About the Author

Marjorie Perloff is professor emerita of English at Stanford University and the author or editor of many books, including Wittgenstein's Ladder: Poetic Language and the Strangeness of the Ordinary and The Sound of Poetry / The Poetry of Sound, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Reviews

""Unoriginal Genius" showcases, yet again, why Marjorie Perloff is the most respected expositor for the avant-garde in poetry. She demonstrates why lauded, modern poets (many of whom have questioned the values of both ''the original'' and ''the creative'') might prefer instead to ''cheat'' on their assignments by handing in poems that steal words and remix lines, verbatim, from the databases of the "deja dit". I recommend that every genius read this omnibus--then copy its poetics."--Christian Bok, author of "Eunoia"
--Christian Bok

“When "The Poetics of Indeterminacy" appeared, our view of twentieth-century poetry was reconceived and reborn. Since then Perloff established herself as the pre-eminent scholar and critic of  the Modern/Postmodern epoch, whose continuities she was the first to grasp. Of her work one wants to say, recalling Marianne Moore, it is a privilege to see so much profusion. Another wonderment, "Unoriginal Genius" circumnavigates the poetic world of the past 75 years, touching at strategic ports of call and eager to mix with many languages, cultures, and aesthetic media. The book starts in the theatre of Benjamin’s Second Empire and finishes with a study of the Edgar Poe "des nos jours," Kenny Goldsmith—aptly finishes, since Perloff’s underlying story, though she never says this and though nearly everyone has forgotten it, began—as Baudelaire knew—with Poe, the first of our great poetic theatricians.”—Jerome McGann, University of Virginia