Writing in Real Time
Emergent Poetics from Whitman to the Digital

Writing in Real Time is the first book-length study of the American long poem as a complex adaptive system.

Paul Jaussen (Author)

9781107195318, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 3 July 2017

236 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.7 cm, 0.48 kg

'Writing in Real Time is a welcome contribution to the dearth of systems-theoretical analyses of historically pivotal but formally unwieldy poetic projects … [It] provides tools that are vital and necessary for developing a critical and creative poetic practice with the capacity to engage the complexity of contemporary literary, social, and political ecologies.' James Belflower, Journal of Modern Literature

From Walt Whitman to the contemporary period, the long poem has been one of the more dynamic, intricate, and yet challenging literary practices of modernity. Addressing those challenges, Writing in Real Time combines systems theory, literary history, and recent debates in poetics to interpret a broad range of American long poems as emergent systems, capable of adaptation and transformation in response to environmental change. Due to these emergent properties, the long poem performs essential cultural work, offering a unique experience of history that remains valuable for our rapidly transforming digital age. Moving across a broad range of literary and theoretical texts, Writing in Real Time demonstrates that the study of emergence can enhance literary scholarship, just as literature provides unique insights into emergent properties, making this book a key resource for scholars, graduate students, and undergraduate students alike.

1. Introduction: the poetry of emergence
2. Emergent America: Walt Whitman's enactive democracy
3. Emergent vocabulary: Ezra Pound's translation machine
4. Emergent history: Charles Olson's housekeeping
5. Emergent midrash: Rachel Blau DuPlessis glosses modernism
6. Emergent sounds: Nathanial Mackey's 'post-expectant futurity'
7. Conclusion: emergent poetics and the digital.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Literary studies: general [DSB]