Introduction: The Poetics of Waste Management

Abstract

The Poetics of Waste argues that before we demonize or disregard waste, we must first understand its often conflicting meanings in the contemporary moment and in the preceding century, when consumer capitalism came to dominate and define American culture. If, as Ezra Pound claimed, artists are the “antennae” of the species, picking up the signals long before the general populace notices them,¹ then it is fitting that the poets and experimental writers of the twentieth century should be among the first to perceive the danger, and even more, the value of a waste that late capitalism has attempted to repress, much as it occludes the labor that produces the commodity fetish.

“I have read that Sheridan made a good deal of experimental writing with a view to take what might fall, if any wit should transpire in all the waste pages.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journal K(85)