Before Starting Over is an informal chronicle of several important developments in English-language poetry during the nineties and the turn of the century, most importantly Asian American poetry, digital poetics, and the changing face of poetry's "experimental" wing.

Brian Kim Stefans is an animator of poetic intelligence, of seemingly limitless curiosity and with an acuity to match. All channels seem to pass through the Stefans control centre, but the filters are finely engineered and reliable: the output is clear and attuned to the liveliest sources. -- John Wilkinson The wit and resourcefulness of Brian Kim Stefans' poetry has already marked out a new choreography for post-post-Structuralist writing: pivoting and leaping dangerously, the poet on the ice-polisher prepares a gorgeous track through the shavings of Eurocentric modernism, the invisible machine age, politics under a 'hologram President' and the virtuosity of the American consumer. In Before Starting Over, Stefans reveals the intense and committed critical practice which gets him in condition for his poetic samba. Whether he is treating Language poets, young Korean writers or the deacons of American literature to one of his searching reviews, Stefans gives both text and reader the gift of an admirably old-fashioned sense of the critic's responsibility - to inform and to delight. The insights and the range of Stefans' investigations are constantly surprising. Discussion of Ammons, Williams, Rimbaud, W. S. Graham, Pound and the Situationists show his facility for reconciling contemporary poetic difficulty to an expanded European and American tradition, without constructing the pseudo-lineages which he rightfully distrusts. But he also offers equal consideration to 'Creep Poetry', writing by his contemporaries where 'the "I" is often situated beneath the economic stratum of commercial micro- and hyperactivity that digital technology has made possible.' Stefans is well-known as a critic of digital art and writing, and as the keeper of several essential blogs (including the now defunct anti-war resource Circulars, whose logic he describes at length). In this book, he investigates the consequences for writing of technology: not only the computer and the internet, but also typewriters, paper and sound. In his close readings, he reasserts the expressive potential of gaps, space, diction and assonance alongside the graphic innovations made possible by Flash and Quark. Though his own work might sometimes be assimilated into the Language movement, Stefans' alertness to the 'minority issues' which complicate Language poetry's critique of identity reminds us of the healthy pluralism of the younger generations operating in and on America's power infrastructures. Moreover, his approach to the ideological and formal challenges of anthologising Asian-American writing combines a sympathetic historical awareness with exemplary critical rigour. Before Starting Over is a capacious, funny and provocative book, a model of versatility and committed reading. It is proof of the vitality of criticism, and of the critic's role in sustaining communities and the intensities of the labours of poetry. -- Andrea Brady This book may be the only reliable guide to recent poetry in English. Brian Kim Stefans's essays are erudite, stylish, sensitive, curious, never provincial, unintimidated by difficulty, full of statements that are both effortlessly elegant and provocative of serious thought. His range is astonishing. His "little reviews" are models of the form. I have learned a lot from reading these essays, and will continue to do so. -- Aaron Kunin

PREFACES "Poet-Critic" I. SIX REVIEWS Tan Lin, BlipSoak01 Christian Bok, Eunoia Kevin Davies, Comp. Bruce Andrews, Paradise & Method; Lyn Hejinian, The Language of Inquiry Alice Notley, Disobedience W. S. Graham, New Collected Poems II. ASIAN AMERICAN POETRY Voicebox In Search of Lost Time: Walter K. Lew's Excerpts from Dikte/Dictee On the Introduction to The Open Boat Remote Parsee: An Alternative Grammar to North Asian American Poetry III. A POETICS OF VIRTUOSITY A Poetics of Virtuosity IV. REFLECTIONS IN A GLASS HOUSE After Language Poetry Veronica Forrest-Thomson Fence Letter Ezra Pound Open Letter to Brendan Lorber Frank O'Hara Bruce Andrews, I Don't Have Any Paper So Shut Up (Or, Social Romanticism) A Poem for Tyros When Lilacs Last in the Door Jeff Derksen, Dwell Tim Davis, Dailies Jennifer Moxley, Wrong Life Suzanne Dathe of Grenoble, France-Can We Win? (On Carol Mirakove's Poetry) Steve McCaffery, Three Books V. SILLIMAN COMMENTARIES Blogs, by Marianne Moore Silliman Commentaries VI. DIGITAL POETICS Interview with Sylvia Egger Statement for Orono, Maine Iowa Review Web Interview Statement for Slought Brooklyn Rail Interview Towards a Poetics for Circulars Interview of Albanian Arts Magazine VII. LITTLE REVIEWS Jeff Derksen, Transnational Muscle Cars Bill Luoma, Works & Days Stacy Doris, Conference Dan Farrell, Last Instance Renee Gladman, Juice Kenneth Goldsmith, Day Jessica Grim, Fray Pamela Lu, Pamela: A Novel Christophe Tarkos, Ma Langue est Poetique: Selected Work Rodrigo Toscano, Partisans Jose Garcia Villa, The Anchored Angel: Selected Writings Darren Wershler-Henry, The Tapeworm Foundry Harryette Mullen, Muse & Drudge Susan Wheeler, Source Codes Joel Kuszai (editor), poetics@ Caroline Bergvall, Goan Atom