Taking seriously Guillaume Apollinaire's wager that twentieth-century poets would one day "mechanize" poetry as modern industry has mechanized the world, Carrie Noland explores poetic attempts to redefine the relationship between subjective expression and mechanical reproduction, high art and the world of things. Noland builds upon close readings to construct a tradition of diverse lyricists--from Arthur Rimbaud, Blaise Cendrars, and René Char to contemporary performance artists Laurie Anderson and Patti Smith--allied in their concern with the nature of subjectivity in an age of mechanical reproduction.

Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction 3
One Traffic in the Unknown: Rimbaud's Interpretive Communities, Market Competition, and the Poetics of Voyance 16
Two A Poetry of Attractions: Rimbaud's Machine and the Theatrical Feerie 37
Three Confessing Philosophy: Negative Dialectics and/as Lyric Poetry 60
Four Blaise Cendrars and the Heterogeneous Discourses of the Lyric Subject 89
Five High Decoration: Sonia Delaunay, Blaise Cendrars, and the Poem as Fashion Design 114
Six Messages personnels: Radio, Cryptography, and the Resistance Poetry of Rene Char 141
Seven Rimbaud and Patti Smith: The Discoveries of Modern Poetry and the Popular Music Industry 163
Eight Laurie Anderson: Confessions of a Cyborg 185
Coda 213
Notes 219
General Index 255
Index of Principal Primary Sources Cited 263

Carrie Noland is Associate Professor of French at the University of California, Irvine.