DOCSLIB.ORG

Surrealist Poetry and the Cold War

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Surrealist Poetry and the Cold War “The beautiful white ruins / of America”: Surrealist Poetry and the Cold War Peter Roswell Henry Richmond, Virginia M.A., University of Virginia, 2007 M.F.A., University of Oregon, 1997 B.A., University of Virginia, 1995 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy English University of Virginia December, 2013 Abstract This dissertation focuses on the rise and fall of American Surrealist poetry, a mid- twentieth century aesthetic movement that has been largely dismissed by the major critics, anthology-builders and literary historians of contemporary American poetics (Shetley, von Hallberg, Ramazani). Indeed, the prevalent narrative is that American Surrealism was an awkward adolescent moment in contemporary American poetry, falling between the birth of contemporary poetics in the 1950s and its maturity in the canon-opening and postmodernist work that began to bloom in the 1980s. This dissertation attempts two goals. Firstly, it seeks to tell a fuller story of this movement: by examining the poetic successes of the Surrealists—and the intense threat they posed to their more canonical peers—I argue that this movement played a far more significant role in the development of postwar American poetics than it is afforded. Secondly, this dissertation interrogates the cultural, historical and literary phenomena that allowed American Surrealism to emerge in the 1950s and, just as quickly, to disappear. Ultimately, I argue that American Surrealism was a poetic response to the Cold War, and the study of American Surrealism offers unique insight into the relationship between literature and politics during the Cold War. The Surrealists came at a moment when American poetry—and American culture— was roiling: amid the global expansion as a new postwar superpower; amid the post-GI Bill swelling of universities and the further democratization of education in general and literary study in particular; amid changing ideas (geographically, culturally, educationally) of what it meant to be American. In their history, we see a series of tensions at play in Cold War America and our collective memory of the Cold War. As the concluding chapters of this dissertation argue, the i disappearance of American Surrealism occurred as the academy became far more concerned with the Culture War than the Cold War, and American Surrealism was a casualty of this erasure. In the introduction, I provide a brief historical overview of the rise of Surrealism out of the Dadaist movement and follow its spread across three continents in the years between World War I and World War II. Chapter One examines the first generation of American Surrealists by looking at two Midwestern poets, Robert Bly and James Wright, and placing them in an era defined critically, politically, and popularly by Robert Frost. I argue that the emergence of Surrealism in their writing was both a political and a poetic response to American empire- building and the idea that the Midwestern heartland was the epicenter of essential American values. Chapter Two examines the links between the Cold War, American Surrealism, and poetic form by focusing on two 1967 responses to the emerging crisis in Southeast Asia, Robert Lowell’s Near the Ocean and W.S. Merwin’s The Lice. In comparing these volumes, I argue that Merwin’s volume established American Surrealism as the poetic mode of Cold War dissent. Chapter Three examines the pinnacle of the movement in the 1970s, focusing on the Surrealist volumes of a number of practitioners—James Tate, Charles Wright, Larry Levis, Charles Simic—and positioning them against the context of the “poetry wars” of the 1980s. In the Conclusion, I chronicle the disappearance of American Surrealism and argue that this was the result of two phenomena: the Culture Wars’ displacement of the Cold War at the center of American letters; and the embrace of literary theory in American poetry; finally, I suggest the ultimate costs of forgetting American Surrealism and suggest the possibility of the movement’s heirs. ii Acknowledgments First of all, I would like to thank my committee members Victor Luftig, Paul Cantor, and Stephen Cushman. Victor Luftig’s involvement in this project dates back to an informal conversation we had long ago at the conclusion of my oral exams a decade ago in which he said he’d be “chuffed” at the prospect of being my dissertation director. I am thankful for his support and stewardship of this project. Stephen Cushman, in addition to serving on my committee, has been an enduring model of an outstanding teacher. Indeed, the fact that many of the ideas that appear in this dissertation came indirectly from the Poetic Form course I took with him twelve years ago speaks to the quality of his teaching. Paul Cantor has been my teacher, advocate, mentor, and friend since I was eighteen years old. He has watched me grow up and been there to challenge and support me all along the way. I am deeply indebted to him. I am grateful to Gustavo Pellón for his willingness to serve as an outside reader on the defense and for his sincere engagement with the project. I am particularly lucky to have had him as an outside reader, in that he helped strengthen the sections of this dissertation that touched upon Spanish literature. I am thankful for the friendship of fellow students Peter Capuano, Elise Lauterbach, Melissa White, and Jason Goldsmith during my years in the English department. Finally, I wish to express my deep gratitude to the following people who supported me along this route: my parents, Molly and Larry Henry; John Stambaugh and Karina Bull; Karen iii Lyons; Robin Lollar; Ian Ayers; Dan Vivian; Ben Arthur; Ron Edwards; Steve Kramp; my colleagues in the Department of Focused Inquiry at Virginia Commonwealth University; the Metz family; and Sarah, Paul, and Barbara Murphy. iv Table of Contents Abstract i Acknowledgments iii Introduction: Surrealism, from Paris to the Dakotas 1 Chapter 1: Poetic Centers and Poetic Dissenters: Frost, Bly, Wright 28 Chapter 2: “Again again with its pointless sound”: Merwin, Lowell, Vietnam 92 Chapter 3: Levitating Friends, Grave-Robbing Nails, 139 and the Heyday of American Surrealism Conclusion: The Death (and Life?) of American Surrealism 179 Works Cited 197 v Introduction: Surrealism, from Paris to the Dakotas This dissertation provides a history of American Surrealist poetry, an aesthetic mode that traced its lineage to the French Surrealism of the 1920s.1 Arriving on the American poetry scene in the 1950s, Surrealism celebrated the nonsensical, the arbitrary, and the marvelous; it quickly rose to become perhaps the preeminent aesthetic mode of American verse by the 1970s, causing one critic to remark in 1974 that “to look for the influence of surrealism in American poetry today is like looking for references to aquatic animals in Moby Dick” (Zweig 314). Indeed, journals and literary magazines brimmed with American Surrealist verse, poets who embraced American Surrealism won award after award, and two generations of American poets turned their attention towards the French Surrealists and their South American, Spanish, and Eastern European protégés. American Surrealism’s arrival was explosive, and its disappearance was just as abrupt. During the 1980s, it all but vanished from American poetry and criticism. Though its poets continued to write, they adopted all sorts of new aesthetic identities, from eco-poetry to neo- Romanticism to deconstructionist “Ellipticism” to the men’s movement. American Surrealism 1 The correct term for this poetry—whether “Deep Image” or “American Surrealist”—is complicated. Both James Breslin and Paul Breslin use the term “Deep Image” to describe the generation of Bly and Wright; this term comes from Bly’s invocation of a poetry that draws upon “deep images of the unconscious” in his 1959 essay “On English and American Poetry” (47). In turn, W.S. Merwin, James Tate, Charles Simic, Charles Wright and Larry Levis (among many others) have been called “Surrealist” by Paul Zweig, Robert Pinsky and Paul Breslin. For the sake of consistency, I will use the terms “American Surrealism” and “American Surrealist.” Paul Breslin offers a useful discussion of the distinctions and correlations between “Deep Image” poetry and what he terms the “New Surrealism” (and what I believe to be “American Surrealism”) in The Psycho-Political Muse (118). Joron is also quite useful on this distinction (19-21). 1 has been largely dismissed by recent histories of American poetry, and it is entirely possible that future histories of twentieth-century American poetry will no longer even mention the movement. Such an omission would be a grave mistake. This dissertation advocates for the importance of the American Surrealist movement and to suggest that its disappearance is not, in fact, due to its irrelevance but, in fact, due to the larger political and cultural shifts taking place within the academy as the Cold War gave way to the Culture War. I argue that American Surrealism was a poetic response to the Cold War, and the study of American Surrealism offers unique insight into the relationship between literature and politics during the Cold War. The Surrealists came at a moment when American poetry—and American culture—was roiling: amid the global expansion as a new postwar superpower; amid the post-GI Bill swelling of universities and the further democratization of education in general and literary study in particular; amid changing ideas (geographically, culturally, educationally) of what it meant to be American. In their history, we see a series of tensions at play in Cold War America and our collective memory of the Cold War. An inevitable question follows: “If American Surrealism is so important, why did it fall out of favor during the 1980s and, furthermore, why has it disappeared from literary study?” As the concluding chapters of this dissertation argue, the disappearance of American Surrealism occurred as the academy became far more concerned with the Culture War than the Cold War, and American Surrealism was a casualty of this erasure.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Durham Research Online
    Durham Research Online Deposited in DRO: 24 January 2017 Version of attached le: Published Version Peer-review status of attached le: Peer-reviewed Citation for published item: Harding, J. (2015) 'European Avant-Garde coteries and the Modernist Magazine.', Modernism/modernity., 22 (4). pp. 811-820. Further information on publisher's website: https://doi.org/10.1353/mod.2015.0063 Publisher's copyright statement: Copyright c 2015 by Johns Hopkins University Press. This article rst appeared in Modernism/modernity 22:4 (2015), 811-820. Reprinted with permission by Johns Hopkins University Press. Additional information: Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Durham University Library, Stockton Road, Durham DH1 3LY, United Kingdom Tel : +44 (0)191 334 3042 | Fax : +44 (0)191 334 2971 https://dro.dur.ac.uk European Avant-Garde Coteries and the Modernist Magazine Jason Harding Modernism/modernity, Volume 22, Number 4, November 2015, pp. 811-820 (Review) Published by Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/mod.2015.0063 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/605720 Access provided by Durham University (24 Jan 2017 12:36 GMT) Review Essay European Avant-Garde Coteries and the Modernist Magazine By Jason Harding, Durham University MODERNISM / modernity The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist VOLUME TWENTY TWO, Magazines: Volume III, Europe 1880–1940.
    [Show full text]
  • Against the Amnesiacs: the Art Criticism of Jean Bazaine, 1934-1944
    114 French History and Civilization Against the Amnesiacs: The Art Criticism of Jean Bazaine, 1934-1944 Natalie Adamson In his treatise on the practice of painting published in 1948, Notes sur la peinture d’aujourd’hui, Jean Bazaine argued that the purpose of painting is not simply to capture the simulacral surface appearances of an object, but to give a viable form and authentic meaning to a life that is experienced as a symbiotic engagement with the exterior world and with interior, or spiritual, imperatives. To this end, Bazaine opened his argument with a condemnation of “what is commonly known as naturalism in painting:” It is this refusal or this impossibility of a permeable universe: an art without abstractions, that is to say deprived of profound contact with the universal, a flesh that is no longer armed with signs that surpass it. The decadence of an art, like that of man, always consists of this passage from the object-pretext, crossroads of forces, to the object as an end in itself, to a closed economy, to the object that has become so dumb that it devours its own feet, to the object-catoblepas.1 Bazaine’s Notes articulated the premises of a “third way” route for painting that could transcend the stylistic and ideological conflict between abstraction and realism and maintain the essential connection between representation and nature; and in doing so, revivify the French national tradition. The appeal of his arguments to many artists during the 1950s stemmed from his advocacy of a practice of painting founded in the subjective engagement of the person with the world, retaining pictorial Natalie Adamson is a lecturer in the School of Art History, University of St Andrews.
    [Show full text]
  • Record Store Day 2020 (GSA) - 18.04.2020 | (Stand: 05.03.2020)
    Record Store Day 2020 (GSA) - 18.04.2020 | (Stand: 05.03.2020) Vertrieb Interpret Titel Info Format Inhalt Label Genre Artikelnummer UPC/EAN AT+CH (ja/nein/über wen?) Exclusive Record Store Day version pressed on 7" picture disc! Top song on Billboard's 375Media Ace Of Base The Sign 7" 1 !K7 Pop SI 174427 730003726071 D 1994 Year End Chart. [ENG]Pink heavyweight 180 gram audiophile double vinyl LP. Not previously released on vinyl. 'Nam Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo' was first released on CD only in 2007 by Ace Fu SPACE AGE 375MEDIA ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE NAM MYO HO REN GE KYO (RSD PINK VINYL) LP 2 PSYDEL 139791 5023693106519 AT: 375 / CH: Irascible Records and now re-mastered by John Rivers at Woodbine Street Studio especially for RECORDINGS vinyl Out of print on vinyl since 1984, FIRST official vinyl reissue since 1984 -Chet Baker (1929 - 1988) was an American jazz trumpeter, actor and vocalist that needs little introduction. This reissue was remastered by Peter Brussee (Herman Brood) and is featuring the original album cover shot by Hans Harzheim (Pharoah Sanders, Coltrane & TIDAL WAVES 375MEDIA BAKER, CHET MR. B LP 1 JAZZ 139267 0752505992549 AT: 375 / CH: Irascible Sun Ra). Also included are the original liner notes from jazz writer Wim Van Eyle and MUSIC two bonus tracks that were not on the original vinyl release. This reissue comes as a deluxe 180g vinyl edition with obi strip_released exclusively for Record Store Day (UK & Europe) 2020. * Record Store Day 2020 Exclusive Release.* Features new artwork* LP pressed on pink vinyl & housed in a gatefold jacket Limited to 500 copies//Last Tango in Paris" is a 1972 film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, saxplayer Gato Barbieri' did realize the soundtrack.
    [Show full text]
  • April 2005 Updrafts
    Chaparral from the California Federation of Chaparral Poets, Inc. serving Californiaupdr poets for over 60 yearsaftsVolume 66, No. 3 • April, 2005 President Ted Kooser is Pulitzer Prize Winner James Shuman, PSJ 2005 has been a busy year for Poet Laureate Ted Kooser. On April 7, the Pulitzer commit- First Vice President tee announced that his Delights & Shadows had won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. And, Jeremy Shuman, PSJ later in the week, he accepted appointment to serve a second term as Poet Laureate. Second Vice President While many previous Poets Laureate have also Katharine Wilson, RF Winners of the Pulitzer Prize receive a $10,000 award. Third Vice President been winners of the Pulitzer, not since 1947 has the Pegasus Buchanan, Tw prize been won by the sitting laureate. In that year, A professor of English at the University of Ne- braska-Lincoln, Kooser’s award-winning book, De- Fourth Vice President Robert Lowell won— and at the time the position Eric Donald, Or was known as the Consultant in Poetry to the Li- lights & Shadows, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2004. Treasurer brary of Congress. It was not until 1986 that the po- Ursula Gibson, Tw sition became known as the Poet Laureate Consult- “I’m thrilled by this,” Kooser said shortly after Recording Secretary ant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. the announcement. “ It’s something every poet dreams Lee Collins, Tw The 89th annual prizes in Journalism, Letters, of. There are so many gifted poets in this country, Corresponding Secretary Drama and Music were announced by Columbia Uni- and so many marvelous collections published each Dorothy Marshall, Tw versity.
    [Show full text]
  • TOTAL of 10 PACES ONLY MAY BE XEROXED
    CENTRE FOR NEWFOUNDLAND STUDIES TOTAL Of 10 PACES ONLY MAY BE XEROXED Charles Olson and the (Post)Modem Episteme by 0 David Baird A thesis submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in partial fulfillment ofthe requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department ofEnglish Memorial University ofNewfoundland April2004 St. John's Newfoundland Library and Bibliotheque et 1+1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de !'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 0-612-99049-4 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 0-612-99049-4 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a Ia Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I' Internet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non­ sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve Ia propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits meraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni Ia these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation.
    [Show full text]
  • CV, Full Format
    BENJAMIN PALOFF (1/15/2013) Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures 507 Bruce Street University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI 48103 3040 MLB, 812 E. Washington (617) 953-2650 Ann Arbor, MI 48109 [email protected] EDUCATION Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures, June 2007. M.A. in Slavic Languages and Literatures, November 2002. Dissertation: Intermediacy: A Poetics of Unfreedom in Interwar Russian, Polish, and Czech Literatures, a comparative treatment of metaphysics in Eastern European Modernism, 1918-1945. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan M.F.A. in Creative Writing/Poetry, April 2001. Thesis: Typeface, a manuscript of poems. Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts B.A., magna cum laude with highest honors in field, Slavic Languages and Literatures, June 1999. Honors thesis: Divergent Narratives: Affinity and Difference in the Poetry of Zbigniew Herbert and Miroslav Holub, a comparative study. TEACHING Assistant Professor, Departments of Slavic Languages and Literatures and of Comparative Literature, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2007-Present). Courses in Polish and comparative Slavic literatures, critical theory, and translation. Doctoral Dissertation Committees in Slavic Languages and Literatures: Jessica Zychowicz (Present), Jodi Grieg (Present), Jamie Parsons (Present). Doctoral Dissertation Committees in Comparative Literature: Sylwia Ejmont (2008), Corine Tachtiris (2011), Spencer Hawkins (Present), Olga Greco (Present). Doctoral Dissertation Committees in other units: Ksenya Gurshtein (History of Art, 2011). MFA Thesis Committee in English/Creative Writing: Francine Harris (2011). Faculty Associate, Frankel Center for Jewish Studies (2009-Present); Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (2007-Present). Service: Steering Committee, Copernicus Endowment for Polish Studies (2007-Present).
    [Show full text]
  • Cubism in America
    University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Sheldon Museum of Art Catalogues and Publications Sheldon Museum of Art 1985 Cubism in America Donald Bartlett Doe Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/sheldonpubs Part of the Art and Design Commons Doe, Donald Bartlett, "Cubism in America" (1985). Sheldon Museum of Art Catalogues and Publications. 19. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/sheldonpubs/19 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Sheldon Museum of Art at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Sheldon Museum of Art Catalogues and Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. RESOURCE SERIES CUBISM IN SHELDON MEMORIAL ART GALLERY AMERICA Resource/Reservoir is part of Sheldon's on-going Resource Exhibition Series. Resource/Reservoir explores various aspects of the Gallery's permanent collection. The Resource Series is supported in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. A portion of the Gallery's general operating funds for this fiscal year has been provided through a grant from the Institute of Museum Services, a federal agency that offers general operating support to the nation's museums. Henry Fitch Taylor Cubis t Still Life, c. 19 14, oil on canvas Cubism in America .".. As a style, Cubism constitutes the single effort which began in 1907. Their develop­ most important revolution in the history of ment of what came to be called Cubism­ art since the second and third decades of by a hostile critic who took the word from a the 15th century and the beginnings of the skeptical Matisse-can, in very reduced Renaissance.
    [Show full text]
  • The Logic of Modernism Author(S): Adrian Piper Source: Callaloo, Vol
    The Logic of Modernism Author(s): Adrian Piper Source: Callaloo, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Summer, 1993), pp. 574-578 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2932257 . Accessed: 15/09/2011 20:27 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Callaloo. http://www.jstor.org THE LOGIC OF MODERNISM* ByAdrian Piper There are four interrelated properties of Euroethnic art that are central to understand- ing the development of modernism, and in particular the development of contemporary art in the United States within the last few decades: 1) its appropriative character;2) its formalism; 3) its self-awareness; and 4) its commitment to social content. These four properties furnish strong conceptual and strategic continuities between the history of European art-modernism in particular-and recent developments in American art with explicitly political subject matter. Relative to these lines of continuity, the peculiarly American variety of modernism known as Greenbergian formalism is an aberration. Characterized by its repudiation of content in general and explicitly political subject matter in particular, Greenbergian formalism gained currency as an opportunistic ideo- logical evasion of the threat of cold war McCarthyite censorship and red-baiting in the fifties.
    [Show full text]
  • James Tate - Poems
    Classic Poetry Series James Tate - poems - Publication Date: 2012 Publisher: Poemhunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive James Tate(8 December 1943 -) James Tate is an American poet whose work has earned him the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. <b>Early Life</b> James Vincent Tate was born in Kansas City, Missouri. He received his B.A. from Kansas State University in 1965 and then went on to earn his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa in their famed Writer's Workshop. <b>Career</b> Tate has taught creative writing at the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University. He currently teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he has worked since 1971. He is a member of the poetry faculty at the MFA Program for Poets & Writers, along with Dara Wier and Peter Gizzi. Dudley Fitts selected Tate's first book of poems, The Lost Pilot (1967) for the Yale Series of Younger Poets while Tate was still a student at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop; Fitts praised Tate's writing for its "natural grace." Despite the early praise he received Tate alienated some of his fans in the seventies with a series of poetry collections that grew more and more strange. He has published two books of prose, Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee (2001) and The Route as Briefed (1999). His awards include a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, the Wallace Stevens Award, a Pulitzer Prize in poetry, a National Book Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
    [Show full text]
  • James Wright, the Art of Poetry from the Paris Review, Summer 1975
    James Wright, The Art of Poetry From The Paris Review, Summer 1975 Interviewed by Peter A. Stitt Object 1 Early in 1972—following the publication, in April 1971, of his Collected Poems—James Wright was awarded both the Pulitzer Prize for poetry and the Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets. The latter was awarded “for distinguished poetic achievement” by a panel of judges consisting of W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, and Richard Wilbur. Thus, a considerable measure of public recognition was given to a poet already widely admired, especially on college and university campuses. In an age when, much to our loss, many fine poets find their books out of print, Mr. Wright’s earlier volumes—The Green Wall (1957), Saint Judas (1959), The Branch Will Not Break (1963), and Shall We Gather at the River (1968)—all have gone through more than one printing. The following interview took place at Mr. Wright’s Manhattan apartment in early spring. The apartment is on the ground floor, and so, as we sat talking, we were able to look out through the (inevitably) barred windows at the small back garden and see, occasionally, the sunlight slanting between the surrounding buildings. On the first day we held two sessions, separated by a walk in a nearby park on the East River and an excellent lunch prepared by Mrs. Wright. On the second, a misty, rainy day, we held one long afternoon session. On the table between us lay the tape recorder, the interviewer’s notes, a diminishing and then replenished gallon of wine, and Mr.
    [Show full text]
  • PİŞ Çağdaş İngiliz Şiiri Antolojisi Cevat Çapan
    JÎJ - i* - PİŞ Çağdaş İngiliz Şiiri Antolojisi Cevat Çapan ADAM YAYINLARI © Adam Yayıncılık ve Matbaacılık A.Ş. Birinci Basım Ekim 1985 Çağdaş İngiliz Şiiri A ntolojisi Cevat Çapan ÖNSÖZ Bu antolojide bir araya getirdiğim otuz iki şairin yüz bir şiiri sanırım yirminci yüzyıl İngiliz şiirini bütün özellikleriyle tanıtma­ ya yeterli değildir. Her şeyden önce, şiir çevirisinin güçlüğü böyle bir yetkinliği engelleyen başlıca etken. Buna bir de bu işe girişen kişinin kendi sınırlılığını eklerseniz, böyle bir derlemenin eksik­ likleri ve fazlalıkları daha da kolay anlaşılır. Bütün bu sınırlılıkla­ ra karşın, Çağdaş İngiliz Şiiri Antolojisi’nde yirminci yüzyıl İngiliz şiirinin gelişme çizgisini, her şair kuşağının başlıca temsilcilerini elimden geldiğince okurlara tanıtmaya çalıştım. Amacım İngiliz Edebiyatı öğrencileri için eksiksiz bir ders kitabı hazırlamak de­ ğildi. Daha çok şiir severlerin ilgisini çekebilecek şiirleri çevirinin olanakları içinde sunmayı denedim. Ama bu eksiklikleriyle de edebiyat öğrencilerinin işine yarayacak bir şeyler ortaya koyabil- dimse, bundan büyük bir mutluluk duyacağımı da açıklamalıyım. Konuyla ilgilenen okurların bu antolojinin bu alanda yalnızca bir ilk adım olduğunu anlayacaklarına inanıyorum. C.Ç. 7 İKİNCİ BASKIYA ÖNSÖZ Çağdaş Ingiliz Şiiri Antolojisi'nin 1985’teki ilk baskısına yaz­ dığım önsözde o kitapta bir araya getirilen otuz iki şairden yapı­ lan çevirilerin 20. Yüzyıl İngiliz Şiiri’ni bütün özellikleriyle tanıt­ maya yeterli olmadığını açıklamıştım. Her antoloji gibi bunun da birçok eksikleri vardı. Geçen zaman içinde gerek benim Christop­ her Middleton, Andrew Motion, Michael Hulse ve Lavinia Gre- enlaw’dan, gerekse Nezih Onur, Coşkun Yerli, Gökçen Ezber ve Nazmi Ağıl’ın Basil Bunting, Henry Reed, Charles Tomlinson, Tony Harrison, Hugo Williams ve Simon Armitage’den yaptığı­ mız çevirilerin eklenmesiyle bu antolojinin eksikleri bir ölçüde azalmış oldu.
    [Show full text]
  • After Miłosz: Polish Poetry in the 20Th and the 21Th Century Chicago, Chopin Theatre, 9/30 –10/3 2011
    After Miłosz: Polish Poetry In the 20th and the 21th Century Chicago, Chopin Theatre, 9/30 –10/3 2011 THE FESTIVAL The Chicago's literary festival titled After Milosz: Polish Poetry in the 20th and 21th Century is the largest presentation of Polish poetry in the United States this year. The festival celebrates the year of Czeslaw Milosz and commemorates the centennial anniversary of the birth of the Nobel Prize winner. The event goes beyond a familiar formula of commenting the work of the poet and offers a broader view on the contemporary Polish poetry. Besides the academic conference dedicated to Milosz's work, and a panel with the greatest America poets (Jorie Graham, Charles Simic) remembering the artist and discussing his influence on American poetry, the program includes readings of the most talented modern Polish poets of three generations. From the best known (Zagajewski, Sommer) to the most often awarded young writer nowadays, Justyna Bargielska. An important part of the festival will be two concerts: the opening show will present the best Polish rappers FISZ and EMADE whose songs are inspired by Polish poetry; another concert will present one of the best jazz singers in the world, Patricia Barber, who will perform especially for this occasion. The main organizers of the festival are the Fundation of Tygodnik Powszechny magazine and the Joseph Conrad International Literary Festival in Krakow, for which the Chicago festival is a portion of the larger international project for promoting Polish literature abroad. The co- organizer of the festival is the Head of the Slavic Department at University of Illinois at Chicago, Professor Michal Pawel Markowski, who represents also the Polish Interdisciplinary Program at UIC supported by The Hejna Fund, and also serves as the artistic director to the Conrad Festival.
    [Show full text]