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Performing Memory: American Poets Theater and the Poetics

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Performing Memory: American Poets Theater and the Poetics PERFORMING MEMORY: AMERICAN POETS THEATER AND THE POETICS OF THE ARCHIVE, 1945-1995 by Rebecca Jane Dodd B.A. (Hons.), Simon Fraser University, 2012 M.A., Simon Fraser University, 2014 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (English) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) April 2021 © Rebecca Jane Dodd, 2021 The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled: Performing Memory: American Poets Theater and the Poetics of the Archive, 1945-1995 submitted by Rebecca Jane Dodd in partial fulfillment of the requirements for for the by foffor Doctor of Philosophy degree of in English Examining Committee: Adam Frank, Professor, English Language and Literatures, UBC Co-supervisor Kevin McNeilly, Associate Professor, English Language and Literatures, UBC Co-supervisor Kirsty Johnston, Professor, Theatre and Film, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Mary Chapman, Professor, English Language and Literatures, UBC University Examiner Sima Godfrey, Associate Professor, French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, UBC University Examiner ii Abstract This dissertation uses the methodological tools of archival research to interrogate the relationship between performance, community, and memory in an extended study of American poets theater, a quasi-genre or aesthetic tendency that aligns poetic practices with the conventions of theatre and site-specific performance. At the same time, archival theory provides a theoretical framework for thinking through poets theater’s coterie function. I trace a poetics of the archive across American poetry after 1945 to argue that poets theater creates an accessible record of past communities and community events. In keeping with this community-focused approach, each chapter of this dissertation addresses the origins of American poets theater in the social and aesthetic contexts from which it develops, including the New York School and second-generation New York School of poets, the San Francisco Renaissance, and the New Narrative Movement. Each community, I argue, contributes to the development of poets theater as we recognize it today. Building on these situated contexts, this dissertation also draws on the work of Rebecca Schneider to suggest that poets theater should be read as both a form of re-enactment and an archival-theatrical event. I argue that poets theater operates as a trans-historical tool of the coterie that, through the process of re-enactment, works to capture, recreate, create anew, or signal affective connections across spaces and times. This allows poets theater to extend the parameters of coterie to include both the original event and the re-performance of it, eliciting community membership to both audience members and performers alike across times and performances. iii Lay Summary This dissertation explores the origins of “poets theater,” a hybrid form of poetry and performance associated with American poetry communities in the period following the Second World War. I use archival research to argue that poets theater develops from its relationship with poetic communities such as the first- and second-generation New York School poets, the San Francisco Renaissance, and the New Narrative movement. Across these four case studies, I make the argument that poets theater has been used as a tool for both building and preserving community. Each future performance fulfills this function by creating community across spaces and times. iv Preface This dissertation is original, independent work by the author, Rebecca Dodd. An early version of Chapter 4 was presented in 2019 at the annual conference of the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE) in Vancouver, British Columbia. This project and its methods were approved by the University of British Columbia’s Research Ethics Board (certificate #H17-00316). v Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................. iii Lay Summary ......................................................................................................................... iv Preface ..................................................................................................................................... v Table of Contents ................................................................................................................... vi List of Figures ...................................................................................................................... viii Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ ix Dedication ................................................................................................................................ x Introduction. When is Poets Theater? Theatrical Performance in the Temporal Fold ... 1 American Poets Theater after 1945 .............................................................................. 8 When is Poets Theater? Poets Theater in the Archive ................................................ 14 i. The Living Archive ........................................................................................ 15 The Archive and the Repertoire: Toward a Spatial Reading of Poets Theater as Archival-Theatrical Performance ............................................................................... 18 Site/Citation: The Coterie as Performative and Textual Practice ............................... 22 Chapters ...................................................................................................................... 26 Chapter 1. “This History of Us”: New York School Poets Theater and the Re- Performance of the Coterie .................................................................................................. 32 A Letter from the Living Archive ............................................................................... 33 “Lucky Pierre Style”: Intimacy in New York’s Theatre Scene .................................. 39 Metatheatricality ......................................................................................................... 43 i. The Artists’ Theatre ........................................................................................ 45 The Transtemporal Coterie of the Living Archive ..................................................... 51 Coda: O’Hara’s Letter Today ..................................................................................... 56 Chapter 2. “What We Desire Now is Space”: Poets Theater’s Spatial and Textual Palimpsest and the Archival Interventions of the Second-Generation New York School Poets ....................................................................................................................................... 61 Life Already Theatricalized: Two Examples of the Subversive Spatial Palimpsest .. 66 The Textual Palimpsest: Establishing Poetic Lineage through Re-Composition ....... 73 Site in Citation: Layering the Textual and the Spatial ................................................ 78 Coda ............................................................................................................................ 85 Chapter 3. The Poet as Time Mechanic: Re-enactment and Collage in the San Francisco Renaissance ........................................................................................................................... 87 “All this is to explain why I dedicate each of our poems to someone”: Re-enactment and the Transtemporal Coterie of Jack Spicer ............................................................ 92 Poetry as Magic: A Case Study ................................................................................ 100 i. The Workshop .............................................................................................. 102 ii. Helen Adam’s Initiation to the Magic Workshop ......................................... 107 Coda .......................................................................................................................... 117 vi Chapter 4. “Nothing Ever Just Disappears”: Playing Dead and the Absent Present Body in New Narrative’s Relational Archive ................................................................... 120 Writing Relation: Textual and Archival Practice in New Narrative Writing ........... 126 New Narrative’s Relational Archive ........................................................................ 133 Playing Dead: The Absent Present Body in Narration and Performance ................. 137 i. Real: The Letters of Mina Harker and Sam D’Allesandro ........................... 142 ii. Turn Around: Movement, Absence, and Text .............................................. 145 Coda .......................................................................................................................... 154 Coda: A Methodology of Mourning: Memory, Documentation, and Trace in American Poets Theater and Scholarship .......................................................................................... 156 Works Cited ........................................................................................................................ 160 vii List of Figures Figure 1. Still of John Ashbery (Right) with Ron Padgett (Left) reading
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