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.

“This extraordinary book shows us exactly how the dynamics of the long poem enable the form, in Pound’s phrase, to ‘include history.’ Jaussen develops a suite of basic concepts that make possible revelatory readings of key works, and a new understanding of modern poetry’s most ambitious project.”–Michael Clune, Samuel B. and Virginia C. Knight Professor of Humanities, Case Western Reserve University

Cambridge University Press, 2017. Purchase here.

A Companion to American Poetry brings together original essays by both established scholars and emerging critical voices to explore the latest topics and debates in American poetry and its study. Highlighting the diverse nature of poetic practice and scholarship, this comprehensive volume addresses a broad range of individual poets, movements, genres, and concepts from the seventeenth century to the present day.

“This impressive Companion to American Poetry presents cutting-edge work by distinguished senior scholars and exciting emerging ones. Collectively, its thematically organized essays—on topics ranging from transnationalism to Trans poetry, from African American spirituals to rethinking the Anthropocene—brilliantly display poetry’s intellectual depth, formal variety, emotional power, and diverse social engagements.”–Lynn Keller, Martha Meier Renk Bascom Professor of Poetry Emerita, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Wiley-Blackwell, 2022. Purchase here.

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