Dark Matter: Susan Howe, Muriel Rukeyser, and the Scholar's Art
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City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 2-2015 Dark Matter: Susan Howe, Muriel Rukeyser, and the Scholar's Art Stefania Heim Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/574 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] DARK MATTER: SUSAN HOWE, MURIEL RUKEYSER, AND THE SCHOLAR’S ART by STEFANIA HEIM A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2015 © 2015 STEFANIA HEIM All rights reserved ii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in English in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _______Professor Joan Richardson______ ______________________ __________________________________ Date Chair of Examining Committee ________Professor Mario DiGangi______ ______________________ __________________________________ Date Executive Officer _______Professor Ammiel Alcalay______ _____Professor Wayne Koestenbaum_____ Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii Abstract DARK MATTER: SUSAN HOWE, MURIEL RUKEYSER, AND THE SCHOLAR’S ART by Stefania Heim Adviser: Professor Joan Richardson Instead of describing poetry as a set of constraints or history of practices, Muriel Rukeyser calls it “one kind of knowledge.” Dark Matter heeds Rukeyser’s call, theorizing a poetics of the “scholar’s art,” in which documentary investigation, autobiographical exploration, and formal innovation are mutual, interwoven concerns. The dissertation pairs American poets Susan Howe (b. 1937) and Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980), reading their hybrid works not through the received categories of American poetry, or through common generic and disciplinary divisions, but using an inductive methodology that takes its lead from the poets. Understanding Howe and Rukeyser’s literary experiments as serious interventions in broad fields of thought, I seek out and delve into their many sources – literary, historical, mythological, philosophical, scientific, and intimate. Rukeyser is commonly read as feminist poet of witness, and Howe an aesthetic innovator. The assumptions that underlie these categorizations get at the heart of what poetry is, why it matters, and how it relates to the project of living. Implicit are ideas about the relationship between poetry and politics, what constitutes artistic experimentation, and how poems should and do address lives, particularly the intimate lives of women. Within these frameworks, the qualities that have made Rukeyser’s genre-challenging books so difficult to interpret and place are the same that have secured for Howe’s a preeminent position in contemporary poetry. But just as Rukeyser’s experiments in form are illegible to readers with particular expectations of realism, Howe scholarship suffers from a related, if inverted, short-sightedness: many revel in her linguistic ingenuity without probing its iv profound philosophical underpinnings or explicitly personal stakes. An act of scholarly reclamation, Dark Matter interrogates texts of Rukeyser’s that have received scant or no critical attention: her 1942 biography of physical chemist Willard Gibbs, her musical about Harry Houdini (1973), and The Orgy (1965), her book about the pagan festival, Puck Fair. I read these alongside kindred texts by Howe: Pierce-Arrow (1999), which is indebted to Pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce; The Liberties (1980), which joins Jonathan Swift’s mistress Stella and Shakespeare’s Cordelia; and THAT THIS (2010), which investigates archival scholarship through the lens of personal grief. v Acknowledgments There is nothing so humbling and gratifying as giving thanks. First: It would be impossible to dream up a more inspiring and awe-inspiring dissertation committee. Joan Richardson, Ammiel Alcalay, and Wayne Koestenbaum all provide models for an intellectually, personally, and historically urgent scholarship that is interwoven with grace and wit, wonder and joy. That I have been the occasion for convening these great minds into more than one room is a source of continual amazement to me. I am particularly grateful to Joan for infusing thinking with feeling, feeling with thinking, and doing it always with love; to Ammiel for his deep and unerring sense of the stakes; and to Wayne for his thrilling investment in serious play. I would also like to give special thanks to Nancy K. Miller for her generative and generous teaching and for showing me how the hardest questions often seem the most straightforward. One of my driving convictions throughout the long process of writing this dissertation has been that life and literature cannot be separated, that thinking happens in relation, and that our work on the page matters in “real life.” I could not have chosen better subjects. Susan Howe’s humility and warmth are as astounding as her brilliance, and I am deeply grateful not only for her words, but for her person. Rukeyser’s son, Bill Rukeyser, is a generous, thoughtful, and encouraging supporter of Rukeyser scholarship. His gift to me of his mother’s Willard Gibbs book collection bolstered both my research and my spirit. Following Rukeyser I have found a community. This dissertation benefits particularly from the work of Elisabeth Daümer, Catherine Gander, and Rowena Kennedy-Epstein – all women at the vi vanguard of what I believe is a signal moment in Rukeyser studies. Jan Heller Levi has shared her extensive biographical knowledge, most recently leading me to Rukeyser’s former student Elaine Edelman, who became a generous interlocutor as I brought this project to a close. Portions of Chapters 1 and 2 of this dissertation appeared in articles in Jacket2 and in the Muriel Rukeyser Special Issue of The Journal of Narrative Theory. My thinking about Rukeyser began with my discovery of her “lost” essay, “Darwin and the Writers,” published with my annotations in the first series of Lost & Found chapbooks. Pieces and precursors to the chapters that follow were also presented at the Northeast Modern Language Association Convention (Montreal 2010), the Muriel Rukeyser Tribute at the Century Club (2010), the “Poetry Communities & the Individual Talent” Conference at the University of Pennsylvania Kelly Writers House (2012), and the Modern Language Association Convention (Boston 2013). I am grateful to Aoibheann Sweeney, Executive Director of the Center for the Humanities at CUNY, for inviting me to have a public dialogue with Susan Howe in 2011, and for her innovative work bringing scholarship into the public sphere. A commitment to archival research forms the backbone of this dissertation and I would like to thank those that have made this possible: Isaac Gerwirtz, director of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature at the New York Public Library; the staff of the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress; and the staff of the Archive for New Poetry, Mandeville Department of Special Collections, University of California, San Diego. Institutional support from the Josephine de Karman Fellowship Trust and a Calder Dissertation Fellowship from the Graduate Center English Department provided time and space to write. vii My students – in particular my “American Women Poets” class at Hunter College in spring 2011 and my “Thinking Like a Poet” class at Deep Springs College in winter 2014 – helped me remember why and how this work matters, pushing me to articulate and clarify my instincts and ideas as they inspired me with their own. My friends at the Graduate Center have made this shared scholarly undertaking seem worthwhile and – even more urgently – possible. I am particularly thankful for the minds and hearts of Karinne Keithley Syers, Simone White, and Cecily Parks. Having my sister, Julia Heim, with me in all these CUNY halls has made absolutely everything much, much better. Katie Peterson swooped into my life as I was struggling to finish – gracing this dissertation, and me, with her bright lights. My family: I cannot thank enough. To my parents – who have always modeled curiosity and committed teaching, and who still read everything I write – I am eternally and especially grateful. Finally, truly thanking Peter Pihos for all that he has contributed to this work and to my life would take many more pages than I have already written and forever. As always, he understood my project long before I did. I never would have finished without his faith – or his pushing – and I wouldn’t have wanted to. I am ever thrilled by our joint adventure, grounded by our rock-solid edifice, and buoyed by his beautiful spirit. This dissertation is for him, and for Michela, who is already so patient and so full of wonderful surprises. viii Table of Contents CHAPTER 1 1 Dark Matter: An Introduction CHAPTER 2 31 “As a Poet”: Willard Gibbs and Pierce Arrow CHAPTER 3 84 “The lives of the dead”: Houdini and The Liberties CHAPTER 4 148 “‘I’ for ‘i’ and ‘i’ for ‘I’”: The Orgy and THAT THIS CHAPTER 5 209 Darkest Matters: Toward an Experimental Feminine Poetics of War WORKS CITED 240 ix List of Illustrations Figure 1 64 Charles Sanders Peirce, Language Graphs Reproduced from Susan