Published 2021. Paperback, 214pp, 9x6ins. £14.95 / $23
ISBN 9781848617711 [Download a PDF sampler from this book here.]

From his pioneering studies of the Objectivist poets and of uncertainty and representation in modernist and contemporary thought, Michael Heller has been seeking to expand the terms of how we read and discuss poetry. In these recent writings, at once revelatory and precise, Heller deepens the exploration, articulating a sense of poetic language’s inscription and trace, often with respect to aspects of Judaic thought and Buddhist influences, the “poetics” of Walter Benjamin, Heidegger, the Objectivists, Oppen and Reznikoff, H.D., Robert Duncan, and other twentieth century writers and thinkers. As Xavier Kalck writes in his Foreword to this collection, Heller’s concern is with “the sacred as a function of language and as an objective in his poetics.”

Previous comments on Michael Heller’s work:

“Not just a great book of literary criticism, Michael Heller’s Speaking the Estranged is an exhilarating examination of those 20th century literary, political, and philosophical currents that have carried us into our tumultuous present. As luminous a critic as he is a poet, Heller renews our engagement with “the mind operating in a marvel which contains the mind,” as George Oppen once put it. Through Oppen, Heller locates us and brings us home. When you finish this book, you won’t want to put it away.” —Forrest Gander

“Michael Heller is not only one of our finest poets; he is also one of our best thinkers and prose writers, someone for whom thought is aesthetic. In this volume poetry is the object of exquisite meditations that show it to be alive, delicate—and yet the most powerful force in human affairs. Written under the aegis of an uncertainty that embodies the condition of modernity, Heller’s prose is at once supremely intelligent and knowing, deeply philosophical and ruminative, and utterly graceful. What other poet or scholar could be more illuminating? Heller’s contribution to our understanding of the poetic act, language, more broadly civilization, is truly extraordinary. It will remain with us for a very long time.” —Burt Kimmelman

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