Negative Theology and Utopian Thought in Contemporary American Poetry

Jason Lagapa is Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas – Permian Basin, where he teaches courses in twentieth-century and twenty-first-century American poetry and creative writing.  He has published articles in Contemporary Literature and Journal of Modern Literature and contributed to The Salt Companion to Charles Bernstein.

• Introduction.- Our Message Was Electric: Susan Howe and the Resuscitation of Failed Utopian Projects.- And Be Whole Again: Antiphony, Deprivation, and the “Not-Yet” Place of Utopia in Nathaniel Mackey’s Splay Anthem.- Leave Us the World: Apophasis, Dissent and the Pluralist Politics of Charles Bernstein’s Poetry.- Pages to Come: Utopian Longing and the Merging the Detective Story with the Artist’s Novel in Alice Notley’s Disobedience.- Afterword - Not Yet the End: the Resistance to Closure in Bloch’s Anticipatory Consciousness and Contemporary Experimental Poetry