The Influence and Development of Coterie Poetics in American Avant

An Urban Pastoral Wedding: The Influence and Development of Coterie Poetics in American Avant-Garde Poetry by Jeremy Eisenberg A Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Approved September 2012 by the Graduate Supervisory Committee: Elizabeth Horan, Chair Cynthia Hogue Robert Sturges ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY December 2012 ABSTRACT This dissertation makes the case to reclaim the typically negative term, coterie, as a literary term for poetic method (Coterie Poetics) and offers the epithalamium as a valuable object for the study of coterie conditions and values. This examination of the historical poetics of the epithalamium, or wedding poem, shows how the Classical and Early Modern form was reappropriated by gay postwar poets and those in related social circumstances. This study applies and builds on theories developed by Arthur Marotti (John Donne: Coterie Poet), and Lytle Shaw (Frank O'Hara: The Poetics of Coterie) and subsequent critics to develop a Coterie Poetics, the markers and terms for which I have arranged here to demonstrate conscious "sociable" poetics. It is thus to our advantage to study coterie conditions and methods (e.g. informal personal address and coterie dialect) to open readers to insights into twentieth-century poets that have deliberately exploited reception among those in private and public spheres, just as their Early- Modern precursors did—often as a matter of survival, but also as formative practice. The key figures in this study wrote significant epithalamia or made major theoretical claims for Coterie Poetics: John Donne (1572-1631), W. H. Auden (1907-1973), Paul Goodman (1910-1972), and Frank O'Hara (1926-1966). O'Hara's poetry is approached as the apex of coterie poetics; his personal immediacy and obscure personal references should alienate and exclude—yet, they invite. i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have depended on the support of so many people throughout this process that I will never forget their guidance and toughness on my behalf. Of course, I must thank Elizabeth Horan, Cynthia Hogue, and Robert Sturges for supporting this dissertation. Thanks to Elizabeth for all the copious, rapid notes and the prudent brevity when it counted. Thanks to Cynthia for her advice on how to focus on my strengths while not indulging in them. Thanks to Bob for his encouragement to structure my work symmetrically, even medievally, to help the material under control. For certain, I would not have had a chance of getting to this point without the mostly informal support that made the journey thrilling and hopeful and pragmatic, all at once. Thanks to Mark Cruse for making the next stages seem plausible. Thanks to Iliana Rocha, Meghan Brinson, and Beckian Fritz Goldberg for creative and theoretical feedback. Special thanks to Rob Stauffer, who generously extended any conversation and generally made life sweeter in Arizona. I would like to thank the scholars and poets that, from afar, generously shared information made crucial suggestions: Virginia Tufte, Heather Dubrow, Lisa Jarnot, Kevin Killian, and Lytle Shaw. They made each risky step seem possible. To those at Arizona State University that supported me with funding and the opportunity to achieve the Katherine Turner Dissertation Fellowship, I am grateful for your support. ii Finally, I thank my families across the country that put us up while we did most of this from a distance. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER Page 1 TOWARD A COTERIE POETICS ....................................................... 1 2 MARKERS OF COTERIE POETRY ................................................. 24 3 JOHN DONNE: FROM COTERIE TO CANON .............................. 29 4 W.H. AUDEN AND THE SEMI-CLOSET ........................................ 45 5 FRANK O'HARA: THE APEX OF COTERIE .................................. 63 6 PAUL GOODMAN, COTERIE GURU ............................................. 85 7 AN URBAN PASTORAL WEDDING .............................................. 87 8 WHATEVER HAPPENED TO PAUL GOODMAN?..................... 155 WORKS CONSULTED ........................................................................................ 244 iv CHAPTER 1 TOWARD A COTERIE POETICS Preface This dissertation addresses the critical and literary development of coterie poetics, a relatively recent notion in literary criticism but a persistent concern for poets addressing their private circles and public obligations as what might commonly be called “masters of ceremony.” While most poets have been members of coterie circles at some point in their lives, certain poets can be particularly representative and key contributors to the coterie poetic methods and creative ethos. These poets, though they might have regretted their coterie origins, cannot quite shake them. John Donne (1572-1631), W. H. Auden (1907- 1973), Paul Goodman (1910-1972), and Frank O’Hara (1926-1966) offer instances of such representative figures which the following pages support through a combination of discussion of biographical data supplied by various critics and literary historians, which enriches my close readings of their contributions to coterie poetics. Each of these poets has produced significant work that underlies my theoretical and poetic justification for an emphasis on occasional poetry. I argue that their work has strongly influenced a number of their contemporaries as well as subsequent waves of coterie poets. Although the focus of this work is on critical appraisals of twentieth century poets and poetics, the present work considers closely the movement towards coterie poetics in Donne scholarship that was initiated by Arthur Marotti in the mid-eighties, with 1 findings that are crucial to understanding the effects of coterie circumstances on Donne’s lifetime poetic production. The method involves some degree of identifying and matching the coterie names to the appropriate historical correspondence, but the primary goal is one of recognizing the markers of coterie as potential poetic methods developed in coterie community circumstances. I am not the first to note the similarities between deliberately anti-professional poets, often described as “coterie poets” of vastly different circumstances and time periods. As Brian Epstein states it: In recent years, a promising trend has emerged as a number of critics and scholars, including Michael Davidson, Alan Golding, Libbie Rifkin, Daniel Kane, Reva Wolf, Beret Strong, Terence Diggory, Lytle Shaw, and Oren Izenberg, have begun to look more closely, analytically, and sociologically at the importance of community to twentieth-century avant-garde poetry and its development (Beautiful Enemies 7). By applying the work of literary critics and closely reading representative poetry, this book attempts to refine and organize what others have done less systematically. This study seeks a potentially wide-ranging application of coterie poetics as a tool of literary study. Also, this study follows a significant trend that scholarship has overlooked. From at least the middle of the twentieth century, the most occasional of occasional poems, the epithalamium, has been reappropriated by gay postwar poets and those in related social circumstances. That reappropriation of the epithalamium shows a dual resistance with respect to 2 heteronormativity even as the poets skillfully retain openness to “outsider” reading of their work. Here, I argue, is where the case for studying coterie conditions and coterie poetic methods results in important new insights for twentieth-century poetry, as that openness and dual resistance reflects the poets’ self-conscious, deliberate exploitation of the reception of private and public spheres. The major interpretation, central to this dissertation, is of Frank O’Hara’s “Poem Read at Joan Mitchell’s.” My reading of this poem maps out a border between private and public, avant-garde and the traces of poetic traditions marked within. It is also presented as a major point in the development of the art and poetics of Frank O’Hara, which I see as the apex of coterie poetry. New Kinships: a Brief and Partial Family Tree of Twentieth-century Coterie Poetics Practically all of the canonical English poets and their minor counterparts experimented and finally produced their literary work in coterie settings. Understanding coterie poetics over a significant span of time reveals patterns among poets in terms of group allegiances and affiliations, while affording analysis of how the individual practices of poets might develop with respect to these interpersonal relationships. Occasional forms such as the epithalamium and the masque, the use of which seems to have peaked in late sixteenth and early seventeenth century England, present demonstrable ties to the postmodern relationship and to coterie. These ultimately minor forms proved immensely 3 attractive to major twentieth century poets such as Auden and John Ashbery (b. 1927). Their adaptations of these sometimes forgotten forms in usually loose and fluid alignments stand out as models for other premeditated, regular social arrangements that are likewise anticipated in the work of Paul Goodman. Goodman’s writing and championing of occasional poetry, along with his social theories, exercised a direct influence on the direction of postwar poetics, as modern and postmodern poets have written their occasional poems with and against such traditional occasional forms. Traditionally taught models of epithalamia are found in their Early Modern English revival by Edmund

Load more