Poetics of Cognition

A fascinating collection of poems thst I have loved to read. I thoroughly enjoyed highlighting and making notes on each piece

Poetics of Cognition by Jessica Lewis Luck is based on the work Jessica has done with students in her two special topic courses on experimental poetry. Through an exploration of contemporary experimental poetry the author makes the argument that experimental poetry grants more agency to the reader with the ways it shifts readers from feeling to thinking about the purpose of the form and structure of poetry.

I enjoyed how this book provides readers with a basic education of the ways that human cognition is nonconscious and nonreflective and how experimental poetics challenges the reader to become more aware. I learned so much about new fields of research outside of my areas of expertise including but not limited to neuroaesthetics which studies the neural foundations for the experience of art criticism. Thinking about the ways art relies on our neural connections involved including perception, memory, language, phenomenological experience and more is something new to me.

Jessica Lewis Luck introduces us to the work of scholars such as Blakey Vermeule and Elaine Scarry who have used scientific models of how we think about what we are reading and process information through perception in order to understand how we engage with literature. If you are interested in learning more about how experimental poetry transforms and impacts cognition and therefore our human experience of reading, then you should definitely pick up this book!

Thank you to the author and publisher for the e-arc copy!

Poetics of Cognition is unlike any book I have read recently. Honestly, I picked the book by the cover which reminded me of Cajal's neurons. The poetry in this book is about embracing the forms and structures of poetry consciously. A definite field guide for students and lovers of poetry and literary criticism.

If I understand her correctly, Luck wants to shift the study of the mind, using neuroscience and cognitive science, to poetry, and taking the findings from the scientific study of poetry and shifting them back to the mind. She cites William James, in his role as a psychologist, that the mind is not a tabula rasa. The mind is a repository of experiences and memories. Experimental poetry, like other experiences and memories, influence and alter the state of the conscious mind.

The minds of experimental poets are different from the minds of people who are not experimental poets. Why is that? Because of their personal experiences and their devotion to using words, sometimes made up words, and symbols, in ways a number of persons who spend long years studying and working with poetry validate those words and often utterances assembled on paper and spoken as speech patterns as poetry. I want to say poeticizing is an act of cognition.

Luck assembles several fascinating people involved with experimental poetry for her study. Some of the poets discussed, Lyn Hejinian, by the way, married to jazz saxophonist and composer, Larry Ochs, Harryette Mullen, Larry Eigner, spoken word poet Tracie Moore, and Charles Olson for his work with Mayan glyphs. Theorists and critics are Ron Silliman, Charles Bernstein, the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty for his essay on the perceptions of Cezanne realized as, what might be called, experimental painting, Fred Moten, and Charles Olson for his work with Mayan glyphs.



Luck’s call for inclusivity of African American poets, with mention of Harryette Mullen, Douglas Kearney, and Tracie Morris, represented in different group sections instead of by race, gives one some idea of the scope of the study experimental poetics within cognitive science. Curiously, N H Pritchard, given much page space by critic Charles Bernstein, did not make the cut of African-American experimental poets for this book . Topics covered, the new sentence, proceduralism, crip or disability theory, and Rita Felski’s 4 modes of textual engagement.

By embracing both neuroscience and cognitive science, if I’m not overlooking something, she side-steps first questions of identity of the mind: is the mind the brain or the mind a construct of the brain. The second question of mind and brain, since the brain comes under the province of neuroscience, do these poetic alterations physically alter the brain or solely function as affectations of the mind? In discussing the poetry of Eigner and Mullen, Luck expands physicality, the brain becomes part of the body, and her inquiries speak of the total body—the connections of Eigner’s disability to his creating text. Mullen’s ‘poems illustrate an emergent poetics arising from the constraints of a body whose flesh is possessed by language itself.’ A torturous metaphor sending one in search of a siting of the nature of those constraints and how physical flesh—is this a return from the body in total to the brain as part (as reversal?)—possessed by language.

More than forty pages of notes and an extensive bibliography of critics, scientists, poets, philosophers, and performers, seeded into her text evidence this work as not a new field, just one seldom harvested outside a few patches of the academic community garden. Self-sustaining, self-sufficient.
Mullen’s Wikipedia page pointing to an article, Signifyin(g) on Stein: The Revisionist Poetics of Harryette Mullen and Leslie Scalapino by Elisabeth Frost published in the Muse Project, identify the readership for experimental poetry: ‘Critics, including Elisabeth Frost and Juliana Spahr, have suggested that Mullen’s poetry audience is an eclectic community of collaborative readers who share individual and collective interpretations of poems that may provoke multiple, divergent, or contradictory meanings, according to each reader’s cultural background.’
Luck writes: ‘My primary focus is a series of tests of the hypothesis that poems written with experimental techniques can generate new practices of thought. My investigation into the transformative cognitive effects of reading experimental poetry.’

As a professor and teacher, the number of students in attendance in Luck’s classes over years testify to some interest in this topic, possibly a few of them genuinely interested and not there just for the credit, though this is far from as easy credit. I can’t imagine anyone else wanting to delve into this book without reading one or more of the poets mentioned. For the rare solitary reader of challenging poetry outside academic and professional circles, who chooses to pick up a book by one of the poets mentioned, Luck’s book, admittedly rough going, will serve as a good introduction and reading guide, welcoming insights into the poems by the poets discussed.

I hesitate to say I found all this exciting for fear of being accused of needing to get out more often. Hopefully, her book will generate better readings than I give here. Thank you Net Galley and the University of Iowa Press for an advanced copy.

Who knew a book with so many footnotes and citations could be so fascinating! Poetics of Cognition introduced me to ideas, thinkers, and poets I would not have encountered otherwise. I am grateful for the time, effort, and thoughtfulness Jessica Lewis Luck put into writing this book. What could have been dryly academic was a joyful exploration - eliciting a sense of adventure on each page. Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the eARC.

Poetics of Cognition explores ways of reading, interacting with, responding to, and critically evaluating various forms of experimental poetry. I was unfamiliar with most of the cognitive research presented here, making for a mind-bending, mind-expanding reading experience. My immediate response to much of the book was a knee-jerk denial. Which does not speak highly of me as a reader. The ideas were so far outside my comfort zone, it took me awhile to come around. But as I sat with my discomfort, discussed possibilities with friends, and reflected a bit, I found myself understanding the point being presented. The first step was acceptance, and then I became intrigued. Wait! Our brains work how? Really? And then the fun of thinking about the implications and applications began. Extended cognition? The experiment exposing students to nonsense and a loss of self-unity? Emergent phenomenon? IDS? All of it brand new to me!

In addition to these intriguing ideas, Poetics of Cognition introduces various forms, practitioners, and examples of experimental poetry. Again, I find myself admitting I was not familiar with much of this portion of the book either. What a gift to discover an entire world of creative expression! And of course the author does an amazing job citing other scholars. Not only is there this entire world, there is fascinating discussion about it. Again, I found myself thinking, "That is not a poem." Only to be brought around by the author's explanation and exploration.

Perhaps my favorite part of the book though, is the end where the author gives us real world examples of teaching this material in the classroom. I was inspired by the creativity of the assignments and the obvious care for the students. I now count myself among those students, having learned and questioned and argued my way cover to cover.