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Working from a broad knowledge of modern poetry, Baker proposes an original interpretation of the long poem based on the notion of ""exteriority"". Readers of the 20th-century long poem must discard the traditional idea of a lyric speaker, or Romantic ""I"", he argues. Modern and postmodern poetry turns outward, toward the experience of others, and deliberately de-emphasizes an inner or personal life. His analysis, informed by postmodern literary theory, focuses on both American and French long poems. ""Obdurate Brilliance"" is the only major critical study in English of the poetry of Saint-John Perse, whose works are examined in depth throughout each of the major phases of his poetic career. In addition Baker presents significant new readings of Rene Char, Gertrude Stein, Louis Zukofsky, Michael Palmer, Bernadette Mayer and Clark Coolidge, as well as a fresh discussion of Leon-Paul Fargue, Valery Larbaud, Ezra Pound, Charles Olson, and John Ashbery. Baker steers headlong into a number of critical debates on history, subjectivity and politics, and offers one of the few attempts to relate feminism to comparative or genre studies.