Long Essay on the Long Poem: Modern and Contemporary Poetics and Practices

Description:

A masterful meditation on our most mercurial and abiding of poetic forms--the long poem

Review Quotes:

"I know of no other poetics of the long poem that engages such a range of questions and works. This is a must read for anyone working in the twentieth- and twenty-first-century long poem because of its numerous ways of examining its subject. DuPlessis's intuitive and reasoned understanding of just what it means to write a long poem drawn from her own experience of writing her long poem Drafts, as well as her astute reading of the poetry and poetics of an impressive array of poets, makes this book zing."
--Jeanne Heuving, author of The Transmutation of Love and Avant-Garde Poetics

"A Long Essay is a thought-provoking and illuminating exploration of its subject, one that neither this brief review nor a single read can do justice to."
--Rupert Loydell, Tears in the Fence

"Longing, and agony. I cannot think of better terms to sum up the tensions of the very long poem. DuPlessis does us all a service by making the long poem--that expansive 'site for poetic and social research' (169)--something we might be able to get our heads around at last--so long as we are willing to have the tops of our heads taken off."
--Relentless Messengers