Part anthology, part essay collection, The Fate of Difficulty in the Poetry of Our Time offers original readings of poems composed in this century--poems that are challenging to follow, challenging to understand, challenging to discuss, and challenging to enjoy. Difficult poetry of the past relied on allusion, syntactic complexity, free association, and strange juxtapositions. The new poetry breaks with the old in its stunning variety, its questioning of inherited values, labels, and narratives, its multilingualism, its origin in and production of unnamed affects, and its coherence...

Part anthology, part essay collection, The Fate of Difficulty in the Poetry of Our Time offers original readings of poems composed in this century--poems that are challenging to follow, challenging to understand, challenging to discuss, and challenging to enjoy. Difficult poetry of the past relied on allusion, syntactic complexity, free association, and strange juxtapositions. The new poetry breaks with the old in its stunning variety, its questioning of inherited values, labels, and narratives, its multilingualism, its origin in and production of unnamed affects, and its coherence...