The Collected Poems of Mary Ellen Solt collects almost five decades of poetry from one of the few Americans in the concrete poetry movement.
Mary Ellen Solt (1920-2007) was a writer and academic first recognised professionally for her critical writing on William Carlos Williams. Celebrated for her suite of visual poems Flowers in Concrete, much of Solt’s work has remained little known or unpublished. From her lyrical engagement with the 'American idiom' of William Carlos Williams to her accomplished forays into visual and concrete poetry, this volume, assembled and edited by her daughter Susan Solt, provides an in-depth documentation of a truly original writer who was at the centre of some of the most daring global poetic developments of the mid-twentieth century.
Solt edited the influential anthology Concrete Poetry: A World View (1968), which brought her to the forefront of that movement not only as a poet, but as an acclaimed critic. After a prominent career as an independent scholar, Solt became a professor of comparative literature at Indiana University, Bloomington, where she and her colleagues developed and expanded one of the first interarts studies programs in the United States.
Primary Information, 240pp, 17cm x 23cm, paperback, 2024