Description
Book SynopsisThe first study of modern and contemporary poetry's vibrant exchange with gossip. Can the art of gossip help us to better understand modern and contemporary poetry? Gossip's ostensible frivolity may seem at odds with common conceptions of poetry as serious, solitary expression. But in Word of Mouth, Chad Bennett explores the dynamic relationship between gossip and American poetry, uncovering the unexpected ways that the history of the modern lyric intertwines with histories of sexuality in the twentieth century. Through nuanced readings of Gertrude Stein, Langston Hughes, Frank O'Hara, and James Merrillpoets who famously absorbed and adapted the loose talk that swirled about them and their workBennett demonstrates how gossip became a vehicle for alternative modes of poetic practice. By attending to gossip's key role in modern and contemporary poetry, he recognizes the unpredictable ways that conventional understandings of the modern lyric poem have been shaped by, and afforded a uniq
Trade ReviewIn a deeply researched discussion of poetic, queer, and rhetorical theory, Bennett argues that "ideas of lyric, gossip, and queerness" reveal "new and illuminating contexts" (3).
—
ChoiceChad Bennett's
Word of Mouth: Gossip and American Poetry is so careful and decorous, it is beyond reproach. The writing is groomed, the research meticulous, the choice of subjectsGertrude Stein, Langston Hughes, Frank O'Hara, James Merrillstrikingly diverse. By patiently unpacking a crowd of difficult poems, Bennett shows how twentieth-century poetries have used gossip as mode to expand the formal and rhetorical possibilities of lyric.
—Christopher Schmidt, City University of New York,
Contemporary LiteratureChad Bennett's intuition that gossip is not inconsequential but central to poetry and that both gossip and poetry are eccentrically central to life, marks an ironic, mature, and observant mind. . . . His rhetoric is unaggressive, but his point is provocative. The point is that although not all gossip is queer, there is something potentially queer about gossip itself.
—Andrew DuBois, University of Toronto,
American Literary HistoryTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
1. “They Will Tell Well”
2. “Ain’t You Heard?”
3. “The Dish That’s Art”
4. “The Celestial Salon”
Coda
Notes
Bibliography
Index
