Recording Voice and the Racial Politics of American Experimental Poetry
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Copyright by Jeffrey Kyle Boruszak 2018 The Dissertation Committee for Jeffrey Kyle Boruszak Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Sound Off!: Recording Voice and the Racial Politics of American Experimental Poetry Committee: Lisa Moore, Co-Supervisor Chad Bennett, Co-Supervisor Brian Bremen Tanya Clement Meta DuEwa Jones Sound Off!: Recording Voice and the Racial Politics of American Experimental Poetry by Jeffrey Kyle Boruszak Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2018 Acknowledgements The prefix “ac-” in the word “acknowledgement” derives from the Latin preposition “ad,” meaning “to” or “towards.” It implies a vector, a spatial directionality that mirrors the physical properties of sound and the electric mechanisms in recording devices that make signal processing possible. Sound, listening, and knowledge are never solo performances, and this project was no exception. As I reflect on the countless people, who either in their direct or indirect contributions made this dissertation possible, I am prepared to fail in the impossible task I now commence: naming them all. I am incredible fortunate to be the recipient of such overwhelmingly gracious support from so many people, without whom I could never have made it this far. My gratitude towards my parents, Amy and Allan, will never be enough. I don’t think they ever really understood why I got into this poetry “business” to begin with, but they never tried to sway me from the course. Instead they continue to offer nothing but unconditional love, support, and encouragement as I wander my uncharted path. The same goes for my siblings: Haley, Sidney, and Sarah, thank you for everything you have done—and will continue to do. You are the buttresses I know I can always turn to when facing life’s storms. During my time at the University of Texas, I found camaraderie with my fellow graduate students. Your friendships mean the world to me, and this document contains countless ideas that emerged from many formal and informal conversations over the years. Erin Cotter, Loren Cressler, Reid Echols, Jesi Egan, Zach Hines, Robert Jones, Keith Leisner, Regina Mills, Aubri Plourde, Valerie Sirenko, Jeremy Smyczek, Anne Stewart, Elliott Turley, and of course, my dearest friend and roommate Alejandro Omidsalar: in my wildest dreams I never would have imagined that my graduate school cohort would consist of so many kind, wonderful, and intelligent humans. You’ve made the past six years an amazing and unforgettable existence, and there will always be a “hole in the wall” of my heart filled with memories of our time together. iv Many other friends from Austin and beyond put up with my intellectual ramblings and occasional trolling as I worked on this project, and I would be woefully remiss were I not to name them now: Betsy Berry, Emily Echols, Meg Freitag, Meghan Gorman-Darif, Thomas Green, Hannah Harrison, Aleina Kreider, Katie Logan, Sequoia Maner, David Marcou, Rosy Mack, Rebecca Macmillan, Courtney Massie, Meg McKeon, Steve McLaughlin, Aidan McQuay, Will Mosley, Ben Roth, Jonathan Schoenfelder, Mark Sheridan, Megan Snell, Charles Stewart, and JC Wilt. Thank you all. Of course, the actual writing in this document would not exist at all without the extensive feedback I received from the members of my dissertation writing group. For drea brown, Carolyn Davis, Lindsey Gay, Jeremy Goheen, and Nick Spinelli, a mere “thank you” is hardly enough. Your incisive comments on numerous drafts pushed me to make this dissertation better than I thought it could be. I also owe a great debt to the members of my dissertation committee, who greatly impacted my intellectual development over the past six years and whose impact on this document is not limited to its present state. Your thoughts and questions continue to push me beyond the limits of what I know. Thank you, Brian Bremen, for serving on my field exam and prospectus committees as well as my dissertation committee. Not only are you the only person in this department who loves the work of Ezra Pound as much as I do—you were the first to suggest the work of Alexander Weheliye to me, and this project took on incredible new directions as a result. Tanya Clement, with whom I began working just before moving to Austin, and who by including me in her HiPSTas project and instructing me in the digital humanities introduced me to new methods of academic inquiry that continue to influence my research: I am forever indebted. Meta DuEwa Jones, your brilliance and insightful questions cut through the nonsense and get to the heart of the issue with an alacrity that never ceases to amaze me. Your comments on drafts made this dissertation better than it ever would have been otherwise. Chad Bennett, you have been a light throughout my graduate studies. My knowledge of and opinions v about contemporary poetry have undergone radical transformations over the years because of your infinite generosity. Your extraordinary kindness and mentorship have meant so much to me, and your work as a scholar and a teacher will always be a model for me. And finally, to Lisa Moore, I will never be able to repay the debt I feel I owe to you. I could not have asked for a better advisor or friend. Your honesty and support led me through the darkness and the pitfalls of my graduate studies, and I would not be here today if not for you. Additional thanks are due to Douglas Kearney, who in addition to providing me with a copy of the recordings analyzed in Chapter Three, sat in a room and listened to me give a paper on his poetry but still had only kind and thoughtful things to say. Thank you to the Stanford Libraries, which houses the Allen Ginsberg Special Collection. In addition to the documents cited in the first chapter, which I encountered in their reading room, the Library was also kind enough to send me a digital copy of one of one of Ginsberg’s auto poesy tapes—an act that advanced both my knowledge and the direction of my arguments. Thank you as well to Patricia Schaub, the Department’s Graduate Coordinator, a truly unsung hero whose efforts made my work as a graduate student possible all these years. Finally, and most importantly, thank you to Dilara Cirit. You are the love of my life, my soul mate, my better half, and most importantly, my partner. I would never have accomplished a feat so large without your never-ending support and companionship. You listened to ideas when they were at their most barebones, engaged my harebrained rhetorical leaps with utter grace, and by reading draft after draft of my writing made my prose sing. You are the person who celebrated my accomplishments and intellectual heights while providing empathy and assurance at my self-critical lows. You are my constant inspiration. And more than completing this dissertation or receiving my doctoral degree, meeting you and falling in love is the most important thing I’ve done as a graduate student over the past six years. As we move forward into a new phase of our life together, I am confident of the great things ahead with you by side. vi Sound Off!: Recording Voice and the Racial Politics of American Experimental Poetry Jeffrey Kyle Boruszak, PhD The University of Texas at Austin, 2018 Supervisors: Lisa Moore and Chad Bennett The racial politics of the avant-garde is one of the dominant and most urgent issues in twenty- first century American poetry. Non-white poets often find themselves excluded from contemporary avant-garde circles, historical narratives of avant-garde practices frequently occlude their contributions, and avant-garde poets rarely include anti-racist rhetoric and principles in their poems. In recent years, the anti-lyric critiques posed by the avant-garde Language poets in the 1980s and 1990s drew increased attention for their role in racially segregating experimental and formally innovative writers. Poetic voice, the rejection of which is a cardinal principle of anti-lyric, became a central figure in these discussions. Yet given that voice can refer to the phenomenal act of speaking as well as serve as a common figure for an individual poet’s style and tone, the nature of the links between voice and race in poetry remain unclear. This dissertation therefore incorporates current trends in the scholarly field of sound studies by attending to postwar American poets who use technology for sound recording and reproduction in their work in order to isolate voice as an object of intense scrutiny. By analyzing the Vietnam-era “auto poesy” of Allen Ginsberg, the dystopian specter colonialism in poems by Cathy Park Hong, and the typographical experiments of Douglas Kearney, this project engages both analog and digital recording technologies and their applications as compositional processes, structural metaphors, and aesthetic influences. Rather than focus on how voice is produced in the vii acts of speaking and writing, I engage the cultural norms that code sounds and inform human listening practices in order to argue that voice is dynamic, fluid, and contextual. Given their significant overlap in political commitments, acknowledging the whiteness of the avant-garde suggests the possibility of creating a broader and more inclusive coalition of experimental poets whose combined efforts can bring about desirable shifts in political, pedagogical, and publishing norms. viii Table of Contents