Material Poetics in Hemispheric America: Words and Objects 1950-2010, Kosick Rebecca

Reconsiders the lyrical norm that predominates in Anglophone accounts of poetry through a multilingual and transnational lens

• A bold project that departs from a tradition heavily dominated by the lyric to question the very nature of what counts as poetry.
• A visually exciting text that draws on poetry and art from a wide array of late twentieth and early twenty-first century practitioners.
• An interdisciplinary approach to poetry and poetics that opens new avenues for understanding how poetry intersects with philosophies of the object, media theory, and visual studies.
• A transnational frame that responds to a growing scholarly push to situate American studies within the broader context of the American hemisphere.

This book examines poets and artists in the Americas during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries to show how they worked to make language into material objects and material objects into language. It builds a theory of ‘material poetics’ that provides an alternative account of poetry in hemispheric America. Rebecca Kosick argues that by reframing American poetry to prominently include object-oriented practices within and beyond the United States, material poetry can be seen as representing a significant branch of the American poetic tradition.