
Trespassing in the Archive
Poetry in Conversation with History
Kristina Marie Darling(Editor)
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published on 13. November 2025
Book
Hardback
176 pages
978-1-7936-4609-5 (ISBN)
Description
This edited volume brings together a diverse group of scholars to examine works of poetry that engage, question, or reimagine history.
Authors question the ethics, aesthetics, and politics of archival work to explore the ways in which poetry has offered a hypothetical testing ground where the power dynamics, upheavals, and discontent reflected in historical texts can be renegotiated.
Authors question the ethics, aesthetics, and politics of archival work to explore the ways in which poetry has offered a hypothetical testing ground where the power dynamics, upheavals, and discontent reflected in historical texts can be renegotiated.
Reviews / Votes
In Joyce's Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus declares that 'History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.' Nearly a century's worth of nightmares, both factual and refractory, farther along, poetry finds itself once again fascinated with history as a literal substance and real-world destination. And so the works that Kristina Darling has gathered here might more accurately be described as expeditions rather than essays. Each has its particular valor and passionate curiosity. Taken all together, they constitute a marvelous wakefulness and revelation. * Donald Revell, Professor of English, University of Nevada, USA * Though the essays in this provocative collection cover a tremendous range-from a 17th c. Chinese courtesan to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to H.D. and Freud-they all speak to our contemporary moment with social and political relevance. Foregrounded in all are the ethical issues that working with an archive inevitably raises, and the forms their responsibility takes are nuanced and penetrating. Full of lively writing and engaging detail, it's an invaluable document for thinking through our interactions with the past and how they affect our obligations to the future. * Cole Swenson, Professor Emerita of Literary Arts, Brown University, USA *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
10 b/w illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 14 mm
Weight
406 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-7936-4609-5 (9781793646095)
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
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
09/2025
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Academic
€90.99
Available for download

E-Book
09/2025
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Academic
€90.99
Available for download
Persons
Kristina Marie Darling is author of over thirty volumes of poetry, essays, and fiction.
Content
1. The Surface of the Break: A Theory of Archival Aesthetics (John James)
2. "As If God Made the Picture and Matched It with a Living Hieroglyph": Myth, Symbol, and Subjectivity in H.D.'s Helen in Egypt (Kristina Marie Darling)
3. The Afterlives of a Ming Courtesan: The Re-Invention of Zhang Qiao (1615-1633) in Chinese Cultural Products (Haihong Yang)
4. "Flint and Tinder - Understanding the Difference Between 'Poetry of Witness' and 'Documentary Poetics'" (Sandra Beasley)
5. Archival Renegotiations of the U.S.-Mexico Border: An Autoethnography (D. Seth Horton)
6. To Tinker with the Machinery of Death: Conceptual Poetry and Archival Justice (J.S. Westbrook)
7. Catching Our Country's Historical Moment in American Poems (Ibis Gomez-Vega)
8. A Wind Kept Blowing in My Body: The Archives as Song with Victoria Chang, Deborah Paredez, and Mai Der Vang (Tiffany Troy)
2. "As If God Made the Picture and Matched It with a Living Hieroglyph": Myth, Symbol, and Subjectivity in H.D.'s Helen in Egypt (Kristina Marie Darling)
3. The Afterlives of a Ming Courtesan: The Re-Invention of Zhang Qiao (1615-1633) in Chinese Cultural Products (Haihong Yang)
4. "Flint and Tinder - Understanding the Difference Between 'Poetry of Witness' and 'Documentary Poetics'" (Sandra Beasley)
5. Archival Renegotiations of the U.S.-Mexico Border: An Autoethnography (D. Seth Horton)
6. To Tinker with the Machinery of Death: Conceptual Poetry and Archival Justice (J.S. Westbrook)
7. Catching Our Country's Historical Moment in American Poems (Ibis Gomez-Vega)
8. A Wind Kept Blowing in My Body: The Archives as Song with Victoria Chang, Deborah Paredez, and Mai Der Vang (Tiffany Troy)