That Tongue Be Time: Norma Cole and a Continuous Making [Hardcover]

Originally from Canada, Norma Cole is a revered writer and visual artist who has authored and translated over thirty books and chapbooks. Though highly esteemed internationally in both visual art and poetry circles, Cole’s association with the New College of California and her influence on artists and poets has been overlooked by scholars. In“That Tongue Be Time,”Dale M. Smith seeks to remedy this oversight by bringing together sixteen noted scholars, editors, and poets to examine Cole’s poetry, translations, and visual art in order to place her within the larger scholarly conversation about contemporary poetry and poetics. The book also includes a number of black-and-white reproductions of Cole’s art and a contextual introduction by Smith.“That Tongue Be Time”provides a groundbreaking look at Norma Cole’s lasting influence on multiple generations of poets, visual artists, and scholars and should be on the shelf of anyone interested in contemporary poetry.Dale M. Smithis a professor in the Department of English at Toronto Metropolitan University. He is author and coeditor of several other books, includingAn Open Map: The Correspondence of Robert Duncan and Charles Olson(UNM Press).“The impact of Norma Cole’s work as a writer, artist, and translator crosses continents as well as disciplinary boundaries. I am thrilled that she is finally getting the critical attention that she has long deserved.”“Taken together, these essays amplify a powerful alternative to the careerist and technocratic approaches to the field of ‘creative writing,’ an alternative where poetry, as Norma Cole practices it, is as much an art as a modality where life and curiosity entwine.”