Emerging Improvisations: A Review of Writing in Real Time | Emergent Poetics from Whitman to the Digital

In Writing in Real Time | Emergent Poetics from Whitman to the Digital, Paul Jaussen reconsiders the formal idiosyncrasies of the American long poem through contemporary systems theories. Jaussen claims that the immutable architectures that support long poems from Walt Whitman to Nathaniel Mackey cannot be reduced to the play of lyric intensities, nor are they productively approached through extensive genre categorization. He argues that instead of these two methodologies, their forms interactively emerge; they unfold in real time as adaptive systems with the capacity to critique, rework, and respond to their changing material environments. To read the diversity of the American long poem through systems theoretical discourse is to reveal what Jaussen calls "interactive emergence," the poet's sustained creative/critical improvisation with the material dynamism of time.