Description:
A definitive work of literary scholarship, The Objectivist Nexus gathers leading critics and poets to explore one of the most influential yet historically underexamined movements in modern poetry. This rich collection of essays examines Objectivist writers--from Louis Zukofsky and George Oppen to Lorine Niedecker and Charles Reznikoff--situating their work within broader conversations about politics, ethics, and culture. Bridging literary criticism, cultural theory, and historical analysis, the volume presents Objectivist poetics not as a fixed doctrine but as a dynamic field of inquiry that continues to shape contemporary poetry. Essential for scholars, students, and readers of avant-garde literature, this anthology reveals poetry as a rigorous mode of thought grounded in history, society, and the material world.
Review Quotes:
"Rachel Blau DuPlessis's and Peter Quartermain's The Objectivist Nexus [is] not only useful but downright necessary. This volume, which collects essays by Charles Altieri, Alan Golding, Peter Middleton, Charles Bernstein, Stephen Fredman, and others, establishes the canon of so-called Objectivist poets, situates them in their composition and reception contexts, reads them through the interpretive filters of politics, ethics, and religion, and argues for their significance in the history of twentieth-century American poetry. This major set of objectives is admirably met, and the book should help to redefine 'Objectivist.'"--Michael Thurston, Yale University, in Modernism/modernity