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Unending Design: The Forms of Postmodern Poetry
Drawing on the work of contemporary American poets from Ashbery to Zukofsky, Joseph M. Conte elaborates an innovative typology of postmodern poetic forms. In Conte's view, looking at recent poetry in terms of the complementary methods of seriality and proceduralism offers a rewarding alternative to the familiar analytic dichotomy of "open" and "closed" forms. Unending Design will be welcomed by anyone interested in American poetry in particular and postmodernism more generally.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 1991
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January 13, 2026
3 ‘Of greater interest to me is the emergence among postmodern poets of a new perception of poetic form. As evidence, I wish to identify and explore the attributes of the two poetic forms I consider to be peculiar to and in many ways typical of postmodernism: serial and procedural form. The series is determined by the discontinuous and often aleatory manner in which one thing follows another. In an age of instant telecommunications and the motley of metropolitan life, the series accommodates the rapidly shifting contexts and the over whelming diversity of messages that we now experience as part of our daily routine.’
14 ‘The repeated clashes between academia and bohemia over the viability of open forms or the applicability of closed forms to the contemporary ethos give evidence that these were not peripheral spats over technique; such formal concerns constituted an active engagement with the sociopolitical goals and values of their adherents.’
27 ‘The serial form is a distinct type of the long poem, and it is remarkable for being the one long form whose characteristics are unique to a postmodern poetics.’
122 ‘an essential structural tension of the serial poem occurs between the series as relational system and the autonomy of each poem: the whole must act as a taut mechanism, just as the parts must have their independent sway’
268 ‘A new theory of poetic form can be measured in its importance by the scope and diversity of its practice.’
280 ‘The serial form is for poetry the most adept method of portraying both the interconnectedness and the particularity of objects in the world and our relationship to them and to one another.’
14 ‘The repeated clashes between academia and bohemia over the viability of open forms or the applicability of closed forms to the contemporary ethos give evidence that these were not peripheral spats over technique; such formal concerns constituted an active engagement with the sociopolitical goals and values of their adherents.’
27 ‘The serial form is a distinct type of the long poem, and it is remarkable for being the one long form whose characteristics are unique to a postmodern poetics.’
122 ‘an essential structural tension of the serial poem occurs between the series as relational system and the autonomy of each poem: the whole must act as a taut mechanism, just as the parts must have their independent sway’
268 ‘A new theory of poetic form can be measured in its importance by the scope and diversity of its practice.’
280 ‘The serial form is for poetry the most adept method of portraying both the interconnectedness and the particularity of objects in the world and our relationship to them and to one another.’
Displaying 1 of 1 review