Bob Perelman

Bob Perelman in 2008. Photo by Francis Shaw. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Bob Perelman (born December 2, 1947) is an American poet, literary critic, editor and academic, often associated with the Language School of poets.

Life

Perelman was born in Youngstown, Ohio.

He earned an M.A. in Classics from the University of Michigan, an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

He is a professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania.

Perelman's debut collection, Braille, a series of "improvisations" inspired by William Carlos Williams, was published in 1975. His many works since then include The First World (1986), Face Value (1988), Captive Audience (also 1988), and Virtual Reality (1993). In 1999, his selected poems were published under the title Ten to One.

Perelman's critical work often focuses on poetry and modernism, and he is the author of several scholarly volumes including The Trouble with Genius (1994) and The Marginalization of Poetry: Language writing and literary history (1996). Perelman had been involved in various editing projects, including Writing/Talks (1985), a volume which featured talks given by poets in a series Perelman curated in San Francisco in the 1970s.

Publications

Poetry

• 11 Romantic Positions (illustrated by Francis Shaw). KS Press, 1975.
• Braille. Ithaca, NY: Ithaca House Press, 1975.
• 7 Works. Great Barrington, MA: Figures, 1978.
• a.k.a. Berkeley, CA: Tuumba Press, 1979.
• Primer. San Francisco, CA: This Press, 1981.
• To the Reader. Berkeley, CA: Tuumba Press, 1984.
• The First World. Great Barrington, MA: Figures, 1986.
• Face Value. New York: Roof Press, 1988.
• Captive Audience. Great Barrington, MA: Figures, 1988.
• Virtual Reality.New York: Roof Press, 1993.
• Ten to One: Selected poems. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1999.
• Playing Bodies (with painter Francie Shaw). New York: Granary Books, 2003.
• IFLIFE. New York: Roof Books, 2006.

Plays

• The Alps (produced in San Francisco, 1980), published in Hills. Berkeley, CA: 1980.

Non-fiction

• The Trouble with Genius: Reading Pound, Joyce, Stein, and Zukovsky. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994.
• The Marginalization of Poetry: Language writing and literary history. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. ISBN 978-0-691-02138-6
• (contributor) The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography. Detroit, MI: Mode A/This Press, 2006- (ongoing). ISBN 978-0-9790198-0-7

Edited

• Writing/Talks. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985.

See also

• Language poets
• List of U.S. poets
• List of literary critics

External links

Poems

• Bob Perelman at the Poetry Foundation
• Poems on-line in the DCPoetry Anthology link to three of Perelman's poems: "Postcard Poetics", "Driving to the Philadelphia Poetry Festival at the Free Library", and "Here 2"
• Perelman Author Homepage @ EPC (Electronic Poetry Center)

Prose

• "Taste Test"

Audio / video

• Bob Perelman at PennSound

Books

• Bob Perelman at Amazon.com

About

• Bob Perelman at the University of Pennsylvania
• Feature: Bob Perelman at Jacket Magazine
• A discussion of Bob Perelman’s book The Marginalization of Poetry Readings and responses to Perelman’s book by Ron Silliman, Ann Lauterbach, Juliana Spahr, Steve Evans, Bob Perelman, and Kate Lilley, with Perelman’s counter-response

Etc.

• The Grand Piano website devoted to the 10 volumes of "Collective Autobiography" by 10 of the so-called "West Coast" group of Language poets, including Perelman, which began serial publication in November 2006.