What Is Poetry: Conversations With the American Avant-Garde

By Daniel Kane

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0915924641
• ISBN13: 9780915924646
• Release Date: April 2003
• Publisher: Teachers & Writers Collaborative
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.5" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

Having some fun with it

I find this book valuable for a number of reasons. It's written in a conversational style, reflecting the relaxed tone of Kane's interviews with 12 writers including (as example) Ann Lauterbach, Bernadette Mayer, Harryette Mullen, John Ashbery, Lisa Jarnot, and Robert Creeley. Kane recommends one or two books as good starting places for readers not familiar with each author profiled. He then presents a poem and asks its author to discuss it. That discussion evolves into a longer conversation, prompted by a series of insightful questions.

Can easy be used in the classroom

I can see where many of the idea can be used in the classroom. I will probably end up using some of the quotes for classroom use. I do feel that a nice variety of poets were used for this book. Though the interviews themselves can be somewhat dry at times, this is a book that poetry instructors should peruse.

A great resource for teachers!

I guess the best kept secret about "avant-garde" poetry is that it ISN'T inaccessible, opaque, or difficult. Any teacher who has taught poetry knows that often time the work that students (of any age) respond to most passionately and excitedly is the work that's strangest in appearance, content, style, or format.This book has really helped me approach the poetry of these poets with an eye towards helping students to understand language, respond creatively, and (of course) to appreciate all different styles of poetry.All of the interviews are wonderful but the ones with Ann Lauterbach, Fanny Howe, Michael Palmer, and Harryette Mullen are particularly revelatory. If you are a reader of any kind of poetry, you should get this book. If you are a teacher, your school library should have a copy of this.

Avant-Garde for the Rest of Us!

Kane has put together an intelligent - and intelligible - casebook of current American avant-garde practitioners. His interviews and examples are clear and appreciable; the poets' responses lucid and thoughtful. Together they make What Is Poetry the perfect introduction for anyone interested in the avant-garde. Because Kane helps demystify both the approach and intention of these poets, What Is Poetry is the perfect text for high schoolers and college students, even M.F.A. students, whose poetry experiences lack breadth. It's a long overdue and invaluable resource. I recommend it to everyone.

When poets talk together . . .

-it's not often they talk about poetry. More often than not you'll hear them gossiping about money, sex, jobs, politics, just like anybody else. It's refreshening indeed to have a whole book devoted to interviews in which the poets speak candidly about the thing only they have to share-how they wrote the poetry in the first place. Daniel Kane, the distinguished historian who wrote All Poets Welcome: The Lower East Side Poetry Scene in the 1960s, has done an admirable job first of selecting a representative group of avant-garde poets, then drawing them out, making them feel comfortable enough to speak freely about the sources and techniques of their writing. In addition, I can recommend this book to people who are curious about experimental poetry, but can't bring themselves to jump off into the deep end without a parachute. It's very user friendly, and yet at the same time, you don't get the feeling you're being talked down to. Some of the poets are quite well known (Creeley, Koch, Ashbery) while others are on the up and coming list. Even the most interviewed among them wind up saying things you've never heard before. That's the mark of a good interviewer.