DOCSLIB.ORG

William Carlos Williams in the 1930S

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
William Carlos Williams in the 1930S 1 William Carlos Williams in the 1930s Robert L.G. Tucker University College London English Language and Literature Ph.D. 2 I, Robert L.G. Tucker, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 3 Abstract The subject of this thesis is William Carlos Williams and the circle of writers around him in the 1930s. During this decade Williams was a key figure in the formation of an alternative left-wing American canon, and active in a group that included Nathanael West, Louis Zukofsky and Kenneth Burke. This thesis explores the political and aesthetic grounds on which that canon was constructed. The assumption that Williams was already a successful writer after Spring and All (1923) has often led to a disproportionate emphasis on his poetry and the ‘modernist’ aspects of his aesthetics. This thesis makes the case for the significance of Williams’ 1930s prose writings in the growth of the Proletarian Literature movement, and challenges the assumption that ‘Marxist’ literature of the 1930s was at odds with ‘modernist’ literature of the 1920s. I investigate the key concepts of Williams’ own aesthetic philosophy, ‘Objectivism,’ ‘Pragmatism,’ ‘Contact,’ and ‘Localism,’ and show how these concepts became politicized during the 1930s. By exploring the relationship between art and politics, and the ways in which Williams was radicalized by the Great Depression, this thesis attempts to expand critical notions of ‘radicalism’ to include a broader New Deal alliance between traditional democratic liberalism and Marxist economic determinism. Focusing on concepts of ‘Nativism’ and ‘Americanism,’ this thesis also charts America’s burgeoning cultural nationalism during the 1930s, and demonstrates how America’s founding values were challenged by political, economic and social upheaval in the wake of the Depression. By locating Williams’ desire for radical economic change within the context of the Jeffersonian movement, I demonstrate how a historical assessment of America’s past led Williams and the writers mentioned above to question America’s attitudes towards individualism, the redistribution of wealth, the forces of corruption and plutocracy, and the effectiveness of democracy to bring about social justice. 4 Table of Contents Acknowledgements............................................................................................ p. 6. List of Abbreviations.......................................................................................... p. 7 Introduction....................................................................................................... p. 9 i.i. A Native Literature........................................................................................ p. 18 i.ii. Marxism and Pragmatism............................................................................. p. 45 Chapter 1. Williams and the Little Magazines of the 1930s......................... p. 67 1.1. Blues: Literary Radicalism in 1929............................................................. p. 74 1.2. Pagany: A Change of Form......................................................................... p. 101 1.3. White Mule: An Unconventional Middle-Ground....................................... p. 113 Chapter 2. The Politics of Medicine................................................................ p. 126 2.1. Positivism and Pragmatism in Medicine...................................................... p. 128 2.2. The Institution of Medicine.......................................................................... p. 142 Figure 1............................................................................................................... p. 149 Chapter 3. Contact: Williams and Nathanael West....................................... p. 153 3.1. The American Jungle................................................................................... p. 156 3.2. Miss Lonelyhearts........................................................................................ p. 171 3.3. Native Violence............................................................................................ p. 182 5 Chapter 4. An Ambiguous Past: The Founding Fathers and Social Credit.................................................................................................................. p. 197 4.1. The American Grain..................................................................................... p. 199 4.2. George Washington in the 1930s................................................................. p. 217 4.3. Washington, Whiggery and Isolationism..................................................... p. 233 Chapter 5. Objectivism: Williams, Pound, Zukofsky.................................... p. 245 5.1. Objectivism: History and Myth.................................................................... p. 249 5.2. Objectivism and Anti-Semitism................................................ p. 271 5.3. Objectivism and the Documentary Aesthetic.............................................. p. 284 Conclusion.......................................................................................................... p. 300 Appendices......................................................................................................... p. 307 Bibliography........................................................................................................ p. 317 6 Acknowledgements I would like to thank the British Association of American Studies, for their generous support of my archival research, and for offering me the Malcolm Bradbury Prize which afforded me the opportunity to study in America. Without it, I almost certainly would not have been able to write this thesis. I would also like to thank the University College London English Department and the Arts and Humanities Research Council for their support. I would like to thank Adrienne Sharp and all the staff of the Beineke Library for their assistance during my stay at Yale. I would also like to thank James Maynard, and all the staff at the Poetry Collection, at SUNY, Buffalo, whose valuable insight into the Williams archives at Buffalo was a great help to me in my studies. I would also like to acknowledge Declan Springs of New Directions Press and I would like to thank New Directions and the Estates of Paul H. and William Eric Williams for granting permission to print Williams’ Democratic Party Poem. I’m very thankful to Leith Johnson, archivist at the Wesleyan Library, for assisting me with my research into Gorham Munson, as well as, David Pavelich and the staff at the Regenstein Library, Chicago. I would like to thank Alan Marshall of Kings College London for his decisive contribution in reshaping this thesis. I would like to thank Ian Copestake, Christopher MacGowan, and all the kind and generous members of the William Carlos Williams Society for their inspiration and encouragement. Most of all I would like to thank my wonderful supervisors, Kasia Boddy, whose constant guidance and support was the foundation of this thesis, and Mark Ford, for giving me the direction and focus that I needed. 7 List of Abbreviations People EP Ezra Pound GA George Antheil KB Kenneth Burke LZ Louis Zukofsky NW Nathanael West RJ Richard Johns WCW William Carlos Williams Works A Autobiography of William Carlos Williams ARI A Recognizable Image CPI William Carlos Williams: Collected Poems, Volume I EK The Embodiment of Knowledge FD The Farmer’s Daughters ITAG In the American Grain IWWP I Wanted to Write a Poem HP The Humane Particulars: The Collected Letters of William Carlos Williams and Kenneth Burke ML Many Loves SE Selected Essays of William Carlos Williams 8 SL Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams STS Something to Say: William Carlos Williams on Younger Poets WCW/LZ The Correspondence of William Carlos Williams and Louis Zukofsky EP/LZ Selected Letters of Ezra Pound and Louis Zukofsky WM White Mule Introduction The subject of this thesis is the politics and poetics of William Carlos Williams and the literary circles that he engaged with from 1929 to 1939. These circles can be divided into a number of separate categories. First, there are specific writers who influenced and were influenced by Williams, in particular Louis Zukofsky, Ezra Pound, Nathanael West and Kenneth Burke. Secondly, there are the publishing ventures that Williams supported and often helped to fund, such as the Objectivist Press, the Alcestis Press, and towards the end of the 1930s, New Directions. Thirdly, there are the little magazines that Williams edited and whose editorial policies he often shaped, such as Blues, Pagany, Contact, Blast, not to mention the many little magazines that Williams contributed to, such as New Masses, Anvil and Partisan Review to name but a few. Finally, there are the literary movements that Williams was involved in: in this study I shall focus on two in particular – ‘Objectivism’ and the ‘Proletarian Literature’ movement. The purpose of this study is twofold. First and foremost this thesis is a work about Williams himself. I wish to show, through a study of the writers, magazines and movements that he engaged with during the 1930s, that we must revise our conception of Williams as the modernist poet typified by Spring and All, an apolitical poet of formal experimentation, to something quite different, a writer of great influence in America, in prose as much as poetry, in ‘proletarian literature’ as much
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Culture Wars' Reloaded: Trump, Anti-Political Correctness and the Right's 'Free Speech' Hypocrisy
    The 'Culture Wars' Reloaded: Trump, Anti-Political Correctness and the Right's 'Free Speech' Hypocrisy Dr. Valerie Scatamburlo-D'Annibale University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada Abstract This article explores how Donald Trump capitalized on the right's decades-long, carefully choreographed and well-financed campaign against political correctness in relation to the broader strategy of 'cultural conservatism.' It provides an historical overview of various iterations of this campaign, discusses the mainstream media's complicity in promulgating conservative talking points about higher education at the height of the 1990s 'culture wars,' examines the reconfigured anti- PC/pro-free speech crusade of recent years, its contemporary currency in the Trump era and the implications for academia and educational policy. Keywords: political correctness, culture wars, free speech, cultural conservatism, critical pedagogy Introduction More than two years after Donald Trump's ascendancy to the White House, post-mortems of the 2016 American election continue to explore the factors that propelled him to office. Some have pointed to the spread of right-wing populism in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis that culminated in Brexit in Europe and Trump's victory (Kagarlitsky, 2017; Tufts & Thomas, 2017) while Fuchs (2018) lays bare the deleterious role of social media in facilitating the rise of authoritarianism in the U.S. and elsewhere. Other 69 | P a g e The 'Culture Wars' Reloaded: Trump, Anti-Political Correctness and the Right's 'Free Speech' Hypocrisy explanations refer to deep-rooted misogyny that worked against Hillary Clinton (Wilz, 2016), a backlash against Barack Obama, sedimented racism and the demonization of diversity as a public good (Major, Blodorn and Blascovich, 2016; Shafer, 2017).
    [Show full text]
  • Writers' Correspondence Not Yet Entered Into the Repository June 2016 Maine State Library
    Maine State Library Maine State Documents Maine Writers Correspondence Maine State Library Special Collections June 2016 Writers' Correspondence Not Yet Entered Into the Repository June 2016 Maine State Library Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalmaine.com/maine_writers_correspondence Recommended Citation Maine State Library, "Writers' Correspondence Not Yet Entered Into the Repository June 2016" (2016). Maine Writers Correspondence. 847. http://digitalmaine.com/maine_writers_correspondence/847 This Text is brought to you for free and open access by the Maine State Library Special Collections at Maine State Documents. It has been accepted for inclusion in Maine Writers Correspondence by an authorized administrator of Maine State Documents. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Maine Writer’s Correspondence Project Files not yet Digitized For more information or to obtain the contents of any of these folders please contact the Maine State Library referencedesk @ Maine.gov Entries include a typed letter of correspondence from the Maine State Adelaide V. Finch Library Entries include a brief biography, typed letters on personal and literary stationery, a card with the image of a covered bridge a short distance from potato houses, newspaper clippings, and a leaflet from the 1956 State of Adelbert M. Jakeman Maine Writers' Conference. Entries include a publisher advertisement clipping, a typed biography, a newspaper clipping of Bushnell's obituary with her photographic image, and Adelyn Bushnell a typed biographical letter Entries include brief biographical information and a typed biographical Agnes Cope Foote letter on Tory Row Bookshop, Cambridge, Massachusetts, stationery Entries include typed letters of correspondence from the Maine State Albert E.
    [Show full text]
  • Reading Stephen King: Issues of Censorship, Student Choice, and Popular Literature
    DOCUMENT RESUME ED 414 606 CS 216 137 AUTHOR Power, Brenda Miller, Ed.; Wilhelm, Jeffrey D., Ed.; Chandler, Kelly, Ed. TITLE Reading Stephen King: Issues of Censorship, Student Choice, and Popular Literature. INSTITUTION National Council of Teachers of English, Urbana, IL. ISBN ISBN-0-8141-3905-1 PUB DATE 1997-00-00 NOTE 246p. AVAILABLE FROM National Council of Teachers of English, 1111 W. Kenyon Road, Urbana, IL 61801-1096 (Stock No. 39051-0015: $14.95 members, $19.95 nonmembers). PUB TYPE Collected Works - General (020) Opinion Papers (120) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC10 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Censorship; Critical Thinking; *Fiction; Literature Appreciation; *Popular Culture; Public Schools; Reader Response; *Reading Material Selection; Reading Programs; Recreational Reading; Secondary Education; *Student Participation IDENTIFIERS *Contemporary Literature; Horror Fiction; *King (Stephen); Literary Canon; Response to Literature; Trade Books ABSTRACT This collection of essays grew out of the "Reading Stephen King Conference" held at the University of Mainin 1996. Stephen King's books have become a lightning rod for the tensions around issues of including "mass market" popular literature in middle and 1.i.gh school English classes and of who chooses what students read. King's fi'tion is among the most popular of "pop" literature, and among the most controversial. These essays spotlight the ways in which King's work intersects with the themes of the literary canon and its construction and maintenance, censorship in public schools, and the need for adolescent readers to be able to choose books in school reading programs. The essays and their authors are: (1) "Reading Stephen King: An Ethnography of an Event" (Brenda Miller Power); (2) "I Want to Be Typhoid Stevie" (Stephen King); (3) "King and Controversy in Classrooms: A Conversation between Teachers and Students" (Kelly Chandler and others); (4) "Of Cornflakes, Hot Dogs, Cabbages, and King" (Jeffrey D.
    [Show full text]
  • 'A True Magic Chamber': the Public Face of the Modernist Bookshop
    ‘A True Magic Chamber’: The Public Face of the Modernist Bookshop Andrew Thacker Modernist Cultures 11.3 (2016): 429–451 DOI: 10.3366/mod.2016.0149 © Edinburgh University Press www.euppublishing.com/loi/mod Abstract This article explores the role of bookshops in the construction of a public for modernism and analyses a number of bookshops committed to promoting modernist culture, such as those run by Sylvia Beach (Shakespeare and Company), Adrienne Monnier (La Maison des Amis des Livres), and Frances Steloff (Gotham Book Mart). It also considers how the bookshop is a fulcrum between commerce and culture, a key issue for contemporary modernist studies, and discusses aspects of bookshop culture that seem to operate ‘beyond’ the market. One example is that of We Moderns, a catalogue issued by the Gotham Book Mart in 1940 and which represents a fascinating example of the print culture of the modernist bookshop. Drawing upon the work of Mark Morrisson and Lawrence Rainey, the article also evaluates the position of the bookshop within debates around modernism and the public sphere. The Business of the Magic Chamber A member of the public strolling through Paris in the early 1920s who drifts onto the Left Bank in search of culture, might find themselves in the triangle of small streets between the grander avenues of Boulevard St. Michel and the Boulevard St. Germain in the 6th Arrondissement. These are the streets around the Sorbonne and, as such, there are many bookshops servicing the university. Thinking it might be fun to buy a book, a modern or contemporary book, they stroll up Rue de l'Odéon, across from the National Theatre, spying a likely looking bookshop and decide to enter.
    [Show full text]
  • Post-Soviet Political Party Development in Russia: Obstacles to Democratic Consolidation
    POST-SOVIET POLITICAL PARTY DEVELOPMENT IN RUSSIA: OBSTACLES TO DEMOCRATIC CONSOLIDATION Evguenia Lenkevitch Bachelor of Arts (Honours), SFU 2005 THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS In the Department of Political Science O Evguenia Lenkevitch 2007 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY 2007 All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of the author. APPROVAL Name: Evguenia Lenkevitch Degree: Master of Arts, Department of Political Science Title of Thesis: Post-Soviet Political Party Development in Russia: Obstacles to Democratic Consolidation Examining Committee: Chair: Dr. Lynda Erickson, Professor Department of Political Science Dr. Lenard Cohen, Professor Senior Supervisor Department of Political Science Dr. Alexander Moens, Professor Supervisor Department of Political Science Dr. llya Vinkovetsky, Assistant Professor External Examiner Department of History Date DefendedlApproved: August loth,2007 The author, whose copyright is declared on the title page of this work, has granted to Simon Fraser University the right to lend this thesis, project or extended essay to users of the Simon Fraser University Library, and to make partial or single copies only for such users or in response to a request from the library of any other university, or other educational institution, on its own behalf or for one of its users. The author has further granted permission to Simon Fraser University to keep or make a digital copy for use in its circulating collection (currently available to the public at the 'Institutional Repository" link of the SFU Library website <www.lib.sfu.ca> at: <http://ir.lib.sfu.ca/handle/1892/112>) and, without changing the content, to translate the thesis/project or extended essays, if technically possible, to any medium or format for the purpose of preservation of the digital work.
    [Show full text]
  • Post-War English Literature 1945-1990
    Post-War English Literature 1945-1990 Sara Martín Alegre P08/04540/02135 © FUOC • P08/04540/02135 Post-War English Literature 1945-1990 Index Introduction............................................................................................... 5 Objectives..................................................................................................... 7 1. Literature 1945-1990: cultural context........................................ 9 1.1. The book market in Britain ........................................................ 9 1.2. The relationship between Literature and the universities .......... 10 1.3. Adaptations of literary works for television and the cinema ...... 11 1.4. The minorities in English Literature: women and post-colonial writers .................................................................... 12 2. The English Novel 1945-1990.......................................................... 14 2.1. Traditionalism: between the past and the present ..................... 15 2.2. Fantasy, realism and experimentalism ........................................ 16 2.3. The post-modern novel .............................................................. 18 3. Drama in England 1945-1990......................................................... 21 3.1. West End theatre and the new English drama ........................... 21 3.2. Absurdist drama and social and political drama ........................ 22 3.3. New theatre companies and the Arts Council ............................ 23 3.4. Theatre from the mid-1960s onwards .......................................
    [Show full text]
  • Why Iot Is a Marvelous Work of Art
    Journal of Literature and Art Studies, January 2021, Vol. 11, No. 1, 62-70 doi: 10.17265/2159-5836/2021.01.010 D DAVID PUBLISHING Covers and Contents: Why iot is a Marvelous Work of Art Peter L. Hays University of California, Davis, USA iot (1924) was a remarkable artistic achievement. Following collages in the works of Picasso, Braque, and Gris, publisher Bill Bird created a collage of newspaper headlines on the cover of that slim volume that linked to the collage of vignettes within that Hemingway wrote. Both depicted a world losing traditional values, torn by war and despair and increasing commercialism. Subsequent Hemingway book covers by Scribners, at least until The Old Man and the Sea, emphasized sales over art and had little to do with content. Keywords: Hemingway, iot, collage, modernist art Introduction The cover of Ernest Hemingway’s 1924 in our time—behind the lower-case title, lower-case author’s name, publisher’s colophon, and lower-case press name—is a collage of newspaper snippets.1 Only 170 copies of the book survived pristine printing on handmade Rives paper, of the 300 planned, with 120 having the watermark of the paper appear under the frontispiece. 1924 was an advanced year for Cubist collages by Picasso and Braque, both of whom incorporated bits of printed material, often newspapers, into their works of art (“collage” from the French for “to glue”). Picasso’s Still Life with Chair Caning (1911-12) features imitation chaircaning on oilcloth surrounded by a frame of actual rope, and on the chair caning one can read the letters J.O.U., which can be a pun on jouer, to play, which both artists were doing with their collages.
    [Show full text]
  • Concretismo and the Mimesis of Chinese Graphemes
    Signmaking, Chino-Latino Style: Concretismo and the Mimesis of Chinese Graphemes _______________________________________________ DAVID A. COLÓN TEXAS CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY Concrete poetry—the aesthetic instigated by the vanguard Noigandres group of São Paulo, in the 1950s—is a hybrid form, as its elements derive from opposite ends of visual comprehension’s spectrum of complexity: literature and design. Using Dick Higgins’s terminology, Claus Clüver concludes that “concrete poetry has taken the same path toward ‘intermedia’ as all the other arts, responding to and simultaneously shaping a contemporary sensibility that has come to thrive on the interplay of various sign systems” (Clüver 42). Clüver is considering concrete poetry in an expanded field, in which the “intertext” poems of the 1970s and 80s include photos, found images, and other non-verbal ephemera in the Concretist gestalt, but even in limiting Clüver’s statement to early concrete poetry of the 1950s and 60s, the idea of “the interplay of various sign systems” is still completely appropriate. In the Concretist aesthetic, the predominant interplay of systems is between literature and design, or, put another way, between words and images. Richard Kostelanetz, in the introduction to his anthology Imaged Words & Worded Images (1970), argues that concrete poetry is a term that intends “to identify artifacts that are neither word nor image alone but somewhere or something in between” (n/p). Kostelanetz’s point is that the hybridity of concrete poetry is deep, if not unmitigated. Wendy Steiner has put it a different way, claiming that concrete poetry “is the purest manifestation of the ut pictura poesis program that I know” (Steiner 531).
    [Show full text]
  • The Thought of What America": Ezra Pound’S Strange Optimism
    University of New Orleans ScholarWorks@UNO English Faculty Publications Department of English and Foreign Languages 2010 "The Thought of What America": Ezra Pound’s Strange Optimism John Gery University of New Orleans, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uno.edu/engl_facpubs Part of the Literature in English, North America Commons Recommended Citation Gery, John “‘The Thought of What America’: Ezra Pound’s Strange Optimism,” Belgrade English Language and Literature Studies, Vol. II (2010): 187-206. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English and Foreign Languages at ScholarWorks@UNO. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UNO. For more information, please contact [email protected]. UDC 821.111(73).09-1 Pand E. John R O Gery University of New Orleans, USA “THE THOUGHT OF What AMerica”: EZRA POUND’S STRANGE OPTIMISM Abstract Through a reconsideration of Ezra Pound’s early poem “Cantico del Sole” (1918), an apparently satiric look at American culture in the early twentieth century, this essay argues how the poem, in fact, expresses some of the tenets of Pound’s more radical hopes for American culture, both in his unorthodox critiques of the 1930s in ABC of Reading, Jefferson and/or Mussolini, and Guide to Kulchur and, more significantly, in his epic poem, The Cantos. The essay contends that, despite Pound’s controversial economic and political views in his prose (positions which contributed to his arrest for treason in 1945), he is characteristically optimistic about the potential for American culture.
    [Show full text]
  • The Mayhem Poets Resource Guide
    teacher resource guide schooltime performance series the mayhem poets about the who are in the performance the mayhem poets spotlight Poetry may seem like a rarefied art form to those who Scott Raven An Interview with Mayhem Poets How does your professional training and experience associate it with old books and long dead poets, but this is inform your performances? Raven is a poet, writer, performer, teacher and co-founder Tell us more about your company’s history. far from the truth. Today, there are many artists who are Experience has definitely been our most valuable training. of Mayhem Poets. He has a dual degree in acting and What prompted you to bring Mayhem Poets to the stage? creating poems that are propulsive, energetic, and reflective Having toured and performed as The Mayhem Poets since journalism from Rutgers University and is a member of the Mayhem Poets the touring group spun out of a poetry of current events and issues that are driving discourse. The Screen Actors Guild. He has acted in commercials, plays 2004, we’ve pretty much seen it all at this point. Just as with open mic at Rutgers University in the early-2000s called Mayhem Poets are injecting juice, vibe and jaw-dropping and films, and performed for Fiat, Purina, CNN and anything, with experience and success comes confidence, Verbal Mayhem, started by Scott Raven and Kyle Rapps. rhymes into poetry through their creatively staged The Today Show. He has been published in The New York and with confidence comes comfort and the ability to be They teamed up with two other Verbal Mayhem regulars performances.
    [Show full text]
  • The Yale University Jean Toomer Papers
    The Yale University Jean Toomer papers http://webtext.library.yale.edu/xml2html/beinecke.TOOMER.con.html The Jean Toomer Papers contain correspondence; multiple drafts of unpublished books, essays, and other writings; and personal papers documenting the life of Jean Toomer. The papers span the years 1898-1963, but the bulk of the material dates from 1920-1954. Unfortunately, few manuscripts from Toomer's Harlem Renaissance period are preserved. Instead the papers are primarily drafts of his later, philosophical writings. Related papers written by his first wife, Margery Latimer, and transcripts of lectures given by his spiritual mentor, Georges Gurdjieff, as well as typescript drafts of Gurdjieff's Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson can also be found in the collection. The Jean Toomer Papers were donated to The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library by Marjorie Content Toomer in 1980 and transferred to Yale in 1985-88 from Fisk University, where they had been on deposit since 1962. Most of the papers were stamped, numbered, labelled, and annotated with dates and names at Fisk University. Most drafts in the collection were written on highly acidic paper and are in poor condition. Preservation photocopies have been made of all fragile correspondence, notes, and final drafts. Newspaper clippings have also been copied. Series I,Correspondence (Boxes 1-10) is divided into two sections: Jean Toomer and Margery Latimer Toomer. The correspondence of Jean Toomer includes letters from Margery Latimer Toomer, as well as letters to and from Marjorie Content Toomer. Correspondence from his mother, Nina Pinchback Toomer, contains a transcript of her letter to Nathan Toomer in 1897 asking for a divorce (Box 8, folder 262).
    [Show full text]
  • The Mid-Twentieth-Century American Poetic Speaker in the Works of Robert Lowell, Frank O’Hara, and George Oppen
    “THE OCCASION OF THESE RUSES”: THE MID-TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN POETIC SPEAKER IN THE WORKS OF ROBERT LOWELL, FRANK O’HARA, AND GEORGE OPPEN A dissertation submitted by Matthew C. Nelson In partial fulfillment for the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In English TUFTS UNIVERSITY May 2016 ADVISER: VIRGINIA JACKSON Abstract This dissertation argues for a new history of mid-twentieth-century American poetry shaped by the emergence of the figure of the poetic speaker as a default mode of reading. Now a central fiction of lyric reading, the figure of the poetic speaker developed gradually and unevenly over the course of the twentieth century. While the field of historical poetics draws attention to alternative, non-lyric modes of address, this dissertation examines how three poets writing in this period adapted the normative fiction of the poetic speaker in order to explore new modes of address. By choosing three mid-century poets who are rarely studied beside one another, this dissertation resists the aesthetic factionalism that structures most historical models of this period. My first chapter, “Robert Lowell’s Crisis of Reading: The Confessional Subject as the Culmination of the Romantic Tradition of Poetry,” examines the origins of M.L. Rosenthal’s phrase “confessional poetry” and analyzes how that the autobiographical effect of Robert Lowell’s poetry emerges from a strange, collage-like construction of multiple texts and non- autobiographical subjects. My second chapter reads Frank O’Hara’s poetry as a form of intentionally averted communication that treats the act of writing as a surrogate for the poet’s true object of desire.
    [Show full text]