Like many other major contemporary poets, David Shapiro situates his poetry at the interstices between and among modes and traditions. Possessing a singular musical gift, Shapiro problematizes self and culture and challenges conventional notions of fixed and commodified identity in work that discovers and resists meaning. The thirteen essays (and one poem) collected here illuminate a useful range of Shapiro's major texts through diverse critical approaches and elucidate vital questions that Shapiro addresses about poetry's nature and cultural contexts. While some essays trace parallels between Shapiro and poetic, artistic, and philosophical precursors, others demonstrate how a new generation of poets, seeking brilliant sources of experimentation, have benefited from Shapiro's nearly forty-year investigation of cultural representation in original, candid, philosophical, visionary, witty poems.Foregrounding his resistance to myriad dogmatisms and thirst for democratic experimentation, these essays cogently analyze Shapiro's increasing importance to the American poetry scene. Thomas Fink is Professor of English at City University of New York, LaGuardia.
Joseph Lease is Associate Professor of Writing and Literature and Chair of the MFA Program in Writing at California College of the Arts.