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Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-04036-6 - The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry Edited by Walter Kalaidjian Frontmatter More information The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry comprises original essays by nineteen distinguished scholars. It offers a critical overview of major and emerging American poets of the twentieth century in addition to critical accounts of the representative schools, movements, regional settings, archival resources, and critical reception that defi ne modern American poetry. The Companion stretches the narrow term of “literary modernism,” which encompasses works published from approximately 1890 to 1945, to include a more capacious and usable account of American poetry’s evolution from the twentieth century to the present. The essays collected here seek to account for modern American verse against the contexts of broad political, social, and cultural fi elds and forces. This volume gathers together major voices that represent the best in contemporary critical approaches and methods. Walter Kalaidjian is professor and chair of the department of English at Emory University. He is the author of The Edge of Modernism: American Poetry and the Traumatic Past and editor of The Cambridge Companion to American Modernism . A complete list of books in the series is at the back of this book. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-04036-6 - The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry Edited by Walter Kalaidjian Frontmatter More information © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-04036-6 - The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry Edited by Walter Kalaidjian Frontmatter More information THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO MODERN AMERICAN POETRY © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-04036-6 - The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry Edited by Walter Kalaidjian Frontmatter More information © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-04036-6 - The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry Edited by Walter Kalaidjian Frontmatter More information THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO MODERN AMERICAN POETRY Edited by WALTER KALAIDJIAN Emory University © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-04036-6 - The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry Edited by Walter Kalaidjian Frontmatter More information 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013-2473, USA Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107683280 © Cambridge University Press 2015 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2015 Printed in the United States of America A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data The Cambridge companion to modern American poetry / [edited by] Walter Kalaidjian, Emory University. pages cm. – (Cambridge companions to literature) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-107-04036-6 (hardback) – ISBN 978-1-107-68328-0 (paperback) 1. American poetry – 20th century – History and criticism. 2. Literature and society – United States – History – 20th century. 3. Modernism (Literature) – United States. I. Kalaidjian, Walter B., 1952– editor. PS 323.5. C 28 2015 811′.509–dc23 2014025978 ISBN 978-1-107-04036-6 Hardback ISBN 978-1-107-68328-0 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-04036-6 - The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry Edited by Walter Kalaidjian Frontmatter More information CONTENTS List of Figures page ix Notes on Contributors xi Chronology xv Introduction 1 Walter Kalaidjian 1 The Emergence of “The New Poetry” 11 John Timberman Newcomb 2 Modern American Archives and Scrapbook Modernism 23 Bartholomew Brinkman 3 Experimental Modernisms 37 Alan Golding 4 The Legacy of New York 50 Cary Nelson 5 The Modern American Long Poem 65 Anne Day Dewey 6 American Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance 77 James Smethurst 7 Objectivist Poetry and Poetics 89 Rachel Blau DuPlessis 8 American Poetry and the Popular Front 102 Alan Wald vii © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-04036-6 - The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry Edited by Walter Kalaidjian Frontmatter More information Contents 9 Tracking the Fugitive Poets 116 Kieran Quinlan 10 Mid-Century Modernism 128 Stephen Burt 11 Psychotherapy and Confessional Poetry 143 Michael Thurston 12 Black Mountain Poetry 155 Kaplan Harris 13 Beat Poetry: HeavenHell USA, 1946–1965 167 Maria Damon 14 The Black Arts Movement and Black Aesthetics 180 Evie Shockley 15 New York School and American Surrealist Poetics 196 Edward Brunner 16 Land, Place, and Nation: Toward an Indigenous American Poetics 209 Janet McAdams 17 Transpacifi c and Asian American Counterpoetics 223 Yunte Huang 18 Language Writing 234 Barrett Watten 19 Poet-Critics and Bureaucratic Administration 248 Evan Kindley Guide to Further Reading 259 Index 271 viii © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-04036-6 - The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry Edited by Walter Kalaidjian Frontmatter More information FIGURES 1 Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Rosemary” Scrapbook. Millay Papers Box 14, Library of Congress. page 24 2 Amy Lowell, The Private Scrap-Book . MS Lowell 38 (26), Houghton Library, Harvard University. 29 3 George Grantham Bain. Claude McKay and Baroness Von Freytag- Loringhoven. Photograph. George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress, Washington D.C. Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-33941. 61 ix © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-04036-6 - The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry Edited by Walter Kalaidjian Frontmatter More information © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-04036-6 - The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry Edited by Walter Kalaidjian Frontmatter More information NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Bartholomew Brinkman is Assistant Professor of English at Framingham State University, where he specializes in modern American poetry, print culture, cul- tural studies, and digital humanities. He is currently completing a book project on poetic modernism in the culture of mass print and coedits with Cary Nelson the Modern American Poetry Site. Edward Brunner is Professor of English at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. His most recent study is Cold War Poetry (2001). He teaches courses in modern poetry, popular culture, and graphic novels. Stephen Burt is Professor of English at Harvard and the author of several books of criticism and poetry, among them The Forms of Youth: Twentieth-Century Poetry and Adolescence (2013) and, with David Mikics, The Art of the Sonnet (2011). Maria Damon is Professor and Chair of the Department of Humanities and Media Studies at the Pratt Institute of Art. She is the author of The Dark End of the Street: Margins in American Vanguard Poetry (1993) and Postliterary America: From Bagel Shop Jazz to Micropoetries (2011) and the coeditor, with Ira Livingston, of Poetry and Cultural Studies: A Reader (2009). Anne Day Dewey teaches American literature at Saint Louis University’s Madrid campus. Her work on twentieth-century poetry includes Beyond Maximus: The Construction of Public Voice in Black Mountain Poetry (2007); The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov , coedited with Paul Lacey (2013); and Among Friends: Engendering the Social Site of Poetry (2013), essays on friendship, gender, and poetry coedited with Libbie Rifkin. Rachel Blau DuPlessis is the author of the long poem Drafts , spanning 1986 to 2012 (2013). She has written six critical books (from Cambridge, Iowa, and Alabama University Presses), coedited several anthologies, and published numer- ous articles on gender and poetics. DuPlessis edited The Selected Letters of George xi © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-04036-6 - The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry Edited by Walter Kalaidjian Frontmatter More information Notes on Contributors Oppen (1990), coedited The Objectivist Nexus (1999), and has written exten- sively on objectivist poets. She is Professor Emerita at Temple University. Alan Golding teaches poetry and poetics at the University of Louisville. He is the author of From Outlaw to Classic: Canons in American Poetry (1995) and of numerous