Dictionary Poetics
Toward a Radical Lexicography
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The new ways of writing pioneered by the literary avant-garde invite new ways of reading commensurate with their modes of composition. Dictionary Poetics examines one of those modes: book-length poems, from Louis Zukofsky to Harryette Mullen, all structured by particular editions of specific dictionaries. By reading these poems in tandem with their source texts, Dworkin puts paid to the notion that even the most abstract and fragmentary avant-garde literature is nonsensical, meaningless, or impenetrable. When read from the right perspective, passages that at first appear to be discontinuous, irrational, or hopelessly cryptic suddenly appear logically consistent, rationally structured, and thematically coherent.
Following a methodology of “critical description,” Dictionary Poetics maps the material surfaces of poems, tracing the networks of signifiers that undergird the more familiar representational schemes with which conventional readings have been traditionally concerned. In the process, this book demonstrates that new ways of reading can yield significant interpretive payoffs, open otherwise unavailable critical insights into the formal and semantic structures of a composition, and transform our understanding of literary texts at their most fundamental levels.
A captivating study: Dworkin’s readings are not only immensely learned; they are, from chapter to chapter, revelatory. Dictionary Poetics offers a remarkable set of keys for reading—and unlocking—recondite modern and contemporary poetry, and this knowledge is conveyed with a deep comprehension of the material and historical contexts of their production.---Josephine Park, University of Pennsylvania
Dictionary Poetics presents startlingly new ways of reading relatively well-known modernist texts. Dworkin’s scholarship is exemplary: rigorous, enviably insightful, and frequently brilliant. Dictionary Poetics is the book of a brilliant scholar working at the height of his powers. Dworkin’s already legendary blend of scholarly thoroughness and poetic inventiveness reaches a new level in this study.---Jacob Edmond, author of Make It the Same: Poetry in the Age of Global Media
In Dictionary Poetics, Dworkin seeks to uncover the literary texts of poems at the sentence level... Many readers... will enjoy diving in to better understand the layers of meaning in the poetry.---Choice
Introduction: Toward an Experimental Lexicography | 1
1 Funk & Wagnalls Practical Standard Dictionary of the English
Language and Louis Zukofsky’s Thanks to the Dictionary | 33
2 Webster’s Collegiate and Louis Zukofsky’s “A” | 48
3 The Oxford English Dictionary and George Oppen’s
Discrete Series | 77
4 Webster’s New Collegiate and the Poetry of Clark
Coolidge and Bernadette Mayer | 101
5 The Random House Dictionary of the English
Language and the Poetry of Tina Darragh | 129
6 Juba to Jive: A Dictionary of African-American
Slang and Harryette Mullen’s Muse & Drudge | 161
Acknowledgments | 185
Notes | 187
Index | 239
