Poetic Realism by Rachel Blau Duplessis reviewed

Norman Finkelstein’s Website, Restless Messengers: Poetry In Review has a great review by Jeanne Heuving of Rachel Blau DuPlessis’ Poetic Realism.

In “The Entanglements: a Representation,” a poem more than midway through Poetic Realism, Rachel Blau DuPlessis quotes William Carlos Williams: “not ‘realism,’ but reality itself” (50). The passage, from Williams’ 1923 Spring and All, announces Williams’ refusal of normative representation. For Williams, his new poetry meant a different mode of apprehension and writing as well as the inclusion of more mundane things and feelings—more reality.

“Reality,” not “realism,” from Modernist poets into our present has often been the preferred concept for experimental and avant-garde writers. I teach an undergraduate course in which I make a primary distinction between “realism” and “reality” in order to draw students’ attention to how writing they might think of as real is in the fact realism, not reality. Realism, I say, in written arts, is always constructed and no matter how real it might seem, for whatever reason, how much it inclines us to a willing suspension of disbelief, is based on inclusions and exclusions. I make this distinction to get students to consider how realism is a formation and to open up to more experimental or avant-garde writing, which I describe as attempting to incorporate a greater or different sense of reality.

Buy the book here and read a preview:

Poetic Realism by Rachel Blau DuPlessis

Read the Full review here:
https://www.poetryinreview.com/?fbclid=IwAR3TAYjSywAYMaKnbushbGKpqNYqcrs5mVmAXQ6B4TBLPnhZqRexBW51WzA