Unending Design: Urban Life and the State in the Early Modern Era

Drawing on the work of contemporary American poets from Ashbery to Zukofsky, Joseph M. Conte elaborates an innovative typology of postmodern poetic forms. In Conte's view, looking at recent poetry in terms of the complementary methods of seriality and proceduralism offers a rewarding alternative to the familiar analytic dichotomy of "open" and "closed" forms. Unending Design will be welcomed by anyone interested in American poetry in particular and postmodernism more generally.