I wish to thank the editors of the journals who first published some of the materials that appear in this book. In the last two sections I have lifted and reworked parts of the essay “Contemporary Poetry, Alternate Routes,” Critical Inquiry 13 (Spring 1987): 624–47 The following essays are reprinted here more or less exactly as they originally appeared:
“Truth in the Body of Falsehood (Clark Coolidge’s Poetry),” Parnassus 15 no. 1 (1989): 257–80.
“Marxism, Romanticism, and Postmodernism: An American Case History,” South Atlantic Quarterly 88 (Summer 1989): 605–32.
“The Alphabet, Spelt from Silliman’s Leaves (A Conversation on the American Longpoem),” South Atlantic Quarterly 89 (Fall 1990): 737–59.
“Charles Bernstein’s ‘The Simply’,” in Contemporary Poetry Meets Modern Theory, ed. Antony Easthope and John O. Thompson (Harvester-Wheatsheaf: London, 1991), 34–39.
“Art and Error: With Special Reference to the Poetry of Robert Duncan,” Modern Language Studies (special issue on “The Problem of Beauty,” ed. Lisa Samuels) 27 no. 2 (Summer 1997): 9–22.
“From Sight to Shenandoah,” The Bellingham Review 20 (Spring 1997): 38–43.
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