Touch Monkeys: Nonsense Strategies for Reading Twentieth-Century Poetry

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta and
the author of Calling Texas and Earth Prime.

The relationship between nonsense and poetry has fascinated a number of
critics. Marnie Parsons has brought this riddle into the present by
looking at poet Louis Zukofsky and the American “Language” movement,
as well as such Canadian writers as Colleen Thibaudeau and Tim Lilburn.
She also employs the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and such French
poststructuralists as Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva to explore the
intractable problems of thought that poets and nonsense writers struggle
with. This is a book with many insights—the footnotes alone are worth
reading. And it has some interesting innovations in the format; Parsons
provides some diverting “interchapters” as a relief from the main
arguments. My only quibble is the mixing up of Robert Hass and Robert
Haas, which leads to some confusion.