Wreading: A Poetics of Awareness, or How Do We Know What We Know?

Author: Jed Rasula

Publisher: The University of Alabama Press (2022)

Jed Rasula is a distinguished scholar of avant-garde poetics, noted for his erudition, intellectual range, and critical independence. Wreading: A Poetics of Awareness, or How Do We Know What We Know? is a collection of essays and interviews that reflects the breadth and diversity of his curiosity.

While this volume presents highlights from Rasula’s criticism, it also serves as a carefully assembled intellectual autobiography. Wreading consists of two parts: an assortment of Rasula’s solo criticism and selected interviews and conversations with other poets and scholars. These detailed conversations are with Evelyn Reilly, Leonard Schwartz, Tony Tost, Mike Chasar, Joel Bettridge, and Ming-Qian Ma. Their exchanges address ecopoetics, the corporate university, the sheer volume of contemporary poetry, and more. This substantial set of dialogues gives readers a glimpse inside a master critic’s deeply informed critical practice, illuminating his intellectual touchstones.