Preface -- Distortion in the contemporary lyric and prose poem -- Distortion and disjunction in contemporary American poetry -- Distortion within poetry, nature, culture, and media -- Poetry, reality, & place in a placeless world of global communication -- Toward a wilderness of the artificial -- Concept, hyperbole, and truth as forms of abstraction in poetry -- The poem as concept -- Three notions of truth in poetry -- Distortion, transition, and memorability in poetry -- Raising poetry to a higher power -- Poetry & memorability -- Temporal distortion & originality in poetry -- Poetry & originality: "have you been there before?" -- Origin, presence, and time in the poetry of W.S. Merwin -- Jorie Graham: kite's body and beyond -- A romp through Ruefleland: Mary Ruefle's Selected poems & Madness, rack, and honey: collected lectures -- Myth and archetype as forms of abstraction -- Orpheus, Parzival, and Bartleby: ways of abstraction in poetry.;Monster: Distortion, Abstraction, and Originality in Contemporary American Poetry argues that memorable and resonant poetry often distorts form, image, concept, and notions of truth and metaphor. Discussing how changes in electronic communication and artificial notions of landscape have impacted form and content in poetry, Monster redefines the idea of what is memorable and original through a broad range of poets including John Ashbery, Anne Carson, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Forrest Gander, Peter Gizzi, Jorie Graham, Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, Laura Kasischke, W.S. Merwin, Srikanth Reddy, Donald Revell, Mary Ruefle, Arthur Sze, and James Tate.
