Woodslane | Book - 9781421425375

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Word of Mouth

Gossip and American Poetry

ISBN-13: 9781421425375
Publisher: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
Imprint: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
By Chad Bennett
Price: AUD $113.00
Stock: 0 in stock
Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
Local release date: 14/07/2018
Format: Hardback 344 pages Weight: 0g
Categories: Literary theory [DSA]

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Can the art of gossip help us to better understand modern and contemporary poetry? Gossip's ostensible frivolity may seem at odds with common conceptions of poetry as serious, solitary expression. But in Word of Mouth, Chad Bennett explores the dynamic relationship between gossip and American poetry, uncovering the unexpected ways that the history of the modern lyric intertwines with histories of sexuality in the twentieth century.

Through nuanced readings of Gertrude Stein, Langston Hughes, Frank O'Hara, and James Merrill'poets who famously absorbed and adapted the loose talk that swirled about them and their work'Bennett demonstrates how gossip became a vehicle for alternative modes of poetic practice. By attending to gossip's key role in modern and contemporary poetry, he recognizes the unpredictable ways that conventional understandings of the modern lyric poem have been shaped by, and afforded a uniquely suitable space for, the expression of queer sensibilities.

Evincing an ear for good gossip, Bennett presents new and illuminating queer contexts for the influential poetry of these four culturally diverse poets. Word of Mouth establishes poetry as a neglected archive for our thinking about gossip and contributes a crucial queer perspective to current lyric studies and its renewed scholarly debate over the status and uses of the lyric genre.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. ""They Will Tell Well""
2. ""Ain't You Heard?""
3. ""The Dish That's Art""
4. ""The Celestial Salon""
Coda
Notes
Bibliography
Index

""Chad Bennett's intuition that gossip is not inconsequential but central to poetry and that both gossip and poetry are eccentrically central to life, marks an ironic, mature, and observant mind.... His rhetoric is unaggressive, but his point is provocative. The point is that although not all gossip is queer, there is something potentially queer about gossip itself.""

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Word of Mouth

Gossip and American Poetry