Coming to Terms with the American Long Poem: Introduction

Abstract

In this introduction, Carbery illuminates the role phenomenological philosophy has played in the composition of long poems in America. The diverse group of poets explored in the book—George Oppen, Robin Blaser, Susan Howe, Lyn Hejinian, Leslie Scalapino, Nathaniel Mackey and Rachel Blau DuPlessis—have all created extended poetic projects and are motivated by or in places touch upon ideas expressed in the phenomenological writings of Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. In establishing the groundwork of this argument, Carbery discusses recent critical approaches to long poem, before presenting a detailed account of the role of phenomenology in American poetics.