The Poetics of Wrongness

(Paperback)

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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.

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 Thus, Zucker deftly dismantles the outdated paradigms of motherhood, aesthetics, feminism, poetics, and politics.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 Lordeamong many othersinto the conversation, Zucker questions the categories that have been imposed on poetry, as well as a poets 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.

Reviews

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

"Rachel Zucker may be Generation Xs likeliest heir to the confessional legacy of Sylvia Plath, Louise Glck, and Sharon Olds."The Believer

"Zucker renders even the simplest inquiriessuch as 'hasnt anyone tried to stop this'resonant and profound in this restless and thoughtful book."starred review for SOUNDMACHINE, Publishers Weekly

Author Bio

Rachel Zuckeris the author ofThe Poetics of Wrongness(Wave Books, 2023),SoundMachine(Wave Books, 2019),The Pedestrians(Wave Books, 2014), andMuseum 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.