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y separately published work icon Terminally Poetic selected work   poetry  
  • Author:agent Yu Ouyang http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/ouyang-yu
Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 Terminally Poetic
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'‘Terminally Poetic is charged with desperation. It’s written from an opium den of wasted Australian stereotypes in the Grub Street of the mind. Ouyang Yu puts the alien back in Australian. No one is spared in this exposé of Australian letters, certainly neither the poet nor his reader. A book to climb up in love with.’ - Steve Brock
'‘Terminally Poetic is Ouyang Yu working through the colonial alphabet and undoing it and himself at various turns and forks in the road. This is the individuated poet - one of the most committed poets who undoes poetry as an act of principle, who asks questions of 'who's to blame' in startling and nuanced ways - counting down (or up) through the letters so we can make new words from the poems. He confronts reductionism by disowning it while experiencing it, he confronts expectations of style and mode of writing it by writing it and then laughing at himself and the expectations of his readers. Excoriating and yet strangely vulnerable, the poet takes on the poet and poetry's failure to be noticed, to matter, to be what it wants to be.’ - John Kinsella' (Publication summary)

Contents

* Contents derived from the Melbourne, Victoria,:Melbourne University Press , 2020 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
About Poetry, Yu Ouyang , single work prose (p. 10)
Advice to a Translator of Australian Poetry, Yu Ouyang , single work poetry (p. 11)
An Addition, Yu Ouyang , single work poetry (p. 13)
The Agent's Advice to an Aspiring Asian Novelist, Yu Ouyang , single work poetry (p. 14)
Australia, Yu Ouyang , single work poetry (p. 15)
Australian, Yu Ouyang , single work poetry (p. 16)
Award, Yu Ouyang , single work poetry (p. 17)
Bad Writing, Yu Ouyang , single work poetry (p. 20)
Big Name, Yu Ouyang , single work poetry (p. 21-22)
The Burglar, Yu Ouyang , single work poetry (p. 23)
Can You Write a Bad Poem Untitledi"can you write a bad poem", Yu Ouyang , single work poetry (p. 26-27)
Note: with title : Can You Write a Bad Poem
Canadian Memories, Yu Ouyang , single work poetry (p. 28)
A Conversation, Yu Ouyang , single work poetry (p. 32)
Conversations with a Computer, Yu Ouyang , single work poetry (p. 33)
Displacement, Yu Ouyang , single work poetry (p. 40)
Economic Censorship, Yu Ouyang , single work poetry (p. 42)
The Editor's Response, Yu Ouyang , single work poetry (p. 43)
An Email Message Rejected, Yu Ouyang , single work poetry (p. 44)
Empty, Yu Ouyang , single work poetry (p. 45)
Every Second Thousands of Babies Are Born..., Yu Ouyang , single work poetry (p. 46)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Works about this Work

The Ugly Poem : Ouyang Yu’s Terminally Poetic and the Counter-Aesthetics of the Multilingual Kameron Lai , 2024 single work essay
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , September no. 114 2024;

'Beauty has a quality about it that pretends to neutrality and universality, despite being steeped in asymmetrical constructions of aesthetic judgement. Of course, this is no surprise in a hierarchical world; ‘Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier.’ (Bourdieu Distinction xxix) In his poetry collection, Terminally Poetic (2020), Ouyang Yu scathingly critiques hegemonic and Anglocentric aesthetics, raising instead the generative potential of the ugly and the imperfect. Writing in a literary market that moves cosmopolitan capital and commodifies ‘ethnic’ difference, Yu writes to unsettle normative aesthetics that are contingent upon colonially inherited Eurocentric notions of beauty and relegates ‘ethnic’ alterity to easily digestible images of Orientalist fantasy. In this essay, I explore how Terminally Poetic unsettles aesthetic and linguistic whiteness in two parts. I begin by articulating how Yu de-centres Anglocentric aesthetics, contaminating the high cultural register of poetry with an aesthetic of the profane and vulgar. In doing so, he suggests that neutral sounding notions of aesthetic standards and propriety are not so neutral after all. I then argue that Yu’s undermining of Anglocentric aesthetics marries his critique of Australia’s ‘monolingual mindset’, revealing the limitations of Australia’s reliance on colonially inherited linguistic aesthetics in opposition to a plurilingual reality. Analysing his radical poetics through his linguistic play, I suggest that Yu articulates an enmeshed multilingualism that challenges the neutrality of monolingualism.'  (Introduction)

The Ugly Poem : Ouyang Yu’s Terminally Poetic and the Counter-Aesthetics of the Multilingual Kameron Lai , 2024 single work essay
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , September no. 114 2024;

'Beauty has a quality about it that pretends to neutrality and universality, despite being steeped in asymmetrical constructions of aesthetic judgement. Of course, this is no surprise in a hierarchical world; ‘Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier.’ (Bourdieu Distinction xxix) In his poetry collection, Terminally Poetic (2020), Ouyang Yu scathingly critiques hegemonic and Anglocentric aesthetics, raising instead the generative potential of the ugly and the imperfect. Writing in a literary market that moves cosmopolitan capital and commodifies ‘ethnic’ difference, Yu writes to unsettle normative aesthetics that are contingent upon colonially inherited Eurocentric notions of beauty and relegates ‘ethnic’ alterity to easily digestible images of Orientalist fantasy. In this essay, I explore how Terminally Poetic unsettles aesthetic and linguistic whiteness in two parts. I begin by articulating how Yu de-centres Anglocentric aesthetics, contaminating the high cultural register of poetry with an aesthetic of the profane and vulgar. In doing so, he suggests that neutral sounding notions of aesthetic standards and propriety are not so neutral after all. I then argue that Yu’s undermining of Anglocentric aesthetics marries his critique of Australia’s ‘monolingual mindset’, revealing the limitations of Australia’s reliance on colonially inherited linguistic aesthetics in opposition to a plurilingual reality. Analysing his radical poetics through his linguistic play, I suggest that Yu articulates an enmeshed multilingualism that challenges the neutrality of monolingualism.'  (Introduction)

Last amended 13 Sep 2021 07:50:46
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