- Paperback: 952 pages
- Publisher: University of Alabama Press; 1 edition (Sep 4 2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 081735493X
- ISBN-13: 978-0817354930
- Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 12.6 x 5.9 cm
- Shipping Weight: 1.4 Kg
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #334,503 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||
Product Details |
Product Description
Review
"Ron Silliman's ongoing long poem The Alphabet . . . mingles quotidian observation, linguistic-philosophical reflection, and street-level social critique to produce as vivid, systemic, and cumulatively moving an account of contemporary life as any poet now writing."
—Times Literary Supplement
Book Description
<div> <P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><I>The Alphabet</I> is a remarkable and notorious literary achievement, decades in the making, one continually debated, discussed, and imitated since fragments first appeared in the 1970s. Consisting of twenty-six smaller books, one for each letter of the alphabet, it employs language in ways that are startling and innovative. Over the course of the three decades during which it has appeared--in journals, magazines, and as stand-alone volumes--its influence has been wide-ranging, both on practicing poets and on critics who have had to contend with the way it has changed the direction of American poetry.</P> <P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> </P> <P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Ron Silliman, a founder of the language poetry movement in the 1960s and one of its most dedicated and acclaimed practitioners, has deployed in <I>The Alphabet</I> the full range of formal and linguistic experiments for which he is known.</P> <P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> </P> <P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><I>The Alphabet</I> is a work of American ethnography, a cultural collage of artifacts, moments, episodes, and voices--historical and private--that capture the dizzying evolution of America’s social, cultural, and literary consciousness.</DIV>
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
|
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.ca
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
The pleasures of language, Oct 4 2009
By William Michaels - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Alphabet (Paperback)
Wow! Mr. Silliman seems to be in the company of Ashbery and Clark Coolidge when it comes to making higher sense out of apparent nonsense. And 900 pages' worth--God's plenty! I am also amazed as to who published this--a university better known for Bear Bryant.Very highly recommended for anyone who doesn't feel that poetry (or in this case, prose poetry) has to "make sense."
1.0 out of 5 stars
it's a book alright..., Feb 10 2012
By Pietro "Pietro Da Cortona" - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Alphabet (Paperback)
I've actually read this book, strangely enough. I'm not sure if everyone commenting here has read through it all. Silliman it seems is just putting everything down and frankly wasting paper. In this book is his basic conceit: riding on a bus and taking notes in the form of fragmentted "new sentences" about what he sees. He is a poet influenced by 1980's high-theory to be sure, and perhaps some 1960's beat runoff. He isn't a very good poet, but he has served as a paternal center, in terms of poetic subculture and online-poetry-culture, due mostly to his blog ronsilliman@blogspot.com.In this massive tome, there is little readerly pleasure to be had. Mostly, it is fragmentary "new sentences" often in the form of declarative. Silliman has theorized this "new sentence" quite extensively in the volume by the same name, which I think I may have reviewed. Being a member of "Language Poetry" Silliman has managed to publish this volume through the help of fellow language poet friends in academia, through the Alabama press series overseen by Charles Bernstein, among others.
I do challenge readers out there, who are interested in poetic technique, strong tropes, socially relevant themes, conceits, prosody, pathos, or any other effect-affect that good poetry elicits, to read through this book without the aura of an alleged counter-poetical mystique that Silliman assumes he possesses. What you will get is a bunch of sentences, informed by false linguistics and outmoded literary theories; as well as some not very interesting observations. The spectre of Zukofsky's "A" certainly looms large here, even Whitman because where Whitman embedded himself in the spirit of the democratic masses, Silliman tends to do the same only the spirit is lost in Capitalist decadence and all that remains is the trash of our own dead language and the failure to form into poetry itself is reified in his gigantic book (a gigantic failure, but not even an interesting postmodern "failure," usually just a regurgitation of the manifold impressions Silliman has on a bus... for a 1000 or so pages, pretending not be "the author")...
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
steve roggenbuck's interview, Mar 2 2011
By richard chiem - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Alphabet (Paperback)
Q4: Ron Silliman has written about you before. Can you talk about that experience? What poets / writers have inspired you?
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Criticism & Theory
- Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > United States
- Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Criticism
- Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Single Authors > United States
- Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > United States
- Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > History & Criticism
- Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > Poetry
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
