The surprising story of the relationship between experimental poetry and literary studies. In The Academic Avant-Garde, Kimberly Quiogue Andrews makes a provocative case for the radical poetic possibilities of the work of literary scholarship and lays out a foundational theory of literary production in the context of the university. In her examination of the cross-pollination between the analytic humanities and the craft of poetry writing, Andrews tells a bold story about some of today's most innovative literary works. This pathbreaking intervention into contemporary American literature and higher education demonstrates that experimental poetry not only reflects nuanced concern about creative writing as a discipline, but also uses the critical techniques of scholarship as a cornerstone of poetic practice. Structured around the concepts of academic labor (such as teaching) and methodological work (such as theorizing), Andrews traces these practices in the works of authors ranging from Claudia Rankine to John Ashbery, providing fresh readings of some of our era's most celebrated and difficult poets. Throughout, Andrews builds upon recent interest in the institutional contexts of cultural production to outline a rich and far-reaching poetic engagement with academic discourse, demonstrating that poetry is at its most poetic when it is critical-and that criticism, thus, contains a type of poetry. From this dialectical (and sometimes polemical) standpoint, The Academic Avant-Garde reframes major characteristics of contemporary experimental literature, opens up new ways of thinking about the relationship between creative writing and literary study, and expands the horizon of possibility for engaging with and teaching the history of poetry.
