Volume 8, No. 2

This interview covers extensive topics about poetry and poetics, ranging from the language of poetry to the principles of formalism, from performance poetry to visual poetry, from digital humanities to cognitive poetics in the age of data, from the problems of “theory” to the conditions of humanities in American universities, and above all from Marjorie Perloff’s own insightful understanding of the essence of poetry to her endorsement of the ethical literary criticism initiated by Nie Zhenzao. According to Marjorie Perloff, poetry is “the art of relationship” as well as “the discourse that could only be Re-read, because you notice other things when you read it again.” In this interview, Marjorie Perloff cited modern and contemporary poets like Ezra Pound, Alan Ginsburg, Charles Bernstein, and the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein to demonstrate her opinions on poetry and poetics.

Wittgenstein reflects on memory, saying that photograph is not reliable, and the memory-image cannot convince us either, since “memory does not show us the past, any more than our senses show us the present,” and “memory is itself conditioned by the specificity of context.” Reading closely the conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth’s large art exhibition, called “The Play of the Unsayable,” Marjorie Perloff relates Wittgenstein’s theory of language game to Kosuth’s art text of Abridged in Ghent, and argues that the language game initiated by a sentence like “I see us still, sitting at the table” is charged with possibilities for “philosophy” as a “form of poetic composition.” Wittgenstein’s Ladder is an apt figure for Marjorie Perloff’s radical aesthetic which is ethical as well, doing the right thing for the individual poets, moving up the ladder which Gertrude Stein called “beginning again and again,” but with changes with repetition in a spiral way. Later in her preface of Unoriginal Genius: Poetry by Other Means in the New Century (2010), Marjorie provides her rationale to update her earlier work, Radical Artifice: Writing Poetry in the Age of Media (1991) in terms of a “new citational and often constrained-bound poetry” in an environment of “hyper-information.” Since Unoriginal Genius (2010), Perloff traces her poetics of “unoriginal genius” from a Benjamian Arcades Project, made up of creative citations, discussing the processes of choice, framing, and reconfiguration. It is my contention that Marjorie Perloff as the critic par excellence has been dedicating her own Arcades Project to explore the intriguing development in contemporary poetry, creatively embracing the “unoriginal” writing of uncreative poets.

Marjorie Perloff is a towering figure in contemporary literary criticism, known for her incisive analyses and groundbreaking theories on modern and contemporary poetry. Her work traverses the rich terrains of modernism, postmodernism, and media ecology, shedding light on the multifaceted nature of poetic expression in the 20th and 21st centuries. This essay, in memory of Marjorie Perloff, examines her significant literary contributions, and the critical reception of her poetic theories, underlining the interdisciplinary nature of her work.

As a world-renown American critic and theorist in poetry, Marjorie Perl- off (1931-2024), with her in-depth exploration into western avant-garde poetry and poetics and her theoretical and methodological reconstruction by means of dialog with the 20th-century American critical theories, made great and unique achievements, which can be labelled as “the third path” in poetry criticism in terms of its transcending New Criticism and Cultural Criticism in the 20th and early 21st centuries. Since her first visit to China in 2007 and her co-founding of the Chinese/American Association for Poetry and Poetics in 2008, Perloff’s critical theories and ideas have been translated or introduced into China. This paper presents an examination of Perloff’s “third path” of poetry criticism, and its introduction to and influence upon China’s poetry creation and criticism.

This article is both a reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein and a tribute to the monumental work of the late Marjorie Perloff, a towering figure in contemporary poetry criticism, who has arguably been the most ardent and eloquent explicator of what she calls the “Wittgensteinian poetics.” Tapping into the wellspring of Perloff’s critical oeuvre, this article reassesses Wittgenstein as a conceptual poet by interpreting some of the most salient features of his philosophical poetics.

W. Somerset Maugham, an English author active from the late 19th to the mid-20th century, has long been the subject of comparative and cross-cultural literary studies, especially in relation to his literary connections with the East. Moving beyond Edward Said’s “Orientalist” model, this paper adopts J. J. Clarke’s concept of “strategy of self-questioning” to explore Maugham’s “creative” engagement with Zhuangzi’s philosophies. Through analyzing The Painted Veil and The Narrow Corner, the paper argues that Maugham employs Zhuangzi’s concept of Yi Dao Guan Wu as a lens to redefine the concepts of subjectivity and ethics within the context of cross-cultural dialogue.

James Kelman, the first Scottish author in history to win this award twice, is renowned for his distinct language style and his focus on Scotland’s underclass. In Hardie and Baird: The Last Days, Kelman skillfully intertwines narratives to illuminate the challenges faced by ordinary Scottish workers amidst the backdrop of the Battle of Bonnymuir in 1820. This paper aims to analyze Kelman’s portrayal of the Battle of Bonnymuir and to explore the ethical identity and choices of Hardy, a character navigating a socially disadvantaged milieu. Additionally, it delves into the motivations behind Hardy’s ethical decisions, aiming to unravel the identity crisis experienced by the Scottish people. It argues that Kelman’s approach of narrating “history from below” not only infuses his work with a distinct Scottish national character but also establishes the unique essence of his artistic expression. Furthermore, it embeds meaningful ethical reflections into the historical narrative, showcasing Kelman’s ethical contemplations that transcend local confines.