Marjorie Perloff (born Gabriele Mintz; September 28, 1931 – March 24, 2024) was an Austrian-born American poetry scholar and critic, known for her study of avant-garde poetry. Perloff was a professor at

Catholic University Catholic higher education includes universities, colleges, and other institutions of higher education privately run by the Catholic Church, typically by religious institutes. Those tied to the Holy See are specifically called pontifical univers ...

, the

University of Maryland, College Park The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1856, UMD i ...

, the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in ...

and

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

. She wrote books about

W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats (, 13 June 186528 January 1939), popularly known as W. B. Yeats, was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer, and literary critic who was one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the ...

Robert Lowell Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV (; March 1, 1917 – September 12, 1977) was an American poet. He was born into a Boston Brahmin family that could trace its origins back to the ''Mayflower''. His family, past and present, were important subjects ...

, and

Frank O'Hara Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara (March 27, 1926 – July 25, 1966) was an American writer, poet, and art critic. A curator at the Museum of Modern Art, O'Hara became prominent in New York City's art world. O'Hara is regarded as a leading figure i ...

and promoted poetry that normally was not discussed in the United States, such as works by

Louis Zukofsky Louis Zukofsky (January 23, 1904 – May 12, 1978) was an American poet. He was the primary instigator and theorist of the so-called "Objectivist" poets, a short lived collective of poets who after several decades of obscurity would reemerge a ...

Kenneth Goldsmith Kenneth Goldsmith (born 1961) is an American poetry, poet and critic. He is the founding editor of UbuWeb and an artist-in-residence at the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing (CPCW) at the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches. He ...

, and Brazilian poetry. Perloff was widely considered the most influential critic of experimental poetry. She coined the term "unoriginal genius" to reflect the desire of some contemporary poets to create poetry by using other people's words and constraint-based practices rather than inspiration or other personal sources.

Early life

Perloff was born Gabriele Schüller Mintz on September 28, 1931, into a secularized Jewish family in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

. The annexation of Austria by

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

exacerbated Viennese

antisemitism Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...

, and so the family emigrated in 1938, when she was six-and-a-half, going first to

Zürich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

and then to the United States, settling in the Riverdale section of

the Bronx The Bronx ( ) is the northernmost of the five Boroughs of New York City, boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. It shares a land border with Westchester County, New York, West ...

, where she attended the Ethical Culture Fieldston School. According to Adam Kirsch, "Perloff can be counted as perhaps the youngest of the great wave of European Jewish intellectual refugees who immeasurably enriched American culture." She changed her name to Marjorie when she was a teenager, as she felt it sounded "more American". After attending

Oberlin College Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1833, it is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational lib ...

from 1949 to 1952, she graduated ''

magna cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sout ...

'' and

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States. It was founded in 1776 at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, ...

from

Barnard College Barnard College is a Private college, private Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college affiliated with Columbia University in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a grou ...

in 1953; that year, she married Joseph K. Perloff, a

cardiologist Cardiology () is the study of the heart. Cardiology is a branch of medicine that deals with disorders of the heart and the cardiovascular system. The field includes medical diagnosis and treatment of congenital heart defects, coronary artery di ...

focused on

congenital heart disease A congenital heart defect (CHD), also known as a congenital heart anomaly, congenital cardiovascular malformation, and congenital heart disease, is a defect in the structure of the heart or great vessels that is present at birth. A congenital he ...

. She completed her graduate work at the

Catholic University of America The Catholic University of America (CUA) is a private Catholic research university in Washington, D.C., United States. It is one of two pontifical universities of the Catholic Church in the United States – the only one that is not primarily a ...

in Washington, D.C., earning an M.A. in 1956 and a Ph.D. in 1965; her dissertation on

was later published as a book entitled ''Rhyme and Meaning in the Poetry of Yeats'' in 1970.

Career

Perloff taught at

from 1966 to 1971. She then moved on to become Professor of English at the

(1971–1976) and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the

(1976–1986) and

(1986–1990). Her position was endowed as the Sadie Dernham Patek Professor of Humanities at Stanford (1990—2000; emerita from 2001). She was also Florence Scott Professor of English Emerita at the

.Poetry Foundation Bio
/ref>USC Faculty Profile
/ref> Her work has been especially concerned with explicating the writing of experimental and

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

poets and relating it to the major currents of

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

and, especially,

postmodernist Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, Culture, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting ...

activity in the arts, including the visual arts and

literary theory Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for literary analysis. Culler 1997, p.1 Since the 19th century, literary scholarship includes literary theory and considerations of intellectual history, m ...

. The first three books published by Perloff each focused on different poets: Yeats,

, and

respectively. In 1981, she changed directions with ''The Poetics of Indeterminacy'', which began her work on avant-gardist poetry, paving the way for ''The Futurist Moment: Avant-Garde, Avant-Guerre, and the Language of Rupture'' in 1986 and many subsequent titles. ''Differentials: Poetry, Poetics, Pedagogy'', published in 2004, won the Robert Penn Warren Prize in 2005 as well as Honorable Mention for the Robert Motherwell Prize of the Dedalus Foundation. Perloff did much to promote poetics that are not normally part of the discourse in the United States such as works of

, or Brazilian poetry. She was widely considered the most influential critic of experimental poetry. She was credited with coining the term — "unoriginal genius" — to reflect the interest of some contemporary poets in generating their work by citational and constraint-based practices rather than inspiration or other personal sources.Alec Wilkinson. Something Borrowed: Kenneth Goldsmith's poetry elevates copying to an art, but did he go too far? The New Yorker, October 5, 2015.
/ref> Her work on contemporary American poetry, and, in particular, poetry associated with

Language poetry The Language poets (or ''L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E'' poets, after the magazine of that name) are an avant-garde group or tendency in United States poetry that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The poets included: Bernadette Mayer, Leslie Sca ...

and the Objectivist poets, posits and critiques an "Official Verse Culture" that determines what is and is not worthy of publication, critique and emulation. In 2001, she gave the

British Academy The British Academy for the Promotion of Historical, Philosophical and Philological Studies is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the sa ...

's Sarah Tryphena Phillips Lecture in American Literature and History, on ''Gertrude Stein's Differential Syntax''. In 2008–09, she was the Weidenfeld Visiting professor of European Comparative Literature in

St Anne's College, Oxford St Anne's College is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. It was founded in 1879 and gained full college status in 1959. Originally a women's college, it has admitted men since 1979. ...

. She was also member of the International Jury of the (an award of the Hungarian PEN Club).

Personal life and death

Perloff and her husband, who died in 2014, had two daughters,

Carey Perloff Carey Elizabeth Perloff (born February 9, 1959) is an American theater director, playwright, author, and educator. She was the artistic director of American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) in San Francisco from 1992 to June 2018. Biography Per ...

and Nancy Perloff. Perloff died at her home in

Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles Pacific Palisades is a neighborhood in the Westside region of the city of Los Angeles, California, situated about west of downtown Los Angeles. Throughout January 2025, the majority of Pacific Palisades was severely affected and destroyed by ...

, on March 24, 2024, at the age of 92.

Bibliography

Selected works

* * ''

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus The ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'' (widely abbreviated and Citation, cited as TLP) is the only book-length philosophical work by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein that was published during his lifetime. The project had a broad goal ...

: A New Translation'' (translated by Damion Searls, with a foreword by Marjorie Perloff) (Liveright, 2024) * Wittgenstein, Ludwig, ''Private Notebooks: 1914–1916'' (translated by Marjorie Perloff) (Liveright, 2022) * ''Poetics in a New Key: Interviews and Essays'' (University of Chicago Press, 2014) Rea
an excerpt
* ''Unoriginal Genius: Poetry by Other Means in the New Century'' (University of Chicago Press, 2010) . Spanish version: ''El genio no original: Poesía por otros medios en el nuevo siglo'' (greylock, 2019) * ''Differentials: Poetry, Poetics, Pedagogy'' (University of Alabama Press, 2004) * ''The Vienna Paradox: A Memoir'' (New Directions Books, 2004) * ''The

Futurist Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futures studies or futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities ...

Moment: Avant-Garde, Avant Guerre, and the Language of Rupture, with a New Preface'' (University of Chicago Press, 2003) pbk. * ''Poetry On and Off the Page: Essays for Emergent Occasions'' (Northwestern University Press, 1998) * ''

: Poet Among Painters'' (University of Chicago Press, 1998) (originally published by Braziller, 1977) * ''The Dance of the Intellect: Studies in the Poetry of the Pound Tradition'' (Northwestern University Press, 1996) pbk. * ''

Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. From 1929 to 1947, Witt ...

's Ladder: Poetic Language and the Strangeness of the Ordinary'' (University of Chicago Press, 1996) pbk. * ''Radical Artifice: Writing Poetry in the Age of Media'' (University of Chicago Press, 1991) * ''Poetic License: Studies in the

Modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

and Postmodernist Lyric'' (Northwestern University Press, 1990)

Critical studies and reviews of Perloff's work

;''Radical artifice'' *

References

External links

Author Page at EPC

A response to
the literary critic

Harold Bloom Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world". Af ...

*Audio of Marjorie Perloff's lectur
"The Aura of Modernism"
delivered at the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities on May 19, 2004.
Review of ''The Vienna Paradox''
poet Ron Silliman discusses Perloff's memoir on his blog September 12, 2005
Three one-hour radio interviews
on Entitled Opinions with Robert P. Harrison about Ezra Pound, W. B. Yeats, and the Avant-Gardes {{DEFAULTSORT:Perloff, Marjorie 1931 births 2024 deaths 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women writers American academics of English literature American literary critics American people of Austrian-Jewish descent American women literary critics 20th-century Austrian Jews Austrian literary critics Austrian women literary critics Barnard College alumni Catholic University of America School of Arts and Sciences faculty Catholic University of America alumni Ethical Culture Fieldston School alumni Jewish emigrants from Austria after the Anschluss to the United States Oberlin College alumni People from Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles People from Riverdale, Bronx Presidents of the Modern Language Association Stanford University Department of English faculty University of Maryland, College Park faculty University of Southern California faculty Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 20th-century American Jews 21st-century American Jews Cage scholars