{"product_id":"unoriginal-genius-poetry-by-other-means-in-the-new-century-9780226660622","title":"Unoriginal Genius: Poetry by Other Means in the New Century","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhat is the place of individual genius in a global world of hyper-information a world in which  as Walter Benjamin predicted more than seventy years ago  everyone is potentially an author? For poets in such a climate  \"originality\" begins to take a back seat to what can be done with other peoples wordsframing  citing  recycling  and otherwise mediating available words and sentences  and sometimes entire texts. Marjorie Perloff here explores this intriguing development in contemporary poetry: the embrace of \"unoriginal\" writing. Paradoxically  she argues  such citational and often constraint-based poetry is more accessible and  in a sense  \"personal\" than was the hermetic poetry of the 1980s and 90s. Perloff traces this poetics of \"unoriginal genius\" from its paradigmatic work  Benjamins 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  both movements now understood as precursors of such hybrid citational texts as Charles Bernsteins opera libretto Shadowtime and Susan Howes documentary lyric sequence The Midnight. Perloff also finds that the new syncretism extends to language: for example  to the French-Norwegian Caroline Bergvall writing in English and the Japanese Yoko Tawada  in German. Unoriginal Genius concludes with a discussion of Kenneth Goldsmiths conceptualist book Traffica seemingly \"pure\" radio transcript of one holiday weekends worth of traffic reports. In these instances and many others  Perloff shows us \"poetry by other means\" of great ingenuity  wit  and complexity.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45665799798837,"sku":"ByrdShop_0226660621","price":45.84,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780226660622.jpg?v=1782407782","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/unoriginal-genius-poetry-by-other-means-in-the-new-century-9780226660622","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}