The Testimonies of Russian and American Postmodern Poetry

By Albena Vassileva and Albena Lutzkanova-Vassileva

This book challenges the belief in the purely linguistic nature of contemporary poetry and offers an interpretation of late twentieth-century Russian poetry as a testimony to the unforeseen annulment of communist reality and its overnight displacement by a completely unfathomable post-totalitarian order.

Albena Lutzkanova-Vassileva argues that, because of the sudden invalidation of a reality that had been largely seen as unattained and everlasting, this shift remained secluded from the mind and totally resistant to cognition, thus causing a collectively traumatic psychological experience. The book proceeds by inquiring into a school of contemporary American poetry that has been likewise read as cut off from reality.

Executing a comparative analysis, Vassileva advances a new understanding of this poetry as a testimony to the overwhelming and traumatic impact of contemporary media, which have assailed the mind with far more signals than it can register, digest and furnish with semantic weight.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1628921870
• ISBN13: 9781628921878
• Release Date: December 2014
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.1" x 9.1"