Strips: Scientific Language in Poetry
Strips: Scientific Language in Poetry
The poetry that flourished in America between the mid 1970s and the 1990s known as Language Poetry was influenced by changing public perceptions of the natural sciences as well as the influence of structuralist social sciences. By considering the importance of physics and chemistry for the British poet J. H. Prynne, and the epistemological implications of references to current scientific publications, I discuss the struggles of Language Poets and other contemporary writers to assert the primacy of their own cognitive inquiries in the face of the authority of the sciences. Does poetry adumbrate more extended forms of knowledge and truth than dominant scientific methods recognise, and if so how might writers and critics better articulate these possibilities? The essay demonstrates that these questions have to address sensuous particularity as well as conceptual argument.
language poetry, J. H. Prynne, science and poetry, Ron Silliman, cybernetics
947-958
Middleton, Peter
9f64f346-a05f-4e54-bbf4-600c87a2b237
December 2009
Middleton, Peter
9f64f346-a05f-4e54-bbf4-600c87a2b237
Abstract
The poetry that flourished in America between the mid 1970s and the 1990s known as Language Poetry was influenced by changing public perceptions of the natural sciences as well as the influence of structuralist social sciences. By considering the importance of physics and chemistry for the British poet J. H. Prynne, and the epistemological implications of references to current scientific publications, I discuss the struggles of Language Poets and other contemporary writers to assert the primacy of their own cognitive inquiries in the face of the authority of the sciences. Does poetry adumbrate more extended forms of knowledge and truth than dominant scientific methods recognise, and if so how might writers and critics better articulate these possibilities? The essay demonstrates that these questions have to address sensuous particularity as well as conceptual argument.
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Published date: December 2009
Keywords:
language poetry, J. H. Prynne, science and poetry, Ron Silliman, cybernetics
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Local EPrints ID: 79386
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/79386
ISSN: 0950-236X
PURE UUID: f47349f6-aa34-401d-8968-9a88f1c86518
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Date deposited: 15 Mar 2010
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 00:29
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