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The Cultural Politics of William Carlos Williams's Poetry by Ciarán O'rourke

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The Cultural Politics of William Carlos Williams's Poetry by Ciarán O'rourke The Cultural Politics of William Carlos Williams's Poetry by Ciarán O'Rourke A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy University of Dublin Trinity College 2019 Declaration I declare that this thesis has not been submitted as an exercise for a degree at this or any other university and it is entirely my own work. I agree to deposit this thesis in the University's open access institutional repository or allow the Library to do so on my behalf, subject to Irish Copyright Legislation and Trinity College Library conditions of use and acknowledgement. ___________________ Ciarán O'Rourke. Summary This thesis offers a political reading of William Carlos Williams's poetry. Grounding its analysis in the work of a range of authors and theorists, as well as his own biography and writings, it approaches Williams's poems as critical texts that in complex ways represent, reinvent, and call into question the societal life and social spaces to which they refer. This approach exemplifies a new framework for understanding Williams's work and literary evolution: one that is as historically attuned as it is aesthetically exploratory. As such, this thesis also assesses Williams's engagement with genre and poetic form, arguing that these last are closely related to his understanding of American democracy, political commentary, and radical commitment – as detailed in the opening chapter. The second chapter examines the political aesthetic that Williams establishes in his work from 1913 to 1939, highlighting the often subtle – sometimes problematic – discourses of class, race, gender, and materiality that permeate his poetry. The chapter encompasses: the social element of Williams's break with traditional form in “The Wanderer”; his modernisation of the pastoral mode and treatment of gender, class, and national identity in suburban settings; the close association of his poetry with the politics of advertising, social portraiture, and race in his time; the poetics of perception he evolves to engage both the global “facts” that define his era and the material “vision” presented to him in his New Jersey locale (CP I 312). This chapter demonstrates that Williams's work is calibrated to combine formal innovation with social representation, while such representation frequently itself functions as a mode of political implication and critique – the poem standing as “a social instrument” that enables “the lifting of an environment to expression” (SL 286). Focusing on the period 1939-1963, the third chapter explores the development of Williams's home-grown poetics in light of his engagements with issues of race, nationalism, and violence (including atomic warfare), among others, in American and global contexts. As in the preceding chapters, this section probes Williams's aesthetic assumptions, but also shows his work evolving new capacities for self-critique and a general criticism of his society. The chapter thus addresses Williams's objectification of working-class, racial, and female figures, as well as his apparent ease in substituting rhetorical provocation for meaningful political response, while also counterposing these tendencies against his effort to democratise his verse and criticise his times. The fourth chapter attends to the formal and political valencies informing Paterson. Taking issue with a number of scholarly interpretations of the poem – from critics as eclectic in their emphases as Frederic Jameson and Marjorie Perloff – this chapter casts Paterson as a distinctly postmodern work, highlighting Williams's deployment of documentary and cinematic techniques in the poem, and his engagement of a number of complex (often self-ironising) literary and political discourses. Breaking the formal barriers of an art-form burdened by artificial conventions, Williams in Paterson combines the body breathing with the body politic to create an epic vision of modern American life – one that is as politically resonant today as it is interrogatory of Williams's era. Drawing on the pedagogical philosophies of radical hope outlined by Paulo Freire and Maxine Greene, the concluding portion of this thesis argues for a socially conscious and performatively engaged pedagogical approach to Williams's poetics. By close reading of individual poems and with reference to his own writings on educational reform, this final segment argues that Williams's cultural politics invite exactly that mode of politically efficacious pedagogy which Freire and Greene, among others, have advocated in their respective studies. This conclusion encourages students and educators alike to approach Williams's poetry as a platform from which to fashion a creative vision and critical understanding of their own society. Table of Contents Acknowledgements....................................................................................................... 1 Abbreviations................................................................................................................ 2 1. “I cannot tell it all”: Williams in History 1.1 Approaching Williams............................................................................................. 3 1.2 Williams Among the Rest....................................................................................... 18 1.3 A Note on Structure............................................................................................... 37 2. “Poetry is a rival government”: 1913-1939 2.1 Introduction........................................................................................................... 43 2.2 Mirroring Modernity: “The Wanderer”................................................................ 48 2.3 Creation / Destruction: American Visions............................................................. 58 2.4 A Rival Government: the Objects of Speech.......................................................... 74 2.5 Advertising America: the Language of Democracy............................................... 88 2.6“The cap on his head is red and blue”: Williams, Race, and Social Criticism... 105 2.7 Conclusion: the Poetry of Facts.......................................................................... 122 3. “Such war, as the arts live and breathe by, is continuous”: 1939-1963 3.1 Introduction......................................................................................................... 133 3.2 Williams and Russia: Getting the Measure of It.................................................. 147 3.3 Atomic America: Writing the Bomb..................................................................... 163 3.4 Savage Flowers: Symbolising Native America.................................................... 182 3.5 A World of Two Shades: the Language of Racism............................................... 196 3.6 Envisioning Violence: the Politics of Mourning.................................................. 206 3.7 Conclusion: Revising the Times.......................................................................... 224 4. “Doc, listen”: Paterson 4.1 Introduction......................................................................................................... 236 4.2 The Labour of Paterson....................................................................................... 262 4.3 Paterson and Mass Culture.................................................................................. 274 4.4 The Symbolism of Paterson.................................................................................. 282 4.5 The Self-Criticism of Paterson............................................................................. 292 4.6 Place and History in Paterson............................................................................. 301 4.7 Conclusion: the Venture of Paterson.................................................................... 318 5. Conclusion: On “the sharp edge of the mechanics of living” 5.1 Williams's Radical Hope...................................................................................... 326 Bibliography.............................................................................................................. 347 Acknowledgements For his patience, good humour, rigorous re-reading, and stimulating feedback, I am grateful to my supervisor, Professor Stephen Matterson. It was a pleasure to work under his tutelage. I also express my gratitude to the School of English and the wider community of Trinity College Dublin, where I have had the privilege to live for the past number of years. As such, I wish to thank: Trinity's housekeepers, including Stephanie and Veronica, for their tireless work and good company; the BLU librarians and security guards for their cheer and assistance; the catering and cloakroom staff, especially June, for all her help; and the student members of People Before Profit TCD (2016-18), whose commitment to radical change (on campus and beyond) has been an education all its own. I send love to my ever-supportive family: Mum, Dad, Aeveen, and Iseult – who first recommended the work of Maxine Greene and Paulo Freire to me, and so, on a practical level, provided the shape and direction of the concluding chapter of this thesis. Farther afield, I hope that the ghost of Williams, bright dancer and Angel of the Left Wing that he is, will accept my affectionate thanks (for the memories). I've come to realise that most individual endeavours, if worthwhile, are enabled by the example and companionship of others. Because they showed the way, this thesis is dedicated
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