Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"‘Isn’t the avant-garde always technological?’ asks Paul Stephens in this exciting book, which poses key questions and ventures revealing answers at every turn. He offers one of the freshest and smartest perspectives on the past century’s avant-garde, as well as an exceptionally clear view of the most exigent poetry from our contemporary moment."—Craig Dworkin, University of Utah and author of No Medium
"Well-documented and elegantly written, Stephens's book demonstrates the vitality of literary and poetic studies in the age of big data criticism."—Leonardo Reviews
"Enthralling and rigorous."—Neural
"The Poetics of Information Overload offers rewarding insights into these processes and establishes a compelling new perspective on the development of American poetry."—Amerikastudien/American Studies
"Stephens offers an engaging and stimulating introduction to the breadth of the American avant-garde’s conscious poetic engagement with the data age, its anxieties, and its ongoing struggle for recuperation." —British Society for Literature and Science
Table of ContentsContents
Preface: Stars in My Pocket Like Bits of Data
Introduction
1. "Reading At It": Gertrude Stein, Information Overload, and the Makings of Americanitis
2. Bob Brown, "Inforg": The "Readies" at the Limits of Modernist Cosmopolitanism
3. Human University: Charles Olson and the Embodiment of Information
4. "When Information Rubs/Against Information": Poetry and Informatics in the Expanded Field in the 1960s
5. Paradise and Informatics: Lyn Hejinian, Bruce Andrews, and the Posthuman Adamic
6. Vanguard Total Index: Conceptual Writing, Information Asymmetry, and the Data Glut
Afterword. "Proliferating Raw Data": Robert Grenier in the Expanded Field of New Media Poetics
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
