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Proquest Dissertations Inarticulate prayers: Irony and religion in late twentieth-century poetry Item Type text; Dissertation-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Lagapa, Jason S. Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 06/10/2021 17:32:53 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/280295 INARTICULATE PRAYERS: IRONY AND RELGION IN LATE TWENTIETH-CENTURY POETRY by Jason St. James Lagapa A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERISTY OF ARIZONA 2003 UMI Number: 3089972 UMI UMI Microform 3089972 Copyright 2003 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 9 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA ® GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Final Examination Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by JaSOn St. JameS Laqaoa entitled Tnart.ir.i]1 ate Pravers: Ironv and Religion in Late Twentieth-Century Poetry and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of DOCtOr Of PhilOSOOhy Tenney Nathaprcoii-/' J T-hh'.x Roger Bowen ' '' ' ' Jeremy Green Date Date Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate's submission of the final copy of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. Dlssertac/o.. Dlractozr NathansOn 3 Statement by Author This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided accurate acknowledgement of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his or her judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all others instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author. Signed: 4 Acknowledgements During the writing of the dissertation, I was able to draw upon the advice, support and kindness of quite a few people. I am very grateful to Tenney Nathanson for teaching me most of what I know about reading poetry and directing my efforts with compassion and thoughtfulness. I would like to thank Roger Bowen for his guidance throughout my graduate studies, his good nature, and of course, for his friendship. From our very first meeting, Jeremy Green has been extremely generous and encouraging, and I appreciate his rigorous and provocative responses to my work. My experiences in Tucson and at the University of Arizona would have been greatly diminished without Herb Schneidau's sense of humor and wisdom, and I cannot begin to detail what I have learned from him. Dan Cooper Alarcon and Susan Aiken have also been integral in the progression of my graduate studies and the writing of my dissertation. I would not have been able to complete the dissertation without the support of the College of Humanities, which awarded me with the 2002 David L. Patrick Dissertation Fellowship and the Dean's Fellowship nor without the assistance of the Graduate College, which extended to me the Graduate College Dissertation Fellowship. My family also helped and encouraged me throughout my writing efforts; Sharon and Ed always made me feel as if I was doing important work, and because of that, I never lacked a sense of purpose to my project. The significance of my parents to my education and my life is almost indescribable; I hope that the dedication of my dissertation to them begins to reveal my appreciation. Lastly, I'd like to thank Emily—for everything. 5 For My Mother and Father TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract 7 Introduction 9 Chapter 1 Heresies Will hnplode: John Ashbery's Apostate Poetics 31 Chapter 2 A Poem Is a Small (or Large) Malfunctioning Machine Made of Words 62 Chapter 3 Caliban's Profit: Cursing and Obscenity in the Work of Derek Walcott and Kamau Brathwaite 107 Chapter 4 Something from Nothing: the Disontological poetics of Leslie Scalapino and Jackson Mac Low 160 Conclusion 217 Works Cited 226 7 Abstract Inarticulate Prayers: Irony and Religion in Late Twentieth-Century Poetry examines irony and its implications for religious belief within texts ranging from the New York School Poets to the Language Poets and, in Caribbean literature, within the poems of Derek Walcott and Kamau Brathwaite. Taking Jacques Derrida's distinction between deconstruction and negative theology as a point of departure, I argue that contemporary poets employ ironic language to articulate an ambivalent, and skeptical, system of belief In "How to Avoid Speaking: Denials," Derrida contrasts his theory of dijferance—as a fimdamentally negative and critical mode of inquiry—with negative theology, which ultimately affirms God's being after a process of negation. My study asserts that contemporary poets, in accord with principles of negative theology, engage in inarticulate, self-canceling and negative utterances that nevertheless affirm the possibility of belief and enlightenment. By postulating the affinity between contemporary poets and the apophatic tradition, I explain how the work of these poets, despite often being dismissed as arid exercises in poststructuralist thought, productively draws on linguistic theories and also advances beyond the "negativity" of such theories. Moreover, as it intervenes in recent debates over the absence of a spiritual dimension to contemporary poetry, my dissertation opens new perspectives through which to theorize postmodern literature. Demonstrating that experiments in language and form are driven by an ironic 8 stance towards belief, authorship and literary tradition, Inarticulate Prayers ultimately redefines contemporary lyric and narrative poetry and asserts negation, inarticulateness, and contradiction as determining characteristics of postmodern writing. 9 Introduction Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes) —Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself Every time I say: X is neither this nor that, neither the contrary of this nor that, neither the simple neutralization of this nor of that with which it has nothing in common, being absolutely heterogeneous to or incommensurable with them, I would start to speak of God, under this name or another. God's name would then be the hyperbolic effect of that negativity or all negativity that is consistent in its discourse. —Jacques Derrida on Negative Theology^ Dana Gioia ends his now famous essay "Can Poetry Matter?" with "six modest proposals," the third of which soberly pronounces that: "Poets need to write prose about poetry more often, more candidly, and more effectively" (23). Although such a recommendation would seemingly be an approbation of the critical work written by language poets, who are often known as much for their poetics as for their poetry, Gioia qualifies his proposal with a condition that reads like a pointed attack on Language poets. "They must also avoid the jargon of contemporary academic criticism and write in a public idiom" (23). The fifth proposal, which advocates that ^'poetry teachers...should spend less time on analysis and more on performance," also indirectly censures Language poetry by its assertion that "poetry needs to be liberated from hterary criticism" (23). Even before Gioia's qualification about what type of language ought to be used in writings about poetry, the injunction that "poets need to write prose" already violates principles espoused by Language poets, who hold that criticism and poetry are not antithetical discourses and that poetry ought not to be necessarily opposed to prose. In The Marginalization of Poetry, for example. Bob Perelman plays with the conventional distinctions drawn between prose and poetry through a highly self- conscious and ironic use of abrupt line breaks: this may or may not be a poem. The couplets of six- word lines don't establish an audible rhythm; perhaps they aren't, to use the Calvinist mercantile metaphor, "earning" their right to exist in their present form—is this a line break or am I simply chopping up ineradicable prose? (4)^ Later in The Marginalization of Poetry, in an essay entitled "Language Writing and Literary History," Perelman provides a brief account of the beginnings of Language poetry and outlines the extent to which Language writing opposed the prevailing 11 conceptions of poetry advanced by the majority of university creative writing departments. Specifically, Perelman underscores how the poststructuralist theories that inform Language writing were inimical to proponents of mainstream poetry: The aesthetics of this mainstream [poetry] are not without variation, but generalizations are possible,
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