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The Plasticity of Poetry
Article first published online: 12 APR 2006
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2006.00338.x
1741-4113/asset/cover.gif?v=1&s=af89c86cb6c63465dc7223e925eb84e028d82b49 "Literature Compass")
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How to Cite
Smith, J. (2006), The Plasticity of Poetry. Literature Compass, 3: 613–624. doi: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2006.00338.x
Publication History
- Issue published online: 12 APR 2006
- Article first published online: 12 APR 2006
- Literature Compass 3/3 (2006): 613–624, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2006.00338.x
- Abstract
- Article
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- Cited By
Abstract
This essay won the 2005 Literature Compass Graduate Essay Prize, Twentieth Century Section.
By comparing avant-garde visual poetry to the avant-garde architecture of Arakawa and Madeline Gins, this essay describes how one virtually “moves through” poetic space. Appealing to examples from L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets Charles Bernstein, Steve McCaffery and Susan Howe and contemporary Chilean poet Cecilia Vicuña, I steer the reader through complex visual poems based on the grounds that a disruption of the reader’s sense of space has aesthetic and political implications.