Fordham University Press Dictionary Poetics: Toward a Radical Lexicography (Verbal Arts: Studies in Poetics)

Dictionary Poetics analyses book-length poems from a number of writers who have used particular editions of specific dictionaries to structure their work. Authors include Louis Zukofsky , George Oppen, Clark Coolidge, Bernadette Mayer, Tina Darragh, and Harryette Mullen. Review In Dictionary Poetics, Dworkin seeks to uncover the literary texts of poems at the sentence level... Many readers... will enjoy diving in to better understand the layers of meaning in the poetry.-- "Choice" Dictionary Poetics presents startlingly new ways of reading relatively well-known modernist texts. Dworkin's scholarship is exemplary: rigorous, enviably insightful, and frequently brilliant. Dictionary Poetics is the book of a brilliant scholar working at the height of his powers. Dworkin's already legendary blend of scholarly thoroughness and poetic inventiveness reaches a new level in this study. ---Jacob Edmond, author of Make It the Same: Poetry in the Age of Global Media, A captivating study: Dworkin's readings are not only immensely learned; they are, from chapter to chapter, revelatory. Dictionary Poetics offers a remarkable set of keys for reading--and unlocking--recondite modern and contemporary poetry, and this knowledge is conveyed with a deep comprehension of the material and historical contexts of their production. ---Josephine Park, University of Pennsylvania, About the Author Craig Dworkin is Professor of English at the University of Utah. He is the author of Reading the Illegible (2003) and No Medium (2013) and is the editor or co-editor of six volumes of literary criticism and avant-garde poetry.