Overview

Locating poetry in a philosophy of the everyday, Brett Bourbon continues a tradition of attention to logic in everyday utterances through Wittgenstein, Austin, Quine, and Cavell, arguing that poems are events of form, not just collections of words, which shape everyone’s lives. Poems taught in class are formalizations of the everyday poems we live amidst, albeit unknowingly. Bourbon resurrects these poems to construct an anthropology of form that centers everyday poems as events or interruptions within our lives. Expanding our understanding of what a poem is, this book argues that poems be understood as events of form that may depend on words but are not fundamentally constituted by them. This line of thought delves into a poem’s linguistic particularity, to ask what a poem is and how we know. By reclaiming arenas previously ceded to essayists and literary writers, Bourbon reveals the care and attention necessary to uncovering the intimate relationship between poems, life, reading and living. A philosophical meditation on the nature of poetry, but also on the meaning of love and the claim of words upon us, Everyday Poetics situates the importance of everyday poems as events in our lives.

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9781350265462

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Reviews

Brett Bourbon's new book suggests that no theory of poetry can be just about poetry. For him too, the theory of poetry is the theory of life as it is. Everyday Poetics ?is a profoundly serious and moving book, placing poetry alongside our many sublunary dealings and philosophical entanglements. * Miguel Tamen, Professor of Literary Theory, University of Lisbon, Portugal *

Brett Bourbon's new book suggests that no theory of poetry can be just about poetry. For him too, the theory of poetry is the theory of life as it is. Everyday Poetics ?is a profoundly serious and moving book, placing poetry alongside our many sublunary dealings and philosophical entanglements. * Miguel Tamen, Professor of Literary Theory, University of Lisbon, Portugal * What do we mean when we say “I love you”? Why do we write? Why do we read? How do poems claim us or, in Brett Bourbon phrase, hold us? Lucid, well made, and always engaging, Everyday Poetics answers such questions in striking and original ways. * Adam Parkes, Professor of English, University of Georgia, USA * The great strength of this book is that it addresses what others neglect: the ways in which aesthetic experience is embedded in ordinary life, in terms that can seem debased by extensive currency. Brett Bourbon’s discussion of literary criticism, lyric poetry, and philosophical discourse about poetry is constantly surprising and always humane. * Robert von Hallberg, Professor of Literature, Claremont McKenna College, USA *

Author Information

Brett Bourbon is Associate Professor of English, University of Dallas, USA.

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