Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2003 Radical dialectics in the experimental poetry of Berssenbrugge, Hejinian, Harryman, Weiner, and Scalapino Camille Martin Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Martin, Camille, "Radical dialectics in the experimental poetry of Berssenbrugge, Hejinian, Harryman, Weiner, and Scalapino" (2003). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 926. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/926 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. RADICAL DIALECTICS IN THE EXPERIMENTAL POETRY OF BERSSENBRUGGE, HEJINIAN, HARRYMAN, WEINER, AND SCALAPINO A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and A&M College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Camille Martin B.M., Louisiana State University, 1978 M.M., University of Rochester, 1980 M.F.A., University of New Orleans, 1996 May 2003 ©Copyright 2003 Camille Martin All rights reserved ii Begin with this: the world has no origin. Continue with this: not body vs. soul, but the inherent doubleness of any situation. Thus in fusion there is also abyss. Clayton Eshleman, Under World Arrest iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am very grateful to my co-chairs, Professor Adelaide Russo and Professor Sharon Aronofsky Weltman, whose encouragement, guidance, and suggestions immeasurably improved this dissertation, and indeed were indispensable to the completion of the project. Even when I had doubts about the direction my project was taking, Professor Weltman’s faith in it always pulled me through. Her warm encouragement never failed to reassure me. Her many thoughtful and insightful comments from the very beginning and as the work progressed are greatly appreciated. Professor Russo’s interest in my work and deep knowledge of the field of contemporary poetry continues to be an inspiration to me. I am thankful for her encouragement and guidance at a time when I most needed it, and throughout the completion of the dissertation. I thank Professors Bainard Cowan, Carl Freedman, and John Henderson for their thoughtful reading of the dissertation, stimulating discussion during the defense, and helpful suggestions for revision. And I am grateful for the encouragement, love, and support of my husband, John P. Clark. Our many discussions about philosophy introduced me to ideas that are integral to this work. He helped me to find out what I wanted to do in the first place. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments ................................................................................................iv List of Figures ......................................................................................................vi Abstract ...............................................................................................................vii Chapter One. Introduction: A Middle Way with No Middle Ground.....................1 Chapter Two. The Voice of Things: Mei-mei Berssenbrugge’s and Lyn Hejinian’s Dialectics of Phenomena........................................................44 Chapter Three. Carla Harryman, Hannah Weiner, and the Poetics of Multivocality .....................................................................90 Chapter Four. Reading the Minds of Events: Leslie Scalapino’s Plural Time and Lyn Hejinian’s Ongoing Life .................................................................151 Chapter Five. Intersubjective Haunting: Self and Other, Public and Private in Mei-mei Berssenbrugge and Leslie Scalapino ..........................................215 Chapter Six. Conclusion....................................................................................260 References .........................................................................................................265 Appendix A. Biographical Sketches of Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Lyn Hejinian, Carla Harryman, Hannah Weiner, and Leslie Scalapino ................279 B. Comments on Metaphorical Constructions from Lyn Hejinian’s My Life ..................................................................283 C. Reflexive Sentences from Lyn Hejinian’s My Life............................284 D. Realistic Description from Lyn Hejinian’s My Life...........................286 Vita....................................................................................................................287 v LIST OF FIGURES 1. Mei-mei Berssenbrugge. From “Irises.” ..........................................................46 2. Mei-mei Berssenbrugge. “Experience.”...........................................................56 3. Hannah Weiner. “3/10.”.................................................................................126 4. Hannah Weiner. “I sjust.”..............................................................................137 5. Leslie Scalapino. From “The Woman Who Could Read the Minds of Dogs.” ......................................................................................166 6. Leslie Scalapino. “bum series.” .....................................................................186 7. Mei-mei Berssenbrugge. “Empathy.” ............................................................227 vi ABSTRACT In this dissertation, I focus on the work of five contemporary experimental poets – Mei- mei Berssenbrugge, Lyn Hejinian, Carla Harryman, Hannah Weiner, and Leslie Scalapino – in order to demonstrate various aspects of a philosophical dynamic at work in their poetry. The critical debates surrounding experimental poetry often tend to be structured as a dualistic opposition with, for example, the forces of coherence, narrative linearity, and transparent referentiality on one side, and the forces of semantic disruption, narrative discontinuity, and linguistic materiality on the other. On each side, critics attempt to bolster the essential value of one term or set of terms over the other, in a binary polarity. However, such a critique only leads to the formation of another hierarchy. I believe that it is important to understand the dialectical motion at work in much experimental poetry in order to avoid lapsing into reductive theories that reinstate hierarchical structures and dualistic thinking. By describing a “radical dialectics,” I am proposing a strategy of reading experimental work that recognizes its philosophical significance and its attempts to complicate dualistic conceptual constructions such as public and private realms of experience, subject and object relations, and narrative and non-narrative forces. This strategy emphasizes the mutually informing and critiquing dialogue and the nonresolving aspect of the dynamic interplay between conceptually opposed terms. I demonstrate this interdependent dialogue in several different yet related realms, including subject and object perceptual experience, the construction of individual subjectivity, temporality and narrativity, and intersubjectivity. To support my argument for the dialectical motion that I describe in the poetry, I draw upon a diverse range of thinkers, some of whom have influenced the poets whose work I analyze. These theorists span a wide range of fields, including ancient Indian Buddhist philosophy, vii cognitive science, feminist psychoanalysis, and phenomenology. In their various ways, these thinkers share, along with the poets with whom I place them side by side, the common project of transforming a dualistic view of the world and engaging in a profoundly dialectical philosophical project. viii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION: A MIDDLE WAY WITH NO MIDDLE GROUND Because there is a relationship between the mind and the body, there are inevitable experiences of instability and therefore of loss and discontinuity. Loss of scale accompanied by experiences of precision1 Lyn Hejinian . disappearing and rooted at once2 Hilda Morley The epigraphs to this introductory chapter give clues to the theoretical treatment of contemporary experimental poetry that I present in this dissertation. Lyn Hejinian juxtaposes loss of scale with precision; Hilda Morley proposes the coexistence of disappearance with rootedness. The experimental poets whose writings I analyze throughout this work question habits of thought and language and investigate conventional and conceptual dualisms, including that between mind and body. Their poetry is concerned with the coexistence and the dialogical motion between seemingly contradictory terms such as “private” and “public,” and “referentiality” and “nonreferentiality.” Moreover, their poetry proposes the interdependence of such terms, and indeed, at a certain level, their deep identity. In the four thematic chapters of this dissertation, I am concerned with ways in which contemporary experimental poetry enacts a dialogue between putatively contradictory realms and generates multiple meanings in the process-oriented and endlessly-circulating motion of that dialogue. The non-resolving and endlessly circulating dialogue between putatively contradictory terms is what I am calling the radical dialectics of experimental poetry. Providing a