Making an Avant-Garde Composition: Intersections of Composition Theory and Innovative Poetics

Abstract

The Making of an Avant-Garde Composition: Intersections of Composition Theory and Innovative Poetics, explores how current discussions in the field of Composition and Rhetoric intersect with the theories and practices of select members of the avant-garde poetry community, focusing on the issues of genre, identity, and language. It examines each of these issues by juxtaposing discussions of leading Composition and Rhetoric scholars with creative and critical work of avant-garde poets, identifying common concerns, and describing diverse approaches to creating innovative writing practices. It demonstrates the connections between Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's multilingual text, DICTEE, and recent scholarship by Min-Zhan Lu and A. Suresh Canagarajah on multilingual student writers in order to argue for more discussion of language politics and linguistic awareness in the composition classroom. It also outlines the connections between Harryette Mullen's creative and critical work and scholarship by Donna LeCourt and Roz Ivanic on writer identity to explore new approaches to interpreting and responding to student texts. Finally, it reads Susan Howe's The Midnight in conversation with leading genre theorists such as Amy Devitt and compositionists such as Robert Davis and Mark Shadle who argue for assigning multigenre papers.