The Poetics of the Limit Ethics and Politics in Modern and Contemporary American Poetry

This book situates Louis Zukofsky's poetics (and the lineage of Objectivist poetics more broadly) within a set of ethical concerns in American poetic modernism. The book makes a strong case for perceiving Zukofsky as a missing key figure within this ethical matrix of modernism. Viewing Zukofsy's poetry through the lens of the theoretical work of Theodor Adorno and Emmanuel Levinas, Woods argues for an ethical genealogy of American poetics leading from Zukofsky through the contemporary school of LANGUAGE poetry. Woods brings together modernism and postmodernism, ethics and aesthetics, in interesting and innovative ways which shed new light on our understanding of this neglected strain of modernist poetics.

Introduction: Ethics and Objectivist Poetics The Emergence of 'Objectivist' Poetics: Aesthetics and Politics in the USA, 1910-1930 'Words ranging forms': The Crises of Modernism in 'A'-1 to 'A'-6 The 'Negative Dialectics' of Louis Zukofsky's 'A' 'A'-9: A Labor of Love, or a Love of Labor? Ethos or Ontos? Modes of Subjectivity in Levinas and Zukofsky 'Figuring it out' and Doubling 'A'-gain: Language and Otherness in 'A'-12 to 'A'-23 'Things at the limits of reason': George Oppen's Materialist Ethics Conclusion: Reading Language Writing

TIM WOODS has taught at King Alfred's College, Winchester, and the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, where he is currently senior lecturer in English and American Studies. He has co-edited 'I'm telling you stories': Jeanette Winterson and the Politics of Reading (Rodopi, 1998), Critical Ethics: Text, Theory and Responsibility (Macmillan, 1999), The Ethics in Literature (Macmillan, 2000), and authored Beginning Postmodernism (Manchester, 1999) and Who's Who in Twentieth-Century Fiction (Routledge, 2001). Articles have appeared in Parataxis, English, Rethinking History, The Poet's Voice, and Textual Practice. He is currently completing a monograph on African Literatures in English