Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-Culturality and Experimental Writing

by Nathaniel Mackey

Discrepant Engagement addresses work by a number of authors not normally grouped under a common rubric--black writers from the United States and the Caribbean and the so-called Black Mountain poets. Nathaniel Mackey examines the ways in which the experimental aspects of their work advance a critique of the assumptions underlying conventional perceptions and practice. Arguing that the work of these writers engages the discrepancy between presumed norms and qualities of experience such norms fail to accommodate, Mackey highlights their valorization of dissonance, divergence and formal disruption. He advances a cross-cultural mix that is uncommon in studies of experimental writing, frequently bringing the works and ideas of the authors it addresses into dialogue and juxtaposition with one another, insisting that parallels, counterpoint and relevance to one another exist among writers otherwise separated by ethnic and regional boundaries.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Theory

326 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Poet and novelist Nathaniel Mackey was born in 1947 in Miami, Florida. He received a BA degree from Princeton University and a PhD from Stanford University.

Nathaniel Mackey has received numerous awards including a Whiting Writer’s Award and a 2010 Guggenheim fellowship. He is the Reynolds Price Professor of English at Duke University and served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2001 to 2007. Mackey currently lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Reviews

[Codi · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the more important books I've read in my life. I will be buried with this one.

[Vinay Khosla · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is how you do syncretic close reading. Rhetoric off the charts.