Being Numerous: Poetry and the Ground of Social Life Paperback - 2011

From the rear cover

"Controversial and important, Being Numerous resurveys the poetic landscape and offers an alternative way of considering both it and our involvement in it. For Izenberg, poetry might well be considered 'something that we are.' And despite the philosophical richness of his arguments, he writes with a lucidity so attentive that his style can seem a kind of tenderness. This is a significant, revisionary book. It might also be a guide. Its claims on our attention will be more than momental."--Forrest Gander, Brown University

"Being Numerous provides a general theory of poetry's claim to universalism through lyric transactions between a writer and a reader that are both enabled and tortured by poetic form. As a result, Izenberg pays very close attention to the reader's experience of feeling connected to the scene of being one of many through the poem. I love reading this manifestic and meticulous writing, and it has a lot to offer scholars of affect, emotion, and intimacy."--Lauren Berlant, University of Chicago

"In this major book, Oren Izenberg introduces a crucial and generative new distinction that reorganizes twentieth-century poetry. Izenberg is simply the best young critic of modernist poetry around--for his capacious scholarship, his elegant prose, his imaginative scope, his close and intelligent reading, and especially his ability to show how some quite diverse poetic projects share a basic purpose."--Charles Altieri, University of California, Berkeley

Media reviews

Citations

• Choice, 08/01/2011, Page 0