The Process of Poetic Vocation in Postwar America
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MAKING A LIVING POETRY: THE PROCESS OF POETIC VOCATION IN POSTWAR AMERICA BY JEFFREY PAUL NEILSON B.A., UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, 2003 M.A., BROWN UNIVERSITY, 2011 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AT BROWN UNIVERSITY PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND MAY, 2014 © Copyright 2014 by Jeffrey Paul Neilson This dissertation by Jeffrey Paul Neilson is accepted in its present form by the Department of English as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date: __________ ________________________________________ Philip Gould, Director Recommended to the Graduate Council Date: __________ ________________________________________ Deak Nabers, Reader Date: __________ ________________________________________ John Shoptaw, Reader Date: __________ ________________________________________ Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Reader Accepted by the Graduate Council Date: __________ ________________________________________ Peter M. Weber, Dean of the Graduate School iii Vita Jeffrey Paul Neilson was born on December 27, 1981 in Berkeley, California. There he experienced quite strange and wonderful configurations of the sacred and secular—from Telegraph Avenue to the eucalyptus groves of Tilden Park. He graduated from St. Mary’s College High School in 1999 and then earned his B.A. in English at the University of California, Berkeley in 2003. At UC Berkeley, his honors thesis, A Proposed World, meditated upon Thomas Merton’s poetry in light of Merton’s complementary and conflicting vocations as a monk and writer. During these years, Jeffrey was an active drummer in various jazz ensembles, rock bands, jam sessions, and the Sunday drum circles that used to be held at UC Berkeley’s Lower Sproul Plaza. After graduating from Berkeley, Jeffrey taught English in high schools and junior high schools for three years in Wakayama, Japan, where, among other adventures, he hiked the Kumano Kodō. At Brown University, he has received the Cogut Center for the Humanities’ John Cargill MacMillan Graduate Fellowship, the Scholarship Award for Cornell’s School for Criticism and Theory, and a fellowship for the Lumen Christi Institute’s summer seminar on “Catholic Social Thought.” Some of his research on Robert Duncan and the post-secular is forthcoming as an article in Contemporary Literature. Jeffrey has also been working on new research projects: one concerning the emergence of world music, cross-cultural experimental writing, and semiotic theory from the 1960s to the present, and another on radical Catholic writers and artists in the Americas during the Cold War. He has also been continuing the long process of writing two books of poetry, Concrescence and The Hoarder of Things. iv Acknowledgements Over the course of writing this dissertation, the opening line of one of Robert Duncan’s Dante Études has reverberated in my Berkeley-bound soul with a kind of meta- derivational irony: “Everything speaks to me!” With the superabundant living and dying of this “everything” kept in mind, I wish to express my immense gratitude to, and radical affection for, singularly important people who have spoken to and with me: teachers, family, friends, and fellow wayfarers who have listened, attended, pushed, pulled, helped, and challenged me along my way. Firstly, I want to thank my parents, Denis and Harriet Neilson. Their love, kindness, support, and understanding through my creative and scholarly adventures have been ongoing. I thank them, my brothers John, Joe, and Jaime, and all of the extended Neilson family in the Bay Area: Erin, Almira, Vera, Sebastian, Bella, Sophia, Daniel, James, Vera, Colin, and Amelia. Each member of my dissertation committee has encouraged me to write a dissertation that has become a “living option.” Philip Gould has tirelessly offered trenchant feedback, bibliographic expertise, sound advice, professional wisdom, as well as poise, humor, and candor throughout the bumpier times of this project. Our work together has generated a vital space of critical freedom. From the downbeat on, Deak Nabers has, with aggressive generosity, sustained vibrant and exploratory debates with me on just about every and any topic in the galaxy. Despite (no, because of) the hyperactive nature of our discussions, Deak has managed to educe some of my most original and compelling discoveries. He has effectively made me a better thinker. I am overwhelmed in gratitude to Barbara Herrnstein Smith, who, since our seminar on “The v Natural and the Supernatural,” has challenged my individual “thought style.” By the same token, she has fostered the expansion of those emerging dispositions, desires, motives, habits, and dreams I call (however provisionally and contingently) my own. Through her disarmingly brilliant lines of critique, inexhaustible rigor, wonderful stories, affirmative perspectives, and generous words of wisdom, she models the intellectual courage and curiosity that I strive to cultivate in my own work and life. Finally, from my first encounters with these poets as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, John Shoptaw has read my work with keen interest, formal precision, and thoughtful care. Our many coffee hours in Berkeley discussing poets, poems, and poetry (and life!) are a very special source of inspiration and discovery. I would also like to thank the extraordinary teachers with whom I was extremely fortunate to study as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley. In particular, Robert Hass has offered his time and friendship in discussing my work since the beginning of the current millennium. He has brought poetry to life and into my life in ways that are too deep for words. I would also like to thank professors Elizabeth Abel, John Bishop, and Stephen Booth for their respectively inimitable styles of thinking and teaching. Lastly, Joseph Jordan deserves special praise. Our time together has been of utmost quality. He is an exemplary mentor, lucid interlocutor, and also a great friend. Over these past seven years, I have been quite fortunate to meet and share my ideas about this project with many colleagues and friends at Brown. I would like to especially thank Andrea Actis for her important advice about this project in its ongoing stages, and for her big-hearted spirit in our frankly wonderful moments of creative insight, and in all of our serious conversations. Many thanks also to Stephen Marth, vi Felipe Valencia, Andrew Starner, Jon Sozek, Rebecca van Laer, Steven Swarbrick, Sarah Osment, Stephanie Tilden, Jennifer Schnepf, David Hollingshead, Luis Prasedes (“Luca”), Alexa Shaw, Julia Shaw, Corey McEleney, Austin Gorman, and Derek Wong. Many scholars, poets scholar-poets, and poet-scholars have responded to my questions and ideas, offering lucid ideas, key references, and precious time: William Keach, Michael Davidson, Oren Izenberg, Stephen Collis, Joshua Clover, Ron Silliman, Stephen Voyce, Charles Leger, Sophia Dahlin, and Aeron Kopriva. In particular, I would like to thank Forrest Gander for his sustaining friendship and critical engagement with my work throughout these years of making it new. As a teenager and college student, I first learned how to listen and respond by studying with a number of amazing musicians in the Bay Area. It was a blessing to be able to work with such jazz legends, and I thank them for making me a sensitive listener and player in the great workshop of becoming: Josh Jones, Peter Apfelbaum, Steve Coleman, Donald “Duck” Bailey, Jessica Jones, and Khalil Shaheed. I cannot forget the first bitter and ecstatic lessons in reading poetry, and speaking in my own voice, imparted to me by Florence Joan Verducci. I would have never accessed poetry’s “manic force” without our teacher-student bond. I thank FJ for everything she has taught me, including some of the most mystically difficult lessons of living. Lastly, a continuing thank you to Natalie Adler for everything she has shared with me in the process of making our lives patiently, curiously, and brilliantly come to life. vii For Tom Behrman (1976-2006) il miglior fabbro viii Abbreviations Chapter One A = The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams CP I = The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Volume I: 1909-1939 CP II = The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Volume II: 1939-1962 IAG = In the American Grain P = Paterson SE = Selected Essays of William Carlos Williams SP = Selected Poems Chapter Two FC = Fictive Certainties GW = Ground Work: Before the War · In the Dark H.D. = The H.D. Book L = Letters: Poems 1953-1956 OF = The Opening of the Field RB = Roots and Branches SP = A Selected Prose Years = The Years as Catches: First Poems 1939-1946 Chapter Three AWP = A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far: Poems 1978-1981 BBP = Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979-1985 CEP = Collected Early Poems: 1950-1970 DCL = The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977 DW = Diving Into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972 LSS = On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978 LP = Later Poems: Selected and New, 1971-2010 MS = Midnight Salvage: Poems 1995-1998 PC = Poetry and Commitment TNP = Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems 2007-2011 TP = Time’s Power: Poems 1985-1988 TRL = Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth: Poems 2004-2006 YNL = Your Native Land, Your Life: Poems Chapter Four PD = Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems BN = Blue Notes: Essays, Interviews, and Commentaries T = Taboo W = Warhorses CC = The Chameleon Couch TDG = Talking Dirty to the Gods ix Contents Vita iv Acknowledgements v Abbreviations ix Introduction 1 1. The Sound of Ongoing Life: William Carlos Williams’s Lyric Descent 40 2. There Are No Final Orders: Robert Duncan’s Conversion to Poetry 102 3. The Will to Change…Is Always One Word Short: Adrienne Rich and the Formalist Continuum 150 4. This Root-Bound Unblooming: Yusef Komunyakaa at the Jazz Workshop 209 Epilogue 262 Bibliography 280 x DOCTOR: What was your son’s work, Mrs. Venable?—besides this garden? MRS. VENABLE: As many times as I’ve had to answer that question! D’you know it still shocks me a little?—to realize that Sebastian Venable the poet is still unknown outside of a small coterie of friends, including his mother.