In the Air I N T H E A I R Essays on the Poetry of Peter Gizzi Edited by Anthony Caleshu Wesleyan University Press | Middletown, Connecticut Wesleyan University Press Middletown CT 06459 www.wesleyan.edu/wespress © 2018 Anthony Caleshu All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Designed by April Leidig Typeset in Garamond by Copperline Book Services Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Caleshu, Anthony, editor. Title: In the air: essays on the poetry of Peter Gizzi / edited by Anthony Caleshu. Description: Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2017018704 (print) | LCCN 2017019569 (ebook) | ISBN 9780819577481 (ebook) | ISBN 9780819577467 (cloth: alk. paper) | ISBN 9780819577474 (pbk.: alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Gizzi, Peter—Criticism and interpretation. Classification: LCC PS3557.I94 (ebook) | LCC PS3557.I94 Z67 2017 (print) | DDC 811/.54—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017018704 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Acknowledgments ix List of Source Abbreviations xi Introduction | Anthony Caleshu In the Air: The Poetry of Peter Gizzi xiii Part I | Tradition and Intertextuality 1 | Michael D. Snediker Gizzi’s Romantic Exportance 3 2 | Charles Altieri Gesture and Philosophical Reflection in the Poetry of Peter Gizzi 15 3 | Kacper Bartczak The Artifice of Personhood and the Poetics of Plenitude in Peter Gizzi’s Archeophonics 34 4 | Marjorie Perloff Peter Gizzi’s Poetics of Contingency 44 5 | Hannah Brooks-Motl Gathering the Poem: On Peter Gizzi’s “A Telescope Protects Its View” 57 6 | Sara Crangle “Tradition & the Indivisible Talent” 66 7 | Jeremy Noel-Tod “To Speak in This Place”: Peter Gizzi, W. S. Graham, and English Poetry 78 Part II | Lyrics and Ethics 8 | Olivier Brossard Peter Gizzi’s Hypothetical Lyricism 97 9 | David Herd The Lyric Voice as Ethical Medium: Peter Gizzi and the Contemporary Polis 119 10 | Ruth Jennison The Outernationale: Only Transition! or, the Poetics of Unfreedom 140 11 | Lytton Smith The Bewilderment of Peter Gizzi’s “Plural Noises”: Toward a Poetics of Citizenship 151 12 | Nerys Williams “This further sound, scratch of pen to parchment in a flight of democracy”: Reading Peter Gizzi’s “Some Values of Landscape and Weather” 166 13 | Peter Middleton Peter Gizzi’s Radical Irony 179 14 | Philip Coleman “turning words to return a world”: On Peter Gizzi’s “Pierced” 193 Part III | Affect and Allusion 15 | Lee Upton Recognition, Affect, Resistance: The Poetry of Peter Gizzi 207 16 | Daniel Katz Peter Gizzi’s Emotion Machine 220 17 | Dan Beachy-Quick To Arrive in Zeno’s Thought: Reverie On, Thinking In, Peter Gizzi’s “A Panic That Can Still Come Upon Me” 232 18 | Anthony Caleshu Divine Allusion and Refraction: Beginning, Ecstasy, and the Dead in the Poetry of Peter Gizzi 244 19 | Aaron Kunin Love at Both Ends of the Western World 263 20 | Graham Foust “Trembling my standard returned”: Two Versions of “Hard as Ash” 271 21 | Ben Lerner From Seeing to Saying: On Peter Gizzi’s “It Was Raining in Delft” 284 Afterword | Cole Swensen “Sonic Sense” 289 About the Contributors 297 Index 301 Acknowledgments The idea for this collection of essays came about during the “Poets and Crit- ics” symposium dedicated to the study of Peter Gizzi’s work that took place on the weekend of May 28–30, 2012, at Universités Paris Est Marne- la- Vallée, Paris 7 & 8, and Institut Universitaire de France. I’m grateful to the organiz- ers, Olivier Brossard and Vincent Broqua, and to the symposium contributors, particularly David Herd and Daniel Katz, who have been generous in con- versation and scholarship over these past five years. Additional enablers of my thoughts and writing about Gizzi include Edward Clarke and Philip Coleman; I remain especially grateful to Philip for supporting my residency at Trinity Long Room Hub (Trinity College, Dublin), where my own chapter herein was redrafted. Once the idea for a volume of essays was in the air, the poets and critics approached were enthusiastic, and I’m grateful to the contributors who made time to write so meaningfully about Gizzi’s work. It must be an awkward position to be the subject of a book, and great thanks are due to Peter Gizzi, himself, for his clarification of certain points as well as his willingness to be in- terviewed several times over these past few years. Thank you to the publishing team at Wesleyan University Press, particularly Suzanna Tamminen, for her invaluable support of contemporary poets and poetry. Thank you to my own institution, University of Plymouth, for research time and funding, enabling various trips in the UK, USA, Ireland, and France, as well as for supporting the hosting of conferences dedicated to contemporary poetry at our home campus: Poetry and Public Language (May 18–20, 2012), and Contemporary Poetry: Thinking and Feeling (May 20–22, 2016). And finally, an acknowledgment to my family, Ciara, Parker, and Caleb, for always giving me reason to “love this ball I’m riding on . . . around my loves and my loving” (to use the words of Peter Gizzi). ix