form, and why, in this connection, is so much latter-day free verse so indif-
ferent to the use of sound?
All of the essays in Differentials have been written within the past ¤ve
years, all of them for speci¤c occasions. Some have appeared in major jour-
nals or book collections, others in obscure “little magazines.” A number have
never been published before, and many are extensively revised. Since in most
cases the occasion dictated, at least in part, a given argument or topic, I de-
scribe these occasions in brief headnotes. The collection is framed by two
broader essays—the ¤rst, “Crisis in the Humanities?” is pedagogical, the sec-
ond, “Writing Poetry/Writing about Poetry: Some Problems of Af¤liation”
both pedagogical and personal. When I reread the fourteen essays in se-
quence, I was surprised to ¤nd that they do in fact have a larger rationale
and, I hope, a particular urgency.
This collection would not exist were it not for the many conference organiz-
ers, lecture coordinators, and editors of various journals and book collec-
tions, whose generous invitations prompted me to write (or rewrite) this or
that essay: H. Porter Abbott, Helène Aji, Louis Armand, Rae Armantrout,
Shyamal Bagchee, Mary Jo Bang, Ralph Berry, Sergio Bessa, Joel Bettridge,
Regis Bonvicino, Graçia Capinha, Brian Caraher, Laura Cowan, Joshua Co-
hen, Thomas Cousineau, Jeffrey Di Leo, Joseph Donahue, Nate Dorward,
Susan Dunn, Edward Foster, Ruben Gallo, Thomas Gardner, Fanny Howe,
Wolfgang Huemer, David Jackson, Lynn Keller, John Kinsella, Peter Nich-
olls, Lois Oppenheim, Peter Quartermain, Claudia Rankine, David Rudrum,
Rainer Rumold, Jean-Michel Rabaté, Lyle Shlesinger, John Tranter, Robert
Von Hallberg, and John Watkins.
A number of the poets whose work is discussed in speci¤c essays provided
indispensable information: Rae Armantrout, Caroline Bergvall, Christian
Bök, Kenneth Goldsmith, Susan Howe, Tom Raworth, and Rosmarie Wald-
rop. The late Haroldo de Campos, whose untimely death came just as I was
putting the ¤nal touches on this manuscript, sent me many useful little
magazines and broadsides, as did his brother, Augusto de Campos. And an-
other poet who is also a scholar-critic, Craig Dworkin (whom I had the privi-
lege of teaching when he was a Stanford undergraduate), read every essay
here and made trenchant comments and suggestions.
But my greatest debt is to the two editors of the Contemporary Poetics Se-
ries at the University of Alabama Press—Charles Bernstein and Hank Lazer.
It was Charles who ¤rst suggested to me that these essays might make an
interesting book and who helped me conceptualize the volume. And Hank
played the role of hands-on editor extraordinaire, going through what was
Introduction xxxiii