O - Apostrophic Ghosts and the Disappearing Acts of Lyric Poetry

Considers how a series of poets reimagined the possibilities of "O" as a gesture of apostrophe and, even more so, of writing.
In poetry circles, "O" is commonly associated with apostrophe-a dramatized turn to call out to an absent friend or idea. This call, however, is made possible by a graphic sign it pretends not to acknowledge. O follows poets who were rethinking the apostrophic "O" alongside its symbolic, iconic, and material forms. Organized conceptually rather than chronologically, the book explores how works by W. B. Yeats, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, James Merrill, Emily Dickinson, and Terrance Hayes, as well as the singer-songwriter Carly Simon and the band The Cure, each turn at deeply human moments to call forth an alternative to the present. Culminating in an experimental epilogue cowritten with the Romanticist Manu Samriti Chander, O engages with ongoing, sometimes excessive debates about lyric poetry and literary critical method, finding modest ground between their respective sides.

About the author

David Ben-Merre is Professor of English at Buffalo State, the State University of New York. He is the coauthor (with Robert Scholes) of Super Schoolmaster: Ezra Pound as Teacher, Then and Now and the author of Figures of Time: Disjunctions in Modernist Poetry, both published by SUNY Press.

Product details

• Authors: David Ben-Merre, David (Buffalo State College Ben-Merre
• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.10.2025
• EAN: 9798855804089
• ISBN: 9798855804089
• No. of pages: 310
• Series: SUNY series, Literature... in Theory; SUNY series, Literature...in Theory
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; LITERARY CRITICISM / Poetry, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 19th Century, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 21st Century, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 20th Century, PHILOSOPHY / Movements / Deconstruction, Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900, Literary studies: poetry & poets, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, Literary studies: poetry and poets, Deconstructionism, Structuralism, Post-structuralism, Structuralism and Post-structuralism, Literary studies: from c 2000