The Poetry of Susan Howe / Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics (PDF)

WILLIAM MONTGOMERY is Research Fellow in Contemporary Poetry and Poetics at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK.

"Montgomery provides a comprehensive survey of Howe's poetry, one that makes use of the poet's correspondence, journals, and working notes." - Choice

"In The Poetry of Susan Howe, it is evident that Montgomery has done an amazing amount of research regarding Howe s career and writings; the pages are peppered with numerous quotations from her writing and from interviews with her. His analysis is also exceptional, making this a book full of insight into a 'difficult' poet." - Rain Taxi Review of Books

"Most readings of Susan Howe s poetry to date have been insider views:they account for Howe s themes, images, and structures by lining these up with her own stated views and purposes. Will Montgomery s may thus be the first to read Howe s oeuvre critically, to examine what he sees as the unresolved but productive tension in Howe s work between a poetry of redress and a poetry of grace. To call Howe s writing (whether poetry or prose ) anti-authoritarian or anti-canonical, for example, is to downplay its complexity and contradiction: hers is an oeuvre that returns poetic language back to a founding and incoercible strangeness. Refusing to classify this dazzling and indispensable writer as a language poet, feminist poet, or pragmatist, Montgomery gives us a highly original reading of Howe s work that is also a study of the larger issues now confronting poetry and poetics." - Marjorie Perloff, Professor of English Emerita, Stanford University and author of Unoriginal Genius: Poetry by Other Means in the New Century

"This lucid study of the full span of Susan Howe s poetry draws on impressive, scholarly research into her letters, essays, poetry, and performances to reveal in compelling detail just how much she has embedded her poetry in a poetic tradition stretching back beyond Wallace Stevens to the Elizabethans, as well as engaging with her avant-garde contemporaries. Will Montgomery is a subtle, perceptive, and knowledgeable guide through the