Poetry After the Invention of América - (Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics) by A Ajens (Hardcover)

About the Book

"These essays trace the Western poem as it confronts indigenous alterity in Latin America. Rather than extend Western conceptions of writing in search of an alleged Amerindian ethno-literature, Ajens approaches literature as a Western invention. This book discusses a wide range of indigenous American, Hispanic, and European texts, with a focus on language, authorship, genre, and translation"--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

This collection of essays traces the emergence of the Western poem from the standpoint of its collision with "American" otherness, particularly, the Latin American tradition. Unlike works extending Western conceptions of writing or searching for an alleged American ethnopoetics, this book approaches literature as a Western invention and, in turn, seeks out correspondences between traditions

Review Quotes

"First, the book is the sum of the autographic inversion(s) of at least five people: Andean Andrés Ajens and his singular essays/assays; Forrest Gander and Erin Moure, tutelary figures demanding cognizance of the nonliterary or ancestral coeval others in American poetry; Alberto Moreiras, whose foreword truly steps forward; and Michelle Gil-Montero, whose careful translation or "dis[em]placement" is a stunning tour de force. Second, the whole book is written in a different chromatic scale of language and history from that usual in the West. This is a veritable tinku (or encounter) that seeks to deblock contaminated thinking about

poeisis in the Americas; it explores what Ajens calls "misture" to denote both the "métis-isation" and a greater "metasisization" in the usual commentary on indigenous thinking expressed only in terms of European culture in the familiar myth of "Conqu-west." Instead of exclusion, he prefers an invitation to partake of a treasure trove that includes Aristotle, Celan, Poe, Derrida, and others in joyful confluence with Aymara, Quechua, Mazateca, and Mapudungun. These important, far-reaching essays, sometimes angry but always playful, are a necessary reminder that culture and poetry existed in the Americas long before 1492. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above." - CHOICE

About the Author

ANDRÉS AJENS lives in Santiago, Chile. He completed his doctoral studies in Sociology under Alain Touraine at la École des Hautes Études in Paris, France. He is the author of numerous books, essays, and poems and he co-edits the journal Mar con Soroche (Santiago/La Paz), and is co-founder of Lenguandina (www.lenguandina.org) with Aymara translator and linguist Zacarías Alavi Mamani.

MICHELLE GIL-MONTERO holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Iowa, USA. Her translations have appeared in Conjunctions, Circumference, Cipher, Jacket, Almost Island, and other journals, and in the forthcoming anthology 500 Years of Latin American Poetry published by Oxford University Press.