"The images set off down the road and yet they never get anywhere, they're simply lost, it's hopeless, says the voice-and the hunchback asks himself, hopeless for who?." (Bolano, Antwerp, 18)
The Cornucopia is Mapped with a Slipping Venn-Diagram and a Moebius Strip: William Carlos Williams and his The Great American Novel
by Sarah Vap
Friendship as Method in Ashbery & Schuyler's A Nest of Ninnies
By Geoffrey G. O'Brien
A Greater Greatness: Max Brand's Twenty Notches becomes Ted Berrigan's Clear the Range
By Edmund Berrigan
Lying in Wait: On Roberto Bolano's Antwerp as a Poet's Novel
By Joshua Marie Wilkinson
Obituary of the Many: Gail Scott
by Carla Harryman
Kevin Killian's Epic Poem of Happiness
By Brandon Brown
Dark Light: Paradox & Subversion in Laura Moriarty's Ultraviloeta
By Brent Cunningham
A Ghostlike Interference: Jack Spicer's Detective Novel
By Daniel Katz
III. Interior Lyric / Displacement/ Cartographic Time 146
"She wanted to climb through walls of no visible dimension"
- H.D. (Hermione, 7)
Hilda Hilst's The Obscene Madame D: A Derelict Reader's Guide
by Traci Brimhall
Narrating the Financialized Landscape: The Novels of Taylor Brady
By Rob Halpern
Structure as Philosophy in Inger Christensen's Azorno
By Denise Newman
The Point of Robert Creeley's The Island
By Marcella Durand
Attention and Attunement in Forrest Gander's As A Friend
By Susan Scarlatta
Out of Marsh and Bog: "H.D., Imagiste" and the Poeisis of HERmione Precisely
by Jenn Scappetone
Message in a Bottle: A Brief Introduction to Radical Love: 5 Novels by Fanny Howe
By Kazim Ali
The School of Fears: Rilke's Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
By Brian Teare
IV. Prose Poem / Concatenation / Novel Borders
"An ambulatory fig tree strolled down a street crowded with seminarians, streetwalkers, and geometry professors-a thousand aging gentlemen, dirty collars, sticky fingers." (Adan, 26)
Impressions of Martin Adan's The Cardboard House
By Monica de la Torre
"What Am I to Do with All of This Life": Gwendolyn Brooks's Maud Martha
by Julia Bloch
"A Book" and Other Fractured Pages: Nicole Brossard's Early Novels
by Angela Carr
To Seek Air: Barbara Guest's Inter-layered Fiction
By Karla Kelsey
Carnal Knowledge: Carla Harryman's Gardener of Stars: A Novel
by Lee Ann Brown
Rereading Emmanuel Hocquard's AEREA dans les forets de Manhattan
By Norma Cole
"The Greek Fragment": Irreal Salvation in Mina Loy's Gnostic Text Insel
By Kimberly Lyons
Gertrude Stein and the Poet's Novel, Thank You.
By Rachel Blau DuPlessis
Fidelity and Form: Rosmarie Waldrop and the Poet's Novel
By Elizabeth Robinson
V. Portrait / Documentary / Representation / Palimpsest 303
"I've read many stories of revenants and apparitions, but my ghosts merely disappear. I never see them." (Keith Waldrop, 11)
Etel Adnan's Paris, When It's Naked
by Brandon Shimoda
"Mme Wiener," the French Novelist and her Masks - Reading Stacy Doris's Two French Novels by Vincent Broqua
Thalia Field's Ululu (Clown Shrapnel): A series of detonations
by Jena Osman
Turning Poetry into Prose: Not Without Laughter and Langston Hughes
by W. Jason Miller
NourbeSe Philip by Sonnet L'Abbe
Coming through Slaughter, Michael Ondaatje's Buddy Book
by C.D. Wright
"Light" in Light While There Is Light: An American History
by Laura Moriarty
"I'M ALL IN THE DIRD AND ON FIRE OR SOMETHING, GET ME OUT OF HERE."
The novels of Phillip Whalen, You Didn't Even Try and Imaginary Speeches for a Brazen Head by Norman Fischer
VI. Metamorphic / Distance / Aural Address / Wandering
"Everything in the poem was in transition"
- Peter Waterhouse
Fernando Pessoa's Book of Disquiet
by John Keene
Malina, Murder
Death in Ingeborg Bachmann's Writing
by Mette Moestrup (translated from Danish by Mark Kline)
Two Sources of Poetry in Carroll's Writing
by Aaron Kunin
A Space for Bhanu Kapil
by Laura Mullen
Circumambulation: Cowrie Shells, Bottle Caps and Balloons in Nathaniel Mackey's From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate
by Tyronne Williams
"the equal instant space of action"
On Leslie Scalapino's Dihedrons Gazelle-Dihedrals Zoom (2010)
by Judith Goldman
The Tattered Labyrinth: On W. G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn
by Dan Beachy-Quick
"The Terrible I": On Peter Waterhouse 's Poem Novel
Language Death Night Outside
By Donna Stonecipher
VII. Identification / Dissolution / Polemic / Bildungsroman 459
"She says to herself if she were able to write she could continue to live."
-Cha (141)
"I Got This Under the Bridge" / Notes on Audre Lorde's Zami
by C.S. Giscombe
On Amiri Baraka's Six Plus One Persons "a longish poem about a dude"
by Aldon Lynn Nielsen
Thersa Cha's Eroticism
By Jeanne Hueving
A Fragmented Whole for Renee Gladman's Toaf
By Danielle Vogel
Three Ways to Sunday: The Mandarin by Aaron Kunin
by Brian Blanchfield
Romantic Substance: Reading Ben Lerner's
Leaving the Atocha Station with the Kuenstlerroman
by Lynn Xu
Stupendous Lore: Poet's Novels by Tan Lin & Pamela Lu
by Patrick Durgin
The Doors of Perception in Eileen Myles' Inferno
Cedar Sigo
Jacques Roubaud's poet's prose
By Abigail Lang
Juliana Spahr's The Transformation thinks wit(h)ness)
by Rachel Zolf