A Guide to Poetics Journal: Writing in the Expanded Field, 1982–1998

How to Use This Guide

ix How to Use This Guide The present volume is one part of a two-part publication based on the ten issues of Poetics Journal that appeared between 1982 and 1998. The second part is the Poetics Journal Digital Archive, a resource that includes virtually all of the articles published in Poetics Journal. The guide and archive each contain an index and set of thematic links organized by keywords that will help readers make connections between articles. This volume has been edited and organized to be read on its own, but also to be used in conjunction with the archive. It comprises an anthology of key works excerpted from the run of Poetics Journal that individually—but, more important,collectively—helped define and articulate the examples and methods of contemporary poetics. The works range widely in style and approach and reflect a diversity of cultural perspectives, representing writing in poetics from North America and parts of Europe,the former Soviet Union,and Asia after 1980.They include essays that influenced the development of contemporary poetics; reviews and responses, both critical and theoretical, to new writing and other experimental practices;and texts that do the work of poetry and poetics simultaneously, as two facets of a single practice. As our volume’s title suggests, it is also intended as a guide, both to its own construction and to the archive.We hope that it will encourage readers to make exploratory connections between the 256 texts of Poetics Journal’s sixteenyear ,ten-issue run.As the introduction explains,each issue was edited around a particular topic; the arrangement of the works within each issue was intended to maximize connections—in terms of affinity or contradiction—in order to catalyze discussion and creative projects. To increase the usefulness of the print volume, we have provided a series of headnotes to the individual works and a general introduction. Our goal has been to provide cultural and historical contexts for the materials as representing a larger field of writing in poetics. The thirty-six articles selected for this guide are presented in three parts, drawn respectively from numbers 1–4, 5–7, and 8–10 of the journal. The twelve articles within each part appear in alphabetical order by author. Each article is preceded by a headnote and followed by publication data; a short list of keywords , which can be used to locate related articles in the guide and archive; a x how to use this guide series of “links” to other works by the author and to related articles; and a selected bibliography of the author’s works, foregrounding creative work, writings in poetics, and collaborative projects. Thematically organized “constellations ,” or annotated lists of suggested further readings follow each part. Some of the essays included in this volume are abridged versions of the originals. The archive will present nearly all of the works published in the journal, including those in the guide, in full. We hope that the combined publication of the guide and archive will provide a model for the continued accessing and circulation of similar bodies of work in a way that foregrounds the historical contexts for their production as well as their relation to each other. The writing that appeared in Poetics Journal reflected the development of a range of creative and critical approaches in avant-garde poetry and art in the 1980s and 1990s. In making the content newly available for creative and critical use, we hope to preserve the generative enthusiasm for new writing and art it represents, while encouraging new uses and contexts. —Lyn Hejinian and Barrett Watten a guide to Poetics Journal ...