The Poetry and Poetics of Michael Heller: A Nomad Memory

by Jon Curley (Editor), Burt Kimmelman (Editor), Hélène Aji (Contribution by), Norman Finkelstein (Contribution by), Stephen Fredman (Contribution by)

Overview

The Poetry and Poetics of Michael Heller: A Nomad Memory is the first comprehensive treatment of a singularly important American poet of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Michael Heller (b. 1937) has amassed a body of poetry and criticism that places him in the vanguard of modern literature, and this essay collection provides the first extensive critical treatment of his varied career. This book 's multifaceted appraisal of his engagement with poetry as well as crucial ideas across various traditions establishes him as a preeminent writer among his contemporaries and younger generations, and as a major poet in any era.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611476897
Publisher:	University Press Copublishing Division
Publication date:	07/01/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	212
File size:	488 KB

About the Author

Jon Curley is senior university lecturer in the humanities at New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Burt Kimmelman is professor of English at New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Table of Contents

Burt Kimmelman, Foreword
Jon Curley, Introduction: Charting a Nomadic Course: Michael Heller’s Dispersions of Tradition
Tyrone Williams, “’To place a word on it’: burning maps, drawing networks”:Michael Heller, This Constellation Is A Name: Collected Poems 1965-2010
Henry Weinfield, “Truth Also Is the Pursuit of It”: Heller’s Encounter with Oppen
Eric Hoffman, On Michael Heller’s “Stanzas Without Ozymandias”
Romana Huk, “Writing in the danger zone”: Michael Heller’s poetics of naming
Hélène Aji, Why Walter Benjamin? A Brief Note on Two Operas
Elisabeth Joyce, “Poetics of Remembrance”: Michael Heller as Memorial Candle
Stephen Fredman, Judaism as Loss in the Poetry of Michael Heller
David Herd, ‘Poetry on abandoned ground’: Michael Heller’s Eschaton
Norman Finkelstein, Afterword: Michael Heller: The Philosophical Poet In the Age of the Simulacrum
Burt Kimmelman and Jon Curley, “Interview with Michael Heller”
Works Cited (for volume)
Works Cited (works by Michael Heller)
Words Cited (articles, reviews, essays about Michael Heller)

Editorial Reviews

Over the past half century, Michael Heller has quietly but emphatically established himself as one of the most masterful poets of a post-Objectivist tradition—indeed, as one of the most thoughtful, lyrical, and philosophically profound of contemporary American poets. In major works of memoir and criticism, he has sensitively unravelled the nomadic origins of cultural and personal identity; in his poems he has limned a glittering constellation of powerful and emotionally resonant meditations on what it means to be Jewish, what it means to be American, what it means to be human. The essays in Jon Curley and Burt Kimmelman’s comprehensive and well-edited collection are an excellent introduction and an essential companion to Heller’s poetic achievement.

Mark Scroggins

In The Poetry and Poetics of Michael Heller, Burt Kimmelman and Jon Curley have assembled a formidable chorus of voices to sing a love song, one of undeniable substance.... Jon Curley, Burt Kimmelman and their contributors offer a compelling assessment of Michael Heller's importance as a poet, but also of poetry as a way of repairing a "defanged" aesthetic. It is a moving tribute to the man, and the mission.

American Book Review

Michael Heller’s work is richly deserving of the intricate seriousness with which it is read in the splendid essays gathered here. At last, one feels, the scale and ambition of his poetry are clearly announced, the claims of the ethical intelligence duly weighed. This volume affords a necessary and timely celebration.

Peter Nicholls

[This book] is an impressive and seminal body of original scholarship and highly recommended for academic library [and] Literary Studies in general, and Michael Heller supplemental studies lists in particular.

Midwest Book Review