{"product_id":"whitman-melville-crane-and-the-peter-riley-9780198836254","title":"Whitman, Melville, Crane, and the Labors of American Poetry: Against Vocation","description":"In \u003cem\u003eWhitman, Melville, Crane, and the Labors of American Poetry\u003c\/em\u003e, Peter Riley confronts our enduring and problematic investment in poetic vocation--a myth, he argues, that continues to inform how all our multifarious labors are understood, valued, and exploited. The book seeks to challenge a dominant cultural logic that frames contingent, non-vocational labor as a necessary sacrifice that frustrates the righteous progress towards realizing that seemingly purest of callings: Poet. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIncorporating the often overlooked or excluded workaday ephemera of three canonical US Romantic poets--Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Hart Crane--this volume offers new archival insights that call for a re-examination of celebrated literary careers and disputes their status as renowned or tragic icons of creative vocation. The poetry of Whitman the real estate dealer, Melville the customs inspector, and Crane the copywriter, Riley contends, does not constitute the formal inscription of an antagonistic or discreet poetic labor struggling against quotidian work towards the fulfilment of exceptional individual callings. Instead, the distracted forms of their poetry are always already intermingled with a variety of apparently lesser labors. Ousting poetic production from its default sanctuary of privileged exemption or transcendent repose, the volume refigures the work of the poet as a living sensuous activity that transgresses labor's various divisions and hierarchies. It consequently recasts the poet as a figure who actually unfastens the 'right of passage' vocational logic that does so much to secure and reproduce the current neoliberal paradigm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Peter Riley\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0198836252\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780198836254\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Oxford University Press, USA\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 07\/23\/2019\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 224\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.95lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.60h x 5.40w x 0.90d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eChoice\u003c\/i\u003e 01\/01\/2020","brand":"Peter Riley","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":44054697902335,"sku":"9780198836254","price":89.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_e4ceef76-4725-4680-a2ce-f33f092a1a99.jpg?v=1685031465","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/whitman-melville-crane-and-the-peter-riley-9780198836254","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}