University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2015 State Verse Culture: American Poets Laureate, 1945-2015 Amy Paeth University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the American Studies Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Paeth, Amy, "State Verse Culture: American Poets Laureate, 1945-2015" (2015). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1928. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1928 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1928 For more information, please contact [email protected]. State Verse Culture: American Poets Laureate, 1945-2015 Abstract This dissertation argues that the state is the silent center of poetic production in the United States after WWII. “State Verse Culture” is the first history of the national poet, the Poet Laureate Consultant to the Library of Congress, whose office sits at the nexus of institutional actors of postwar poetry. Drawing on archival research at the Library of Congress and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, it traces the collusion of 1) federal bodies (The Library of Congress, The State Department, National Endowment for the Arts) with 2) literary-professional organizations (Poetry Society of America, Poetry magazine/The Poetry Foundation) and 3) private patrons (Paul Mellon, Ruth Lilly). The cooperation of public and private interests is crucial to the development of what I call state verse culture—recognizable at the first National Poetry Festival in 1962, and dominant following the end of the Cold War in the 1990s-2000s. Chapter 1, “State Verse Scandals: Views from Yaddo, St Elizabeths, and the Library of Congress, 1945-1956” narrates the Bollingen Prize controversy of 1949 and the arbitration of literary capital between the Library, Poetry magazine and the university system. Chapter 2, “Inaugurating National Poetry: Robert Frost and Cold War Arts, 1956-1965” argues that the Frost-Kennedy years transformed the function of poetry in national culture. The phonocentric narrative poem provided the expressive agency of artist- citizens as ideological weaponry in the global Cold War, and a blueprint for national poets in the longer project of neoliberal identity formation. Chapter 3, “The Politics of Voice: The Workshop Poet and Poet Laureate as the Expressive Subject, 1965-1993” describes the rise of the creative writing program industry, and argues that the recentralization of poetic production in the academy after WWII is a twofold legacy: the MFA workshop poet and the poet-critic of the English Department constitute distinct cultural roles in postwar America. Chapter 4, “Civil versus Civic Verse: National Projects of U.S. Poets Laureate, 1991-2015,” examines Poets Laureate initiatives (Robert Pinsky’s Favorite Poem Project, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and Billy Collins’s Poetry 180) funded through the state verse culture nexus. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group English First Advisor Robert Perelman Keywords American poetry, Cold War, creative writing programs, Library of Congress, nationalism, patronage Subject Categories American Studies | English Language and Literature This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1928 STATE VERSE CULTURE: AMERICAN POETS LAUREATE, 1945-2015 Amy Paeth A DISSERTATION in English Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2015 Supervisor of Dissertation ________________________ Bob Perelman, Professor of English Graduate Group Chairperson ________________________ Melissa Sanchez, Associate Professor of English Dissertation Committee James English, Professor of English Max Cavitch, Associate Professor of English Charles Bernstein, Professor of English and Comparative Literature STATE VERSE CULTURE: AMERICAN POETS LAUREATE, 1945-2015 COPYRIGHT 2015 Amy Leigh Paeth iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many individuals have guided and participated in this project. I am foremost grateful to my dissertation chair, Bob Perelman, and my committee of readers, Jim English, Max Cavitch and Charles Bernstein. Bob has been both a relentlessly challenging reader and a tirelessly encouraging advisor. Jim, Max and Charles have supported this project in more ways than I am able to catalogue here. I could not have written this dissertation with any other committee. I am grateful to the University of Pennsylvania for the institutional support I received during my graduate study. This project would not have been completed without the support of a Benjamin Franklin Fellowship and Critical Writing Fellowship, and it would not have been possible without the incredible faculty in the English Department who have taught me so much about how to write, to teach and to think: particular thanks to Chi-ming Yang, Emily Steiner, Peter Decherney, Paul Saint-Amour, Peter Stallybrass, Michael Gamer and Deb Burnham. I am also indebted to the support of Ann Marie Pitts, Loretta Williams, Stephanie Palmer and Brian Kirk in the Department of English, and Nicola Gentili in Cinema Studies. Within the graduate student community, I enjoyed easy access to brilliant critics who did double duty as friends. The Poetry & Poetics and Modernist Studies working groups were important resources. Jonathan Fedors was my most reliable interlocutor, listening and providing valuable feedback at every stage; Crystal Biruk believed in the project at the beginning; conversations with Raquel Salas- Rivera remind me, time and again, why the work matters. I also relied on intellectual and practical support outside of Penn. Thanks to Bob Perelman and Francie Shaw, I was often the privileged beneficiary of a little-known writing residency called 408, which provided enviable library access, many air- conditioned rooms to write in, and a muse named Mina. During my archival research at iv the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., Beth Dalmut generously gave me a place to stay; Monika Bhagat-Kennedy provided advice about Library collections. Jeremy Braddock and Benjamin Widiss advised my undergraduate work in the Department of English at Princeton and remain deeply influential mentors. Emily Gerstell, Wendy Paeth, Crystal Cheatham, Kelley Sawyer, Katie Price and Jenny Xie supported my writing process. Betsy Siddon, Jonathan Fedors, Crystal Biruk, Raquel Salas-Rivera, Janet Paeth and Neesha Shah read and helped prepare the manuscript. v ABSTRACT STATE VERSE CULTURE: AMERICAN POETS LAUREATE, 1945-2015 Amy Paeth Bob Perelman This dissertation argues that the state is the silent center of poetic production in the United States after WWII. “State Verse Culture” is the first history of the national poet, the Poet Laureate Consultant to the Library of Congress, whose office sits at the nexus of institutional actors of postwar poetry. Drawing on archival research at the Library of Congress and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, it traces the collusion of 1) federal bodies (The Library of Congress, The State Department, The National Endowment for the Arts) with 2) literary-professional organizations (Poetry Society of America, Poetry magazine/The Poetry Foundation) and 3) private patrons (Paul Mellon, Ruth Lilly). The cooperation of public and private interests is crucial to the development of what I call state verse culture—recognizable at the first National Poetry Festival in 1962, and dominant following the end of the Cold War in the 1990s-2000s. Chapter 1, “State Verse Scandals: Views from Yaddo, St Elizabeths, and the Library of Congress, 1945-1956” narrates the Bollingen Prize controversy of 1949 and the arbitration of literary capital between the Library, Poetry magazine and the university system. Chapter 2, “Inaugurating National Poetry: Robert Frost and Cold War Arts, 1956-1965” argues that the Frost-Kennedy years transformed the function of poetry in national culture. The phonocentric narrative poem provided the expressive agency of artist-citizens as ideological weaponry in the global Cold War, and a blueprint for national poets in the longer project of neoliberal identity formation. Chapter 3, “The Politics of Voice: The Workshop Poet and Poet Laureate as the Expressive Subject, 1965- 1993” describes the rise of the creative writing program industry, and argues that the vi recentralization of poetic production in the academy after WWII is a twofold legacy: the MFA workshop poet and the poet-critic of the English Department constitute distinct cultural roles in postwar America. Chapter 4, “Civil versus Civic Verse: National Projects of U.S. Poets Laureate, 1991-2015,” examines Poets Laureate initiatives (Robert Pinsky’s Favorite Poem Project, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and Billy Collins’ Poetry 180) funded through the state verse culture nexus. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements………………………….………………………………………….…………………….iii Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………………..………..v Introduction……………….....……………………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter 1: State Verse Scandals: Views from Yaddo, St Elizabeths, and the Library of Congress, 1945-1956……………………………………………………………………………………16 Chapter 2: Inaugurating National Poetry: Robert Frost and Cold War Arts, 1956- 1965……………………………………………………………………………………………………..……53 Chapter 3: The Politics of Voice: The Workshop Poet and Poet Laureate as the Expressive