Line Break: Poetry As Social Practice

By James Scully

Book Overview

"Line Break" is the major work on poetry as social practice and a must-read for anyone interested in contemporary criticism or poetry. For many years, James Scully, along with others, quietly... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1931896186
• ISBN13: 9781931896184
• Release Date: August 2005
• Publisher: Curbstone Press
• Length: 180 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.6" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

essays by a poet breaking down arbitrary walls and mistaken assumptions

Scully says that in the eight essays he means to question the "fetishes we find ourselves wearing like ankle bracelets...that enable cultural overseers to shut us up in a kind of house arrest." Adrienne Rich remarks in her "Foreword" on this poet's "fiercely demystifying intelligence." Yes, Scully fiercely, uncompromisingly, brings his hopes for a truly, thoroughly humane world into the light. Such hopes are often preceded by trenchant, riveting critiques on writings, ideas, and states of affairs; and sometimes the hopes are bound in with these in a struggle. Such struggling especially is the sign that besides having a cogent moral sense and articulated vision, Scully is a consummate realist. He does not abandon common, inevitable life for promises, visions, or programs of a heavenly life. What he surely does bring to light is the true notion that "ankle bracelets" need not be an inevitable or permanent part of life, nor be the defining attribute of it. The essays mostly and ostensibly about poetry, writing style, expression and all its sources and destinations are in a larger sense and ultimately about larger life than most are accustomed to, and than most can even conceive of. The essays packed with serious and reflective thought, earnest with teaching and persuasion, and buoyant with inspiration and possibility demonstrate once again that the best writing on politics, culture, and individual life and its choices usually comes from accomplished poets such as Scully. Essays of Seamus Heaney are another example.