Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
O: Apostrophic Ghosts and the Disappearing Acts of Lyric Poetry

O: Apostrophic Ghosts and the Disappearing Acts of Lyric Poetry

Ben-Merre, David

Hardcover

Series: Suny Series, Literature...in Theory

Literary CriticismPoetry Criticism

ISBN13: 9798855804089
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: Oct 1 2025
Pages: 310
Weight: 1.29
Height: 0.81 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

Considers how a series of poets reimagined the possibilities of O as a gesture of apostrophe and, even more so, of writing.

In poetry circles, O is commonly associated with apostrophe-a dramatized turn to call out to an absent friend or idea. This call, however, is made possible by a graphic sign it pretends not to acknowledge. O follows poets who were rethinking the apostrophic O alongside its symbolic, iconic, and material forms. Organized conceptually rather than chronologically, the book explores how works by W. B. Yeats, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, James Merrill, Emily Dickinson, and Terrance Hayes, as well as the singer-songwriter Carly Simon and the band The Cure, each turn at deeply human moments to call forth an alternative to the present. Culminating in an experimental epilogue cowritten with the Romanticist Manu Samriti Chander, O engages with ongoing, sometimes excessive debates about lyric poetry and literary critical method, finding modest ground between their respective sides.

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