Description
Book SynopsisThe Poetics of Wrongness is a collection of essay/talks that the poet Rachel Zucker, expanded from lectures presented for the Bagley Wright Lecture Series in 2016.
Devastating in their revelations, yet hopeful in their endurance, these are lectures of protest and reckoning. Zucker declares “I write against. My poetics is a poetics of opposition and provocation that I never outgrew. Against the status quo or the powers that be, writing out of and into wrongness.” Thus, Zucker deftly dismantles the outdated paradigms of motherhood, aesthetics, feminism, poetics, and politics. Bringing Bernadette Mayer, Marina Abramovic, Alice Notley, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde—among many others—into the conversation, Zucker questions the categories that have been imposed on poetry, as well as a poet’s need to speak, and the resulting responsibilities. Prescient in their original observations, these expanded talks seek to respond to and engage the many political events since their presentation, remaining timelessly persistent in their galvanizing force.
Trade Review"Her clean, tempered prose style is an ideal delivery system for her weaponized observations."
—Chicago Tribune"Rachel Zucker may be Generation X’s likeliest heir to the confessional legacy of Sylvia Plath, Louise Glück, and Sharon Olds."
—The Believer"Zucker renders even the simplest inquiries—such as 'hasn’t anyone tried to stop this?'—resonant and profound in this restless and thoughtful book
."—starred review for SOUNDMACHINE, Publishers WeeklyTable of ContentsContents
- The Poetics of Wrongness, an Unapologia
- What We Talk about When We Talk about the Confessional, and What We SHOULD Be Talking About
- A Very Large Charge: the Ethics of ‘Say Everything’ Poetry
- Why She Could Not Write a Lecture on the Poetics of Motherhood
- Outro
