From the Files of Immanent Foundation: A Selected Bibliography
About Norman Finkelstein: A poet and literary critic, Norman Finkelstein is the author of five critical works, including The Ratio of Reason to Magic: New & Selected Poems. Finkelstein has written extensively about modern American poetry and Jewish literature. Like a Dark Rabbi: Modern Poetry and the Jewish Literary Imagination is forthcoming from Hebrew Union College Press. Born in New York City in 1954, Finkelstein is a Professor of English at Xavier University in Cincinnati, where he has taught since 1980. Finkelstein will discuss From the Files of Immanent Foundation on 10/5 at 6pm at the Co-op. He will be joined in conversation by Peter O'Leary.
Little, Big, by John Crowley - Crowley's book is a modern fantasy classic, in part because he reconceives the entire genre through family chronicle and dark alternative history. Along with his Aegypt Cycle, this book opened up possibilities of narrative for me within the lyric mode.
Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and Iron Council, by China Miéville - Another modern master of generic subversion, Miéville's rethinking of fantasy, sci fi, steampunk, and weird horror also inspired me to rework poetic conventions of the romantic sublime in something approaching a narrative frame.
The Uncanny, by Nicholas Royle - Elaborating brilliantly on Freud's original essay on the uncanny, Royle unpacks a mode that became fundamental to my work as the Immanent Foundation took shape.
The Weird and the Eerie, by Mark Fisher - This last book by the late English critic and cultural theorist Mark Fisher (aka k-punk) departs from but also augments our understanding of the uncanny by zeroing in on unsettling qualities of literature, film, and music that are distinct but previously too hazy to define.
The Secret Life of Puppets, by Victoria Nelson - I have long been fascinated by ways in which the supernatural and the fantastic challenge our modern secular sensibility. Nelson reveals the secret genealogy of the fantastic from antiquity to the end of the 20th century.
My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer - Spicer remains a model for how a serial poem or "book" can come to a poet and be sustained. His ghosts and Martians taught me long ago what poetic inspiration really means.
On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, by Gershom Scholem - My worldview, my understanding of literary tradition, and my Jewish/Gnostic sensibility all came into being by reading Scholem, and his thinking and scholarship shape my writing to this day.
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