At the heart of Michael Boughn’s Measure’s Measures are fundamental questions about poetry’s relation to modes of knowing the world beyond what’s given. Lovingly addressed to the work of poets associated with the New American Poetry and their predecessors, these essays probe the development of what Boughn calls the somatic poetics of transformative gnosis. Boughn’s method combines a wide range of scholarship with his affectionate personal knowledge of many of the poets, and a radically decentered view of the stakes poetry brings to considerations of our post-modern moment. Rethinking the history of 20th century US American poetry, these essays challenge the academic containment of poetry to literary studies, opening it into a thriving wilderness of thinking being.
