Skip to content
Description
By: Stephen Rodefer
Originally published in the 1980s and out of print until now, Rodefer's four long poems are milestones in American avant-garde poetry.
Stephen Rodefer was an innovative, singular American writer—a student of Charles Olson’s often associated with the Language poets but whose eclectic, energetic verse defies categorization and embraces a worldly lyricism all Rodefer’s own. Four Lectures—first published in 1982 by Geoffrey Young’s legendary press The Figures and long out of print—is widely considered to be his masterpiece. It is a book of four long poems that explore the radical possibilities of language through a generous, intimate collage of sights and sounds, voices and images, drawn from the poet’s world. In city-block-like stanzas by turns philosophical and political, playful and playing for keeps, with freewheeling reference to everything from Shakespeare to Looney Tunes to Iceberg Slim and much else besides, Rodefer boldly reimagines the modern philosophical poem exemplified by T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets and John Ashbery’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror for an inundating, fragmentary age in which there are “more photographs in the world than there are bricks.”
Originally published in the 1980s and out of print until now, Rodefer's four long poems are milestones in American avant-garde poetry.
Stephen Rodefer was an innovative, singular American writer—a student of Charles Olson’s often associated with the Language poets but whose eclectic, energetic verse defies categorization and embraces a worldly lyricism all Rodefer’s own. Four Lectures—first published in 1982 by Geoffrey Young’s legendary press The Figures and long out of print—is widely considered to be his masterpiece. It is a book of four long poems that explore the radical possibilities of language through a generous, intimate collage of sights and sounds, voices and images, drawn from the poet’s world. In city-block-like stanzas by turns philosophical and political, playful and playing for keeps, with freewheeling reference to everything from Shakespeare to Looney Tunes to Iceberg Slim and much else besides, Rodefer boldly reimagines the modern philosophical poem exemplified by T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets and John Ashbery’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror for an inundating, fragmentary age in which there are “more photographs in the world than there are bricks.”
You may also like
Top Trending
Dog Man 14: Dog Man: Big Jim Believes: A Graphic Novel (Dog Man #14)
Sale priceHK$85.00
Regular priceHK$150.00
In stock
Press Start! #17 The Super Jump Between Worlds! (Branches)
Sale priceHK$55.00
Regular priceHK$98.00
In stock
Darkstalker: A Graphic Novel (Wings of Fire: Legends Graphic Novel)
Sale priceHK$99.00
Regular priceHK$154.00
In stock
Warriors: A Starless Clan Box Set: Volumes 1 to 6
Sale priceHK$399.00
Regular priceHK$669.00
In stock
The Midnight Heist (Geronimo Stilton and The Kingdom of Fantasy #17)
Sale priceHK$128.00
Regular priceHK$200.00
In stock
