Poetics of Emptiness
Transformations of Asian Thought in American Poetry
Published on 7. May 2010
Book
Hardback
292 pages
978-0-8232-3144-7 (ISBN)
Description
The Poetics of Emptiness uncovers an important untold history by tracing the historically specific, intertextual pathways of a single, if polyvalent, philosophical term, emptiness, as it is transformed within twentieth-century American poetry and poetics.
This conceptual migration is detailed in two sections. The first focuses on "transpacific Buddhist poetics," while the second maps the less well-known terrain of "transpacific Daoist poetics."
In Chapters 1 and 2, the author explores Ernest Fenollosa's "The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry" as an expression of Fenollosa's distinctly Buddhist poetics informed by a two-decade-long encounter with a culturally hybrid form of Buddhism known as Shin Bukkyo ("New Buddhism"). Chapter 2 explores the classical Chinese poetics that undergirds the lost half of Fenellosa's essay. Chapter 3 concludes the first half of the book with an exploration of the didactic and soteriological function of "emptiness" in Gary Snyder's influential poetry and poetics.
The second half begins with a critical exploration of the three-decades-long career of the poet/translator/critic Wai-lim Yip, whose "transpacific Daoist poetics" has been an important fixture in American poetic late modernism and has begun to gain wider notoriety in China. The last chapter engages the intertextual weave of poststructural thought and Daoist and shamanistic discourses in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's important body of heterocultural productions.
By formulating interpretive frames as hybrid as the texts being read, this book makes available one of the most important yet still largely unknown stories of American poetry and poetics.
This conceptual migration is detailed in two sections. The first focuses on "transpacific Buddhist poetics," while the second maps the less well-known terrain of "transpacific Daoist poetics."
In Chapters 1 and 2, the author explores Ernest Fenollosa's "The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry" as an expression of Fenollosa's distinctly Buddhist poetics informed by a two-decade-long encounter with a culturally hybrid form of Buddhism known as Shin Bukkyo ("New Buddhism"). Chapter 2 explores the classical Chinese poetics that undergirds the lost half of Fenellosa's essay. Chapter 3 concludes the first half of the book with an exploration of the didactic and soteriological function of "emptiness" in Gary Snyder's influential poetry and poetics.
The second half begins with a critical exploration of the three-decades-long career of the poet/translator/critic Wai-lim Yip, whose "transpacific Daoist poetics" has been an important fixture in American poetic late modernism and has begun to gain wider notoriety in China. The last chapter engages the intertextual weave of poststructural thought and Daoist and shamanistic discourses in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's important body of heterocultural productions.
By formulating interpretive frames as hybrid as the texts being read, this book makes available one of the most important yet still largely unknown stories of American poetry and poetics.
Reviews / Votes
"A beautifully, coherently argued, and well researched book. Stalling goes eyond merely recovering the missing pieces in literary history; he has instead presented a brand new reading of Fenollosa, making him a key figure in the poetic and philosophical tradition that Stalling has shrewdly described as the 'poetics of emptiness.'" -Yunte Huang, University of California, Santa Barbara Petics of Emptiness: Transformations of Asian Thought in American Poetry discusses how Asian thought processes, spirituality, beliefs, and faith has been reflected in the past hundred years by using poetry as a chart of these changes. Scholarly and thoughtful, everything from Buddhism and tradition to the law is discussed and makes for a fascinating read. Poetics of Emptiness is a key addition to any poetry or literary studies collection. The Poetics of Emptiness brings the bubbling transpacific conversation we hear all around us to a boil. Through brilliant readings of Ernest Fenollosa, Gary Snyder, Wai-lim Yip, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Jonathan Stalling traces out the varieties of Buddhist and Daoist thought that contribute to 'a poetics of emptiness' in Asian and American poetry. An authoritative, inventive, necessary book.-Stephen Fredman Jonathan Stalling's thoroughly researched book is a ground-breaking contribution to the recently emerging study of how Asian literature has influenced 20th century American literature. Stalling's study is an exemplary argument that American literary scholars must be more inclusive of global, transpacific, literary perspectives. His study is a sophisticated exploration of how the Asian philosophical concept of emptiness transforms-but is also transformed by-the poetics of 20th century American poetry: highly recommended to a reader seeking a profound understanding of how Asian philosophy inflects American literary thought.-Gary StorhoffMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Cloth
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
622 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8232-3144-7 (9780823231447)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
10/2011
1st Edition
American Literatures Initiative
€25.49
Available for download
E-Book
10/2011
1st Edition
Fordham University Press
€56.49
Available for download
Person
JONATHAN STALLING is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Oklahoma. He is a co-editor of The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry: A Critical Edition (Fordham).