Prior to Meaning: The Protosemantic and Poetics

A long-awaited follow-up to the Canadian poet's first volume of criticism, North of Intention (recently in reprint from Roof Books), Steve McCaffery's Prior to Meaning: The Protosemantic and Poetics doesn't disappoint. With rigor and a spellbinding range of reference, McCafferey explores language as it operates beyond the control of the conscious reader or writer. Whether sussing out the relationship of Milton editor Richard Bentley to postructuralism, or of prosodic master Joshua Steele to Derrida's Grammatology, or looking beneath the surfaces of figures like Sade, Jackson Mac Low, Charles Olson and Emmanuel Levinas (for whom ethical relations with the ""other"" are negotiated in the space of a grapheme). While heavily polysyllabic, the book offers the attentive reader with an interest in radical poetic theory a wealth of rapid insights.