DOCSLIB.ORG

The Age of Auden: Postwar Poetry and the American Scene

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Age of Auden: Postwar Poetry and the American Scene Wasley_final.indb 1 9/8/10 6:32:43 AM PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS Princeton and Oxford Wasley_final.indb 2 9/8/10 6:32:44 AM Wasley_final.indb 3 9/8/10 6:32:45 AM Copyright © 2011 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW press.princeton.edu All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wasley, Aidan, 1968– The age of Auden : postwar poetry and the American scene / Aidan Wasley. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-691-13679-0 (alk. paper) 1. American poetry—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Auden, W. H. (Wystan Hugh), 1907–1973—Influence. 3. Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.)— History—20th century. I.˜Title. PS323.5.W37 2011 813’.5409—dc22 2010025252 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Garamond Premier Pro Printed on acid-free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Wasley_final.indb 4 9/8/10 6:32:45 AM To Jan and Vernagh Wasley Wasley_final.indb 5 9/8/10 6:32:45 AM Wasley_final.indb 6 9/8/10 6:32:45 AM List of Abbreviations ix Preface xiii Prologue: Auden in “Atlantis” 1 Part I 1 A Way of Happening: Auden’s American Presence 33 Part II 2 Father of Forms: Merrill, Auden, and a Fable of Influence 77 3 The Gay Apprentice: Ashbery, Auden, and a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Critic 109 4 The Old Sources: Rich, Auden, and Making Something Happen 145 Epilogue: He Became His Admirers: Saying Goodbye to Auden 175 Notes 209 Index 243 Wasley_final.indb 7 9/8/10 6:32:45 AM Wasley_final.indb 8 9/8/10 6:32:45 AM ACW Adrienne Rich, A Change of World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1951). ADW Adrienne Rich, An Atlas of a Difficult World: Poems 1988–1991 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991). AWK John Ashbery, As We Know (New York: Penguin, 1979). BBP Adrienne Rich, Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986). CLS James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover (New York: Knopf, 1992). CN James Merrill, Collected Novels and Plays (New York: Knopf, 2002). [Auden] CP W. H. Auden, Collected Poems (New York: Vintage, 1991). [Merrill] CP James Merrill, Collected Poems (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002) ix Wasley_final.indb 9 9/8/10 6:32:45 AM x Abbreviations CPM James Merrill, Collected Prose (New York: Knopf, 2004). DCL Adrienne Rich, Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974–1977 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993). DF Adrienne Rich, Dark Fields of the Republic (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995). DM W. H. Auden, Double Man (New York: Random House, 1941). DH W. H. Auden, The Dyer’s Hand (New York: Vintage, 1989). EA W. H. Auden, The English Auden: Poems, Essays and Dramatic Writings 1927–1939, Edward Mendelson, ed. (London: Faber and Faber, 1986). FD Adrienne Rich, The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New 1950–1984 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984). HL John Ashbery, Hotel Lautréamont (New York: Knopf, 1992). Libretti W. H. Auden, The Complete Works of W. H. Auden: Libretti 1939–1973, Edward Mendelson, ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 1993). LSS Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966–1978 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979). MS Adrienne Rich, Midnight Salvage (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999). Prose W. H. Auden, The Complete Works of Auden: Prose Volume II 1939–1948, Edward Mendelson, ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002). RS John Ashbery, Reported Sightings: Art Chronicles 1957–1987 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). S Adrienne Rich, Sources (Woodside, CA: Heyeck Press, 1983). [Ashbery] SP John Ashbery, Selected Poems (New York: Viking, 1985). Wasley_final.indb 10 9/8/10 6:32:45 AM Abbreviations xi [Auden] SP W. H. Auden, Selected Poems (New York: Vintage, 1979). ST John Ashbery, Some Trees (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1956). TP John Ashbery, Three Poems (New York: Ecco, 1989). TPlays John Ashbery, Three Plays (Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 1988). VN John Ashbery, The Vermont Notebook (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1975). WFT Adrienne Rich, What Is Found There (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993). Wasley_final.indb 11 9/8/10 6:32:45 AM Wasley_final.indb 12 9/8/10 6:32:45 AM When W. H. Auden died in 1973, Elizabeth Bishop offered this tribute in a special memorial issue of The Harvard Advocate: When I was in college, and all through the thirties and for- ties, I and all my friends who were interested in poetry, read him constantly. We hurried to see his latest poem or book, and either wrote as much like him as possible, or tried hard not to. His then leftist politics, his ominous landscape, his intimations of betrayed loves, war on its way, disasters and death, matched exactly the mood of our late-depression and post-depression youth. We admired his apparent toughness, his sexual cour- age—actually more honest than Ginsberg’s, say, is now, while still giving expression to technically dazzling poetry. Even the most hermetic early poems gave us the feeling that here was someone who knew—about psychology, geology, birds, love, the evils of capitalism—what have you? They colored our air and made us feel tough, ready, and in the know, too.1 xiii Wasley_final.indb 13 9/8/10 6:32:46 AM xiv preface As Bishop recalls, for American poets of her generation, including Randall Jarrell and Robert Lowell, Auden’s poetry exerted a glamorous and influential appeal. His honesty, his boldness, his engagement with science and politics, and his facility with form all seemed to suggest for these poets a promising path out of the Waste Land, and a number of them—particularly Jarrell—early on began to import characteristically Audenesque diction, imagery, and attitudes into their own work. But for these poets it was the English Auden—the Auden of the 1930s—that mattered, and by the time he arrived in New York in 1939, their careers were already underway, their poetic identities formed, and Auden’s im- portance to their writing was on the wane. Indeed, by the early 1940s, Jarrell had begun to turn on his mentor, harshly attacking Auden in re- views and inaugurating a critical assault on Auden’s perceived American decline that Jarrell would forcefully pursue for the rest of his career. But the poets of the generation after Bishop and Jarrell had a very different relation to Auden. For them, it was the American Auden who had the greatest impact on their careers. This generation began writing poetry during an extended historical period—from the early 1940s to the late 1950s—when Auden reigned as his adopted nation’s chief arbiter of poetic fashion and form. From his famously cluttered apartment on St. Mark’s Place in Greenwich Village and his summer home on Ischia off the coast of Naples, Auden presided over the American poetic land- scape, turning his legendary industriousness not only toward remaking his own poetic project, but toward shaping, fostering, and guiding the generation of American poets who would follow him. These poets not only read Auden, many of them actually got to know him personally during crucial early moments in their poetic growth. He was, for count- less younger writers, a defining figure for post–World War II American poetry and a major influence on their own poetic art. The Age of Auden explores the scope and depth of that influence. When introducing American poetry to British readers in 1956, Auden observed, “The first thing that strikes a reader about the best American poets is how utterly unlike each other they are” [DH, 366]. If American poetry has always been defined by its diversity, one of the aims of this book is to show how the expatriate Auden himself helped point an enormous range of American poets on their own different paths, and to argue that it is impossible to talk about American poetry in the second half of the Wasley_final.indb 14 9/8/10 6:32:46 AM preface xv twentieth century—in all its diversity—without talking about Auden. An important frame for that argument is the tension posed by the ap- parent paradox in the first poem Auden wrote after moving to America, in which he claims that “Poetry makes nothing happen” and yet can still be “A way of happening.” American poets after Auden arrange them- selves in relation to his influence often in terms of how they read those two competing lines, and the obsessive recurrence of this tension in the poems of Auden’s inheritors—and necessarily in this book—is one more way of gauging what Auden makes happen in American poetry. This is a book about poetry and people, since the story of Auden’s American influence is one of human connections almost as much as it is about links across texts. It proposes a new literary history that sees Auden as a central figure in postwar American poetic culture while also suggesting new readings, not just of Auden’s American project, but of those of a number of his major American successors. And while read- ers of American poetry and readers of Auden—especially academic readers—have at times occupied opposing critical turf, I hope this book can put these two readerships in fruitful and friendly conversation, since Auden and American poets were themselves most certainly talking to, and occasionally getting drunk with, each other.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Using Poetry to Teach Business Studies
    Using Poetry to teach Business Studies By Chris Sivewright Published by: The Oxford School of Learning, 66 Sunderland Avenue, Oxford OX28DU Tel: 01865 512428 1 Contents Page Chapter One: 5 – 18 Chapter Two : 19 – 24 Chapter Three: 25 - 32 Chapter Four: 33 - 76 Chapter Five: 77 - 103 Appendices Appendix 1 : 104 - 108 Appendix II: 109 - 111 Appendix 3: 112 - 113 Appendix 4: 114 - 115 2 Introduction Can poetry be used to teach Business Studies? Are the skills transferable? The aim of this manual is to show how poetry can actually help students learn about business. Brief chapter descriptions follow: Chapter One This puts forward the idea that poetry and business actually complement each other rather than conflict. Readers are asked to create a poem from several business ideas. This is a theme throughout the manual – the emphasis is on readers to actually use the pages here to develop their own poetry skills. Please note: the poem ‘Advertising’ (page 10) is not copyright-free. The chapter concludes with three articles. One by Peter Sansom and the others from The Christian Science Monitor and BBC Online (adapted). Especial thanks are given to Peter Sansom for releasing copyright just for this manual. Please visit the Poetry Society website: http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/places/pobiz.htm and the Poetry Business homepage: http://www.poetrybusiness.co.uk/ Chapter Two This chapter deals with the mechanics of writing poetry. A variety of terms are listed but it is left to the reader to establish the meaning of each term. A book reference is given. Several examples of poems written by pupils are included.
    [Show full text]
  • John Ash and the Rise of the Children's Grammar
    John Ash and the Rise of the Children’s Grammar Published by LOT phone: +31 30 253 6006 Trans 10 3512 JK Utrecht e-mail: [email protected] The Netherlands http://www.lotschool.nl Cover illustration: “The Articles”. University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, The Infant’s Grammar Page 3. ISBN: 978-94-6093-061-4 NUR 616 Copyright © 2011: Karlijn Navest. All rights reserved. John Ash and the Rise of the Children’s Grammar Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden, op gezag van Rector Magnificus prof. mr. P.F. van der Heijden, volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties te verdedigen op dinsdag 20 september 2011 klokke 16.15 uur door Karlijn Marianne Navest geboren te Bergen op Zoom in 1980 Promotiecommissie promotor Prof. dr. I.M. Tieken-Boon van Ostade overige leden Prof. dr. P.G. Hoftijzer Prof. dr. I. Sluiter Dr. D. Stoker (University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK) The research for this book was carried out as part of the project “The Codifiers and the English Language: Tracing the Norms of Standard English”, funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). For my parents Table of Contents Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... v Chapter 1. Introduction .................................................................................................. 1 1.1. The teaching of English grammar ................................................................................ 1 1.2. The concept of
    [Show full text]
  • Title Polarities : a Study of John Ashbery's "The Tennis Court Oath Author(S) Ford, Mark Citation 英文学評論 (1993), 6
    Title Polarities : A Study of John Ashbery's "The Tennis Court Oath Author(s) Ford, Mark Citation 英文学評論 (1993), 65: 39-80 Issue Date 1993-03 URL https://doi.org/10.14989/RevEL_65_39 Right Type Departmental Bulletin Paper Textversion publisher Kyoto University Polarities : A Study of John Ashbery's "The Tennis Court Oath" Mark Ford The status of The Tennis Court Oath1 within Ashbery's works has always been, and probably always will be, problematic. It drew on pub- lication in 1962 reviews ranging mainly from contemptuous dismissals to expressions of polite puzzlement.2 Only the critic R. W. Flint of Partisan Review seriously grappled with the nature of Ashbery's poetry in this book, and his conclusions about it, though in many places extremely per- ceptive, were not overall encouraging : In John Ashbery the dazzling vatic style of Dylan Thomas or Roethke's "The Shape of the Fire" has become something cool, business-like and very pecu- liar...3 Flint declares himself at first dismayed by the poems' "extreme disjoint- edness" but after prolonged "immersion" in them discovers they possess "a tonal unity in no way dependent on meter or even cadence conven- tionally understood, but rather on a cadence of feeling-sight in which things are coming apart, receding into night and distance, clouding over, or just becoming uncomfortable in a peculiarly sober, visionary, matter- of-fact way." This last cluster of opposed adjectives certainly reflects 40 Polarities : A Study of John Ashbery 's "The Tennis Court Oath" something of the book's pervasive spirit of self-contradiction.
    [Show full text]
  • Shearsman 52 Autumn 2002 Issue
    Shearsman 52 autumn 2002 issue featuring poetry by Michael Ayres Ian Davidson Peter Larkin John Muckle Steven Taylor & Craig Watson edited by Tony Frazer Shearsman Books 58 Velwell Road Exeter EX4 4LD England [email protected] www.shearsman.com Single issue : £2.50 Subscriptions : £7 (4 issues) Cheques payable to Shearsman Books Europe ex-UK : add 65p / £2.50 Rest of the world : add £1.25 / £5 shearsman 52 MICHAEL AYRES Bridge of Sighs It was the summer of the adjectives. Th ey fl owered everywhere, and scattered in scented migrations. We couldn’t fi nd the noun we wanted – home – but made do with ‘glitter’ and ‘warm’ and ‘bare’. Th ese came away from the stars and the breeze and the walls. A beetle on your tanned leg was a Fabergé mountaineer, intense and hard and sapphire – the colour of extinction. It was harsh and rattled and spoke in dry clicks. It wept light on your skin like a metallic tear until I chopped my gaze in two and it vanished through the hole in vision. I fell on both sides of a blink as if halved with an axe and saw the darkness coming. It was smoke in my lungs, another toxic investment with Goldman Sachs. Smoke, lips. Our kiss seemed to core the sexy, laid-back afternoon. We relaxed: 4 storeys of glory, shades – we became quiet, because this was Summer’s story. I held a small chrome house in my hands, my Leica. She cut out her own face with scissors – try to imagine. Th is is a most unlikely story.
    [Show full text]
  • Borrowed Poetry Fall 2019 Issue 15
    Red Wolf Journal Fall 2019 Borrowed Poetry Irene Toh, Editor 1 Copyright © 2019 by Red Wolf Editions Contributors retain copyright on their own poems. Cover artwork: Vincent Van Gogh, Starry Night Over The Rhone (1888) No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews giving due credit to the authors. 2 Borrowed Poetry Welcome to our Fall 2019 issue. Poems often are in dialogue with other artistic works. That makes us a collective. Things become interesting when there is a two-way street. As poets we read other poems, we consume movies, plays, music, various art forms. These things can be a springboard for our own thoughts and creativity. It’s something I do as well drawing inspiration from other experiential forms. Just for instance riffing off lines from another poem. We Are All Voyeurs “The world is ugly/And the people are sad.”—Wallace Stevens I read a couple of bleak poems that reeked of cheap perfume. Mostly amorous crap. Some guy who peeked through the wall saw a woman take off her clothes, then kissed her husband, then put her hand inside his pants. They engaged in coitus, I think. Me, I’m sitting by a bay window, looking at the spreading branches–morning had broken and the sunlight warmed my soles. I’m slowly coming out of my shell in the pine-scented air, portentous. I combed out my voluminous hair. The allure of woman, I think, lies in some mystery–butt cheeks shifting under maroon panties, for instance.
    [Show full text]
  • Contents Birmingham Physician Dr John Ash (1722-1789). See
    No 31, December 2003 ISSN 0962-7839 Contents Conference reports “Medicine and Society in the Midlands, 1750-1950” Birmingham, 16-17 May 2003 —page 2 “National Health Policies in Context” Bergen, 27-28 March 2003 —page 5 Announcements Conferences and Symposia —page 7 Rose Prize —page 9 Membership News —page 10 Correction: ‘Menstruation’ conference —page 10 Roy Porter Student Essay Competition —page 10 Birmingham physician Dr John Ash (1722-1789). See Conference Report on ‘Medicine and Society in the Midlands’ on pages 2-4. Editors: Carsten Timmermann and Cathy McClive Correspondence should be sent to Carsten Timmermann, CHSTM, The University, Mathematics Building, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL. Email [email protected] Web http://www.sshm.org CONFERENCE REPORT described a project undertaken by herself and her colleagues, Helena Berry, Rachel Ives and Medicine and Society in the Gaynor Western at the University of Midlands, 1750-1950 Birmingham Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity. This involved the excavation and Centre for the History of Medicine, osteological analysis of skeletal remains of University of Birmingham, approximately 850 individuals from the 16-17 May 2003 vaults of St Martin’s cemetery, prior to redevelopment of the site. Brickley This conference, sponsored by the Society suggested that the prevalence of fractures is for the Social History of Medicine and The closely linked to factors such as pathological Wellcome Trust, was dedicated to the conditions affecting a population, social memory of Dr Joan Lane (1934-2001), a factors such as inter-personal violence and well-respected historian, who made a work-place risk/technological advancement. significant contribution, both to the social Successful healing can be linked to the history of medicine and the wider history of disease load of those affected and the type of the Midlands.
    [Show full text]
  • A Bibliography of TS
    UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL OKLAHOMA Edmond, Oklahoma Dr. Joe C. Jackson College of Graduate Studies T.S. Eliot: A Bibliography of T.S. Eliot Criticism, 1987-2013 A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH By Tandi J. Rowe Edmond, Oklahoma 2015 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Dr. Kurt Hochenauer Thank you for agreeing to chair this project. Without your support, feedback and guidance this project would not exist. I appreciate your understanding and patience while I worked to complete this thesis. Dr. J. David Macey Jr. Thank you for dedicating so much time and attention to this thesis. Your guidance and suggestions have greatly improved this thesis. I appreciate your willingness to take the time to guide me through the thesis writing process. Sharon Rowe I appreciate everything you do for our family. Thank you for taking the time to help organize my research. Your willingness to help and constant encouragement helped me complete this work. I am so lucky to be fortunate enough to have you for a mother-in- law. Thank you for welcoming me to your family. Kelso, Grant, and Ethan I realize that time dedicated to the completion of this thesis resulted in time not dedicated to you. I apologize for that. I hope I have taught you that finishing what you start is important. Determination will carry you through any obstacle in life. An education is an investment in yourself. You are worth the investment, so educate yourself at every opportunity. Contrary to popular belief, hard work will not kill you.
    [Show full text]
  • Carcanet New Books Autumn 2009
    NEWBOOKS A u t u m n 2 0 0 9 – S p r i n g 2 0 1 0 Chinua Achebe John Ashbery Sujata Bhatt Eavan Boland Joseph Brodsky Paul Celan Inger Christensen Gillian Clarke Donald Davie Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) Iain Crichton Smith Elaine Feinstein Forty years of great poetry Carcanet Celebrates 40 Years... Louise Glück Jorie Graham W.S. Graham from Carcanet... Robert Graves Ivor Gurney Marilyn Hacker Sophie Hannah John Heath-Stubbs Elizabeth Jennings Brigit Pegeen Kelly Mimi Khalvati Thomas Kinsella R. F. Langley Hugh MacDiarmid L ETTER FyfieldBooks FROM THE E DITOR About forty years ago, in the village of South Hinksey P.N.Review just outside Oxford, Carcanet published its first seven poetry booklets. Since then we have published more than 1500 books; and our authors have received most of the major awards from the Nobel to the Pulitzer and Griffin, the Queen’s Gold Medal to the T.S. Eliot. Our commitment to outstanding writing in English and in translation from Carcanet celebrates forty years every period has been unwavering. This season’s list offers the full Carcanet range. Here are great innovators and new voices; Roman classics – Apuleius and Suetonius in Robert Graves’s celebrated translation – and modern classics of New Zealand and Catalan poetry. A radical anthology of American poetry challenges the European reader; an important historical collection traces a century in poetry; and If it were not for Carcanet, my library there are delightful, unexpected prose titles, FyfieldBooks and new collections by some of the outstanding younger writers in the Anglophone world.
    [Show full text]
  • Gregory, Matthew. 2018. Full Colour & Splendour and Fatigue. Doctoral
    Gregory, Matthew. 2018. Full Colour & Splendour and Fatigue. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis] https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/25920/ The version presented here may differ from the published, performed or presented work. Please go to the persistent GRO record above for more information. If you believe that any material held in the repository infringes copyright law, please contact the Repository Team at Goldsmiths, University of London via the following email address: [email protected]. The item will be removed from the repository while any claim is being investigated. For more information, please contact the GRO team: [email protected] FULL COLOUR & SPLENDOUR AND FATIGUE Matthew Gregory A Doctoral Thesis in Creative Writing Presented to Goldsmiths, University of London 1 DECLARATION This is to certify that the work presented in this thesis is my own: …………………………………………………………………… Matthew Gregory 2 Contents Full Colour ...................................................................................................................................... 5 Part One ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 6 A Portrait of Matteo Lonardi ............................................................................................................ 7 Oranges ...........................................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • A Study of John Ashbery's "The Tennis Court Oath
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Kyoto University Research Information Repository Title Polarities : A Study of John Ashbery's "The Tennis Court Oath Author(s) Ford, Mark Citation 英文学評論 (1993), 65: 39-80 Issue Date 1993-03 URL http://dx.doi.org/10.14989/RevEL_65_39 Right Type Departmental Bulletin Paper Textversion publisher Kyoto University Polarities : A Study of John Ashbery's "The Tennis Court Oath" Mark Ford The status of The Tennis Court Oath1 within Ashbery's works has always been, and probably always will be, problematic. It drew on pub- lication in 1962 reviews ranging mainly from contemptuous dismissals to expressions of polite puzzlement.2 Only the critic R. W. Flint of Partisan Review seriously grappled with the nature of Ashbery's poetry in this book, and his conclusions about it, though in many places extremely per- ceptive, were not overall encouraging : In John Ashbery the dazzling vatic style of Dylan Thomas or Roethke's "The Shape of the Fire" has become something cool, business-like and very pecu- liar...3 Flint declares himself at first dismayed by the poems' "extreme disjoint- edness" but after prolonged "immersion" in them discovers they possess "a tonal unity in no way dependent on meter or even cadence conven- tionally understood, but rather on a cadence of feeling-sight in which things are coming apart, receding into night and distance, clouding over, or just becoming uncomfortable in a peculiarly sober, visionary, matter- of-fact way." This last cluster of opposed adjectives certainly reflects 40 Polarities : A Study of John Ashbery 's "The Tennis Court Oath" something of the book's pervasive spirit of self-contradiction.
    [Show full text]
  • Proquest Dissertations
    FIT TO COPE WITH OUR OCCASIONS; JOHN ASHBERY^S PLACE IN POSTWAR AMERICAN POETRY BY GAVIN DAVID HERD A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON ProQuest Number: 10017300 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest 10017300 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ABSTRACT Fit to Cone with Our Occasions: John Ashberv^s Place in Postwar American Poetry The object of this thesis is to develop terms by which Ashbery’s contribution to postwar poetry can properly be evaluated. I argue that the key term to such an evaluation is ‘occasion’. This term has three distinct critical functions. First, following the poet, I suggest that an Ashbery poem is occasioned by its circumstances (which is to say that events give rise to the poem, but do not determine its shape). Second, I show that Ashbery’s development can be charted in terms of his widening sense of what constitutes the occasion of the poem. Third, I compare Ashbery’s responses to occasions which have shaped postwar American poetry with the responses of important contemporaries.
    [Show full text]
  • PDF Downloadable
    th Sale 10 Part 1 2pm Saturday 8 October BOX LOTS 1 The suitcase special with GB, Australia & World sorted in envs, bags & stockbooks, with high vals & multiples noted incl better Thailand modern F/U on piece. Covers with Aust & GB FDC's, odd circuit sheets & more on Hagners. Stockbook of better with NSW 1/- Consumptive Home, pre-dec blocks, Hitler defins, Japanese M/S's etc. Also SS pages with basic kangaroos & KGV. Needless to say etc, etc. Always easy to carry home i.e. room bidders only! $50 2 Foreign countries only in 17 stockbooks of various makes & sizes. General collector may find this of interest as there is much that is better than "packet material", even if big ticket items are absent. Good ranges incl Austria, Poland, pre-WWII Germany & later DDR, Cuba & lesser ranges of Colombia, Thailand, Vietnam, Czechoslovakia & others. (many 1000s) $50 3 Mixed lot with PNG mint, Queensland duties, Swedish on pages, many older, old circuit sheets with stamps, Angola presentation album, Germany in pack plus a huge homemade South African 1953 coronation FDC. $30 4 Clearance lot with an array of everything. FDC's & others incl. GB maxi cards, GB & Isles pres packs, numerous older GB on stockcards incl. postage dues, Canada Olympics souvenir collection, old postcards from India, 1950's Israel FDC's. plus 1000s of stamps mint & used. $30 5 World off paper, predominantly British C/wealth with many higher vals to 10/- also noted. Australia FU blocks of 4. (1000s) $30 6 Collectors clean out in large box. Incls albums & stocksheets with stamps.
    [Show full text]