Reviews
An illuminating, insightful, and theoretically rigorous engagement with Objectivist poetics that is sure to shape subsequent discussion.
Jennison embraces a precise critical vocabulary that serves her purpose well... Most importantly, [she] presents an incisive and rigorous reading of Zukovsky's early work, not against his own interpretive choices but informed by them.
The signal theoretical work of the year is Ruth Jennison's The Zukofsky Era... It seems unlikely that work on both [Zukofsky and Oppen] in the coming years will be able to avoid responding to Jennison's reconfiguration of the critical terrain—this is a work sure to have a wide influence.
Jennison delivers the most satisfying and intellectually robust explanation we have yet had of Zukofsky, in particular, and Objectivism, in general. No account of modernist poetics should be able to present itself without embarrassment if it avoids Jennison's readings. Along with Moretti and Eagleton, The Zukofsky Era shows that large-scale historical accounts can deliver complex textual readings. More please.
An original and compelling piece of scholarly work, The Zukofsky Era arrives at an especially opportune moment: it is the first closely integrated and theoretically sophisticated, full-length discussion of the Objectivists, a group of poets who are receiving increasing critical attention. Jennison's materialist reading of these late-born modernists will no doubt go far toward setting the terms of debate over Objectivist poetry for some time to come.
Book Details
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: The Uneven Poetics of Radical Parataxis
Chapter 1. Zukofsky: The Political Economy of Revolutionary Modernism
Chapter 2. G. Oppen, Materialiste: Cinematic Capitalism
Pa
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: The Uneven Poetics of Radical Parataxis
Chapter 1. Zukofsky: The Political Economy of Revolutionary Modernism
Chapter 2. G. Oppen, Materialiste: Cinematic Capitalism
Part II: The Commodity's Inscape
Chapter 3. Zukofsky: The Voice of the Fetish
Chapter 4. Niedecker: The Interior Voice Commodified
Part III: The Objectivist Reflex
Chapter 5. Zukofsky: Counterfetishistic Literacy
Appendix
Notes
Index