The Poetics of Wrongness - by Rachel Zucker (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The Poetics of Wrongness is a collection of essay/talks that the poet Rachel Zucker, expanded from lectures presented for the Bagley Wright Lecture Series in 2016.

Devastating in their revelations, yet hopeful in their endurance, these are lectures of protest and reckoning. Zucker declares "I write against. My poetics is a poetics of opposition and provocation that I never outgrew. Against the status quo or the powers that be, writing out of and into wrongness." Thus, Zucker deftly dismantles the outdated paradigms of motherhood, aesthetics, feminism, poetics, and politics. Bringing Bernadette Mayer, Marina Abramovic, Alice Notley, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde--among many others--into the conversation, Zucker questions the categories that have been imposed on poetry, as well as a poet's need to speak, and the resulting responsibilities. Prescient in their original observations, these expanded talks seek to respond to and engage the many political events since their presentation, remaining timelessly persistent in their galvanizing force.

Review Quotes

"Her clean, tempered prose style is an ideal delivery system for her weaponized observations."--Chicago Tribune

"Rachel Zucker may be Generation X's likeliest heir to the confessional legacy of Sylvia Plath, Louise Glück, and Sharon Olds."--The Believer

"Zucker renders even the simplest inquiries--such as 'hasn't anyone tried to stop this?'--resonant and profound in this restless and thoughtful book."--starred review for SOUNDMACHINE, Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Rachel Zucker is the author of The Poetics of Wrongness (Wave Books, 2023), SoundMachine (Wave Books, 2019), The Pedestrians (Wave Books, 2014), and Museum of Accidents (Wave Books, 2009), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A graduate of Yale University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Zucker is an adjunct professor at NYU and other places. She was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in 2012, a Sustainable Arts Fellowship in 2016, and residencies from The MacDowell Colony and the Vermont Studio Center in 2018. Zucker is mother to three sons and lives in Washington Heights, NY and Scarborough, ME.