The Difference Is Spreading: Fifty Contemporary Poets on Fifty Poems
Since its inception in 2012, the hugely successful online introduction to modern poetry known as ModPo has engaged some 415,000 readers, listeners, teachers, and poets with its focus on a modern and contemporary American tradition that runs from Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson up to some of today's freshest and most experimental written and spoken verse. In The Difference Is Spreading, ModPo's Al Filreis and Anna Strong Safford have handed the microphone over to the poets themselves, by inviting fifty of them to select and comment upon a poem by another writer.

The approaches taken are various, confirming that there are as many ways for a poet to write about someone else's poem as there are poet-poem matches in this volume. Yet a straight-through reading of the fifty poems anthologized here, along with the fifty responses to them, emphatically demonstrates the importance to poetry of community, of socioaesthetic networks and lines of connection, and of expressions of affection and honor due to one's innovative colleagues and predecessors. Through the curation of these selections, Filreis and Safford express their belief that the poems that are most challenging and most dynamic are those that are open—the writings, that is, that ask their readers to participate in making their meaning. Poetry happens when a reader and a poet come in contact with one another, when the reader, whether celebrated poet or novice, is invited to do interpretive work—for without that convergence, poetry is inert.

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The Difference Is Spreading: Fifty Contemporary Poets on Fifty Poems
Since its inception in 2012, the hugely successful online introduction to modern poetry known as ModPo has engaged some 415,000 readers, listeners, teachers, and poets with its focus on a modern and contemporary American tradition that runs from Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson up to some of today's freshest and most experimental written and spoken verse. In The Difference Is Spreading, ModPo's Al Filreis and Anna Strong Safford have handed the microphone over to the poets themselves, by inviting fifty of them to select and comment upon a poem by another writer.

The approaches taken are various, confirming that there are as many ways for a poet to write about someone else's poem as there are poet-poem matches in this volume. Yet a straight-through reading of the fifty poems anthologized here, along with the fifty responses to them, emphatically demonstrates the importance to poetry of community, of socioaesthetic networks and lines of connection, and of expressions of affection and honor due to one's innovative colleagues and predecessors. Through the curation of these selections, Filreis and Safford express their belief that the poems that are most challenging and most dynamic are those that are open—the writings, that is, that ask their readers to participate in making their meaning. Poetry happens when a reader and a poet come in contact with one another, when the reader, whether celebrated poet or novice, is invited to do interpretive work—for without that convergence, poetry is inert.

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The Difference Is Spreading: Fifty Contemporary Poets on Fifty Poems

The Difference Is Spreading: Fifty Contemporary Poets on Fifty Poems

The Difference Is Spreading: Fifty Contemporary Poets on Fifty Poems

The Difference Is Spreading: Fifty Contemporary Poets on Fifty Poems

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Overview

Since its inception in 2012, the hugely successful online introduction to modern poetry known as ModPo has engaged some 415,000 readers, listeners, teachers, and poets with its focus on a modern and contemporary American tradition that runs from Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson up to some of today's freshest and most experimental written and spoken verse. In The Difference Is Spreading, ModPo's Al Filreis and Anna Strong Safford have handed the microphone over to the poets themselves, by inviting fifty of them to select and comment upon a poem by another writer.

The approaches taken are various, confirming that there are as many ways for a poet to write about someone else's poem as there are poet-poem matches in this volume. Yet a straight-through reading of the fifty poems anthologized here, along with the fifty responses to them, emphatically demonstrates the importance to poetry of community, of socioaesthetic networks and lines of connection, and of expressions of affection and honor due to one's innovative colleagues and predecessors. Through the curation of these selections, Filreis and Safford express their belief that the poems that are most challenging and most dynamic are those that are open—the writings, that is, that ask their readers to participate in making their meaning. Poetry happens when a reader and a poet come in contact with one another, when the reader, whether celebrated poet or novice, is invited to do interpretive work—for without that convergence, poetry is inert.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780812253962
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Publication date: 03/29/2022
Pages: 272
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Al Filreis is Kelly Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is also Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House, publisher of Jacket2 magazine, and co-director of PennSound. He is the creator and lead teacher of the open online course on modern and contemporary poetry, ModPo. His most recent book is 1960: When Art and Literature Confronted the Memory of World War II and Remade the Modern.

Anna Strong Safford is an Upper School English teacher at the Episcopal Academy. Previously, she was an instructor and curriculum specialist at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Liberal and Professional Studies and the Course Coordinator for ModPo. She has taught at Temple University, the Community College of Philadelphia, and Boston College, and her poems and essays can be found in Supplement, Cleaver, and other publications.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 On Walt Whitman, Canto 11 from "Song of Myself" (1855) Divya Victor 7

2 On Emily Dickinson, "The Brain-is Wider than the Sky" (c. 1862) Rae Armantrout 11

3 On Gertrude Stein, "A Carafe, that is a Blind Glass" (1914) Ron Silliman 15

4 On Robert Frost, "Mending Wall" (1914) Bob Perelman 18

5 On H.D., "Sea Rose" (1916) Rachel Blau DuPlessis 23

6 On Ezra Pound, "The Encounter" (1916) Yosuke Tanaka 27

7 On Marcel Duchamp and Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, "Fountain" (1917) Christian Bök 30

8 On Claude McKay, "If We Must Die" (1919) Tonya Foster 34

9 On Wallace Stevens, "The Snow Man" (1921) Lytie Shaw 38

10 On William Carlos Williams, "The rose is obsolete" (1923) Julia Bloch 42

11 On Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, "XRAY" (1924) Jennifer Scappettone 47

12 On Bob Brown, from GEMS (1931) Craig Dworkin 52

13 On Genevieve Taggard, "Interior" (1935) Rodrigo Toscano 57

14 On Ruth Lechlitner, "Lines for an Abortionist's Office" (1936) Mark Nowak 61

15 On Mina Loy, "The Song of the Nightingale Is Like the Scent of Syringa" (c. 1944) Robert Fitterman 65

16 On Allen Ginsberg, "A Supermarket in California" (1955) Davy Knittle 69

17 On Bob Kaufman, from "Jail Poems" (1960) Jake Marmer 74

18 On Jackson Mac Low, "Call me Ishmael" (1960) Danny Snelson 78

19 On Robert Creeley, "I Know a Man" (1962) Fred Wah 82

20 On Frank O'Hara, "Poem (Khrushchev is coming on the right day!)" (1964) Marjorie Perloff 86

21 On Langston Hughes, "Dinner Guest: Me" (1965) Aldon Lynn Nielsen 92

22 On Sylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus" (1965) Sina Queyras 97

23 On Gwendolyn Brooks, "Boy Breaking Glass" (1967) Herman Beavers 104

24 On Barbara Guest, "20" (1968) Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué 109

25 On Amiri Baraka, "Incident" (1969) Tyrone Williams 114

26 On Lorine Niedecker, "Foreclosure" (1970) Sarah Dowling 118

27 On Larry Eigner, "birds the" (1970) Michael Davidson 122

28 On Tom Leonard, "Jist Ti Let Yi No" (c. 1974) Christie Williamson 126

29 On Bernadette Mayer, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1976) Laynie Browne 130

30 On Lyn Hejinian, from My Life (1980) Charles Bernstein 134

31 On Cid Corman, "It isnt for want" (1982) Al Filreis 140

32 On John Ashbery, "Just Walking Around" (1984) Adam Fitzgerald 144

33 On Susan Howe, from My Emily Dickinson (1985) Stephen Collis 148

34 On Rosmarie Waldrop, "A Shorter American Memory of the Declaration of Independence" (1988) Nick Montfort 152

35 On James Schuyler, "Six Something" (1990) Eileen Myles 156

36 On Erica Hunt, "the voice of no" (1996) Simone White 159

37 On Erica Baum, from Card Catalogues (1997) Mónica de la Torre 164

38 On Joan Retallack, "Not a Cage" (1998) erica kaufman 168

39 On Lydia Davis, "A Mown Lawn" (2001) Lyn Hejinian 173

40 On Rae Armantrout, "The Way" (2001) Elizabeth Willis 177

41 On Michael Magee, from "Pledge" (2001) Sharon Mesmer 181

42 On Eileen Myles, "Snakes" (2001) Rachel Zolf 187

43 On Anne Waldman, "Rogue State" (2002) Edwin Torres 193

44 On Harryette Mullen, "Elliptical" (2002) Amber Rose Johnson 198

45 On Caroline Bergvall, "VIA" (2003) Jena Osman 202

46 On Charles Bernstein, "In a Restless World Like This Is" (2004) Imaad Majeed 211

47 On Laynie Browne, "Sonnet 123" (2007) Bernadette Mayer 215

48 On Tracie Morris, "Africa(n)" (2008) Douglas Kearney 218

49 On Jayne Cortez, "She Got He Got" (2010) Trade Morris 222

50 On Evie Shockley, "a one-act play" (2017) Erica Hunt 226

List of Contributors 231

Index 245

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