Resisting Definition in Susan Howe, Nathaniel Mackey, and Ed Roberson’S Post-1968 Poetics
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RESONANCE OVER RESOLUTION: RESISTING DEFINITION IN SUSAN HOWE, NATHANIEL MACKEY, AND ED ROBERSON’S POST-1968 POETICS Adra Raine A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. Chapel Hill 2019 Approved by: Tyler Curtain Joseph Donahue Nathaniel Mackey María DeGuzmán Randall Kenan © 2019 Adra Raine ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Adra Raine: Resonance Over Resolution: Resisting Definition in Susan Howe, Nathaniel Mackey, and Ed Roberson’s Post-1968 Poetics (Under the direction of Tyler Curtain and Joseph Donahue) In this dissertation on contemporary U.S. literature, I situate the poetry of Susan Howe, Nathaniel Mackey, and Ed Roberson within post-1968 leftist projects that share a common liberatory impulse. I mark the period of cultural production over the past fifty years by the term “post-1968” in order to evoke the popular imagination of “the sixties” as a time of revolutionary action that came to both real and imagined conclusions in 1968 in the U.S., France, China, Mexico, and elsewhere. In response, I argue, post-1968 writers developed a poetics based in cautiousness, wary of the double-edged danger of the tools we deploy toward social transformation. I insist that by doing so, their move from direct action to study represents a continuation rather than a departure from the liberatory projects that precede (and succeed) them, even as their political-aesthetic strategies shift from the certainty of resolute political visions toward the uncertainty of a politics of plurality. In the dissertation’s chapters, I excavate the ways Howe, Mackey, and Roberson’s post- 1968 poetics draws on diverse cultural traditions to document American experience in ways that challenge formal convention—in their use of diction, syntax, and narrative, as well as historiography, literary study, and critical argument—while allowing multiple and often contradictory meanings to resonate with one another in cross-cultural relation, rather than resolve into single definitions that privilege one culture of meaning over another. Furthermore, by iii practicing a liberatory poetics with historical consciousness, they re-vision the American landscape as one haunted by the history of global capitalism, colonialism, and slavery during an age in which this history was increasingly obscured. By bringing Howe, Mackey, and Roberson’s work into literary-historical relation, I highlight a liberatory impulse and sensibility that was moving through the post-1968 period not otherwise accounted for by the existing narratives of innovative, experimental, avant-garde and oppositional poetry. By showing that what makes their individual work distinctive while charting a shared set of concerns and innovations, I make visible a wider field of liberatory poetic practice characterized by a commitment to resonance over resolution by resisting definition. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My deepest gratitude to my committee members for their support of my project, their careful reading, and their generous guidance and patience as I moved unevenly through this process. Thank you to my co-director, Tyler Curtain, for catching me when I was falling; for making me pay attention to language; for your passion for poetry and writing; and, for your unwavering faith in me. Your influence on me as a thinker, writer, and teacher has been profound; every piece of advice you offer I immediately pass on to my own students, who in turn consistently recognize its value. Thank you to my co-director, Joseph Donahue, for your infectious enthusiasm for literary scholarship and for picking up on and helping make concrete the nascent ideas that I brought to our meetings as intuitions that needed encouragement. Your steady reminders to look to the cultural history that surrounds literary production, circulation, and reception has been invaluable and helped shape much of the project. My sincere gratitude to Nathaniel Mackey for playing multiple roles as teacher, mentor, and subject of my graduate studies. Your work on all fronts opened up a world of writing and thinking that not only made possible this project but made real a vision of possibility for my own work that saved me more than once over these past years. Thank you, María DeGuzmán, for modeling commitment and generosity as a scholar and educator. At a moment in the research university in which cynicism seems to be reigning the day, your steadfast passion for intellectual and creative work, your commitment to your students, and your belief in higher education is buoying. Thank you, Randall Kenan, for your kindness and for supporting this work, and for guiding me to important v sources that helped me shape my narrative of the post-1968 period. Thank you, Ruth Salvaggio, for being an original member of my committee before your retirement, and congratulations! I am grateful to our mutual student who helped me find you when he noticed something common in our teaching, at a moment when I needed to know that I was not alone in this work. Your encouragement meant everything to me, and your careful insights into the work I was trying to do had an immeasurable influence on the direction it took. I also want to thank my professors at the University of Maine at Orono—Carla Billitteri, Pat Burns, Steve Evans, Benjamin Friedlander, David Kress, and Jennifer Moxley—for setting me on this path, nurturing the beginnings of this project, and preparing me to pursue the PhD. I’d also like to thank Ed Roberson for welcoming me into his home in Chicago to discuss his work and life, and for his important writing. Thank you, as well, to Susan Howe, for providing a path. One of the most prescient pieces of advice I received when I began the PhD program at UNC was that I would find my most important intellectual community among my peers. This fact seems obvious now, but to a brand-new graduate student was surprising news. It is difficult to account for how much I owe to my friends, whose readings, ideas, and voices suffuse my work as a scholar and writer. I will forever be grateful for the co-incidence of our paths crossing at this particular place, at this particular time, and the circumstances that bonded us together. This project was born in the intellectual community of Selin Ever, Jessica Eileen Jones, Clarissa Lee, Michael Loncaric Michelle Mackenzie, Navid Naderi, Reginald D. Patterson, Morgan Slade, and Karim Wissa. Thank you, all, for your brilliance and camaraderie. Thank you to my fellow UNC PhD students, for being in it together from the beginning, especially Jason Loan, April Munroe, and L. Lamar Wilson. It’s been a long journey and I wouldn’t have made it this far without you; your friendship and your incredible work continually inspires me. Thank you, vi Lidia Klein, for somehow always setting the bar both very low and very high, and for being my best friend. And to Thomas Salem Manganaro for getting her that dinner table that she deserves. My gratitude goes to Jessica Q. Stark and Lindsey Andrews for being here for me in the final stages of the dissertation. Thank you, Jessica, for reminding me what is important, and what is not, and that our work has value. Thank you, Lindsey, for long days at “the office” and holding me through some of the hardest moments of these past couple of years. I also want to thank my online communities—you know who you are!—for your friendship and all of the emotional and practical support that you have provided, at all hours of the digital day and night. Thank you to the Department of English and Comparative Literature at UNC for dissertation fellowships and conference travel support that made this work possible, and for the invaluable teaching opportunities that connected me to Carolina students. I want to thank all of my undergraduate students for the courage, curiosity and commitment with which you were willing to engage in my pedagogical experiments and help me learn as an educator, reader, and writer. I want particularly to thank those students in the literature courses I taught between 2013- 2018, for working through the material of this dissertation with me. One thing nobody tipped me off to was how much my students would be a part of the intellectual community that has shaped me as a scholar and educator. Your brilliance has been a beacon of light through the darkest moments of the past decade. The biggest thanks of all goes to my family. To my mom, Laurie Leinonen, for being my first teacher, and for cultivating my imagination, creativity, and optimism. Your love and care for people and your belief in the magic of the world inspires me every day. To my dad, Stanley Raine, for teaching me the joy of intellectual sparring since I could talk (perhaps earlier even) and for always supporting my wildest dreams. The combination of romanticism and pragmatism, vii hope and cynicism, with which you approach life has been instructive and shows up in the work of this dissertation. To my brother, David Raine, whose artistic talent astounds and grounds me by helping me remember the landscapes of the imagination that we share. Thank you for your gentle kindness, humor, and steadfast belief in me; you make the world a better place and me a better person. Thank you, Helen, Ellie, Granger, and Paula Atkeson; Eva, Jeff, and Karla Chaudoir; and big brother Samir, Sara, and Sophia Wissa for being an important part of my life and sharing your lives with me. Thank you, Marian and Albert Wissa, for all of your love and support and for the greatest gift of all.