Comments & Themes

Topics for research and critical analysis:

• Analyze Ron Silliman’s poetry exploring his sources: Gertrude Stein, Russian Formalism, projectivist poets, and Louis Zukofsky.

• Articulate Silliman’s leftist crirtique. Focus on his multifaceted political analysis.

• Read one of Silliman’s attached poems with an eye to everyday scenes.

• Analyze the structure of these poems with respect to grammar, syntax, time sequences, and his simplest materials.

• Find intrincate forms, puns, sounds, statements, which unfold references to Silliman’s philosophical concerns.

• Determine Silliman’s reflections and questionings on language.

• Give some constitutive factors in Silliman’s poems and how they deal with innovative constructs.