DOCSLIB.ORG

Genial Thinking: Frost, Stevens, Ashbery

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Genial Thinking: Frost, Stevens, Ashbery RICE UNIVERSITY Genial Thinking: Frost, Stevens, Ashbery by Andrew A. Klein A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY APPROVED, THESIS COMMITTEE: Cary Wolfe, Bruce and Elizabeth Dunlevie Professor, Director, English HOUSTON, TEXAS APRIL 2013 ABSTRACT Genial Thinking: Frost, Stevens, Ashbery by Andrew A. Klein This dissertation explores how Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, and John Ashbery have responded to the problem of philosophical skepticism that they inherit from Emerson: that while things do in fact exist, direct knowledge of them is beyond our ken. Traditionally read within the framework of an evolving Romanticism that finds them attempting to resolve this problem through some form of synthesis or transcendence, I argue instead that these poets accept the intractability of the problem so as to develop forms of thinking from within its conditions. Chapter One explains why poetry is particularly suited to this sort of thinking and what it can achieve that philosophy (or at least a certain understanding of it) cannot. Chapter Two focuses on the act of listening in Stevens’s poetry as a way to show how Stevens is not, as is typically thought, interested in “the thing itself,” but in "the less legible meaning of sounds," the slight, keen indecision that resonates in between sense and understanding. Chapter Three focuses on those moments in Frost’s poetry when, instead of attempting to comprehend, seize, grasp, and represent reality through the use of metaphor, he chooses to regard its inappropriability or otherness. And Chapter Four focuses on how Ashbery’s constant shifts of focus are not just the wanderings of his mind, but a technique for disrupting our absorption in a single plane of attention so as to achieve new economies of engagement. Overall, though, the goal of this project is to move the discussion about this line of poets out of the epistemological register within which they are usually read and into an ethical one. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS _____________________________________________________________ This dissertation would not have been possible without the help of many people, but I would especially like to thank: Cary Wolfe—for blowing my mind during my first two semesters of graduate school and sending me on an intellectual journey that, even after writing this dissertation, I have barely begun; his advice in person and in writing has been invaluable and has forever changed the way I see the world and “our” place in it. Terry Doody—for opening me to the joys and wonders of poetry during a directed reading in my second year of graduate school; for taking me under his wing as a teaching assistant; and, most of all, for his unfailing intellectual and emotional support and encouragement. Philip Wood—for guiding me through the difficult terrain of 20th-century French philosophy in a way that not only provided me with competence in this extra-disciplinary field, but also set me on a strange path of “self”-exploration; I will always remember an impromptu lecture that he gave our seminar about the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain: for that hour the entire human drama made sense to me. Susan Lurie—for meeting with me during the Spring of 2006, when I was still wait-listed at Rice; for her seminar on race and ethnicity in American culture where I learned a critical vocabulary that I still make use of today; for teaching me how to write a seminar paper; and for the kind words she offers each time I see her. Santiago Colas—for two classes during my senior year at the University of Michigan that changed the way I read and write. Señor Mason—for teaching me how to study. v Ben Saxton and Amelia Scholtz—for their encouragement, support, and friendship throughout the last eight years. Lina Dib—for turning me on to new avenues of research on a daily basis, reading everything I write, and, most of all, for believing in me. Damian Manire—for the countless hours he has spent on Skype talking with me about the pleasures and pains of writing and the role of literature in society (and for doing it all with a great sense of humor). Lu Berry—for her practical guidance and emotional support. Dave Nasser—for being there. My friends—without whom my life would be so much less. Above all, though, I would like to thank my family; they are behind every word that I write, and this dissertation is dedicated to them. CONTENTS ________________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION…1 1. THE POETICS OF SINGULARITY…25 2. THE TIMBRE OF THOUGHT: WALLACE STEVENS AND THE LESS LEGIBLE MEANINGS OF SOUNDS…71 3. THE REST OF IT: ROBERT FROST AND THE LIMITS OF METAPHOR…113 4. FLOW CHART: JOHN ASHBERY’S ECONOMIES OF ATTENTION…161 CONCLUSION…189 BIBLIOGRAPHY…193 1 INTRODUCTION… GENIAL THINKING ________________________________________________________________________ The world is enigmatical, every thing said & every thing known & done, & must not be taken literally, but genially.1 —Ralph Waldo Emerson According to Simon Critchley, modern philosophy begins in disappointment; that is, it begins “not, as ancient tradition relates, in an experience of wonder at the fact that things (nature, the world, the universe) are, but rather with an indeterminate but palpable sense that something desired has not been fulfilled, that a fantastic effort has failed.”2 Now, I’m not so sure that this dissertation qualifies as a work of philosophy, but it, too, begins in disappointment—and philosophical disappointment at that. Namely, it begins in disappointment with Kant’s settlement with skepticism, which—to spare you (and, frankly, me) from having to suffer through a full explanation of the Critique of Pure Reason3—I’ll simply summarize by citing the following two paragraphs from the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics: Since the oldest days of philosophy inquirers into pure reason have conceived, besides the things of sense, or appearances (phenomena), which make up the sensible world, certain creations of the understanding, called noumena, which should constitute an intelligible world. And as appearances and illusion were by those men identified (a thing which we may well excuse in an undeveloped epoch), actuality was only conceded to the creations of thought. And we indeed, rightly considering objects of sense as mere appearances, confess thereby that they are based upon a thing in itself, though we know not this 1 Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson in His Journals, ed. Joel Porte (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), 351. 2 Simon Critchley, Very Little…Almost Nothing: Death, Philosophy, Literature, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2004), xvii. All further references will be given parenthetically. 3 More seriously, though, I summarize here because I am less interested in what Kant himself actually said than I am in the way in which he has been inherited and interpreted by a certain critical tradition. 2 thing in its internal constitution, but only know its appearances, viz., the way in which our senses are affected by this unknown something. The understanding therefore, by assuming appearances, grants the existence of things in themselves also, and so far we may say, that the representation of such things as form the basis of phenomena, consequently of mere creations of the understanding, is not only admissible, but unavoidable.4 Or, to hopefully make it even more accessible, here’s Stanley Cavell’s five-point schematization: (1) Experience is constituted by appearances. (2) Appearances are of something else, which accordingly cannot itself appear. (3) All and only functions of experience can be known; these are our categories of the understanding. (4) It follows that the something else—that of which appearances are appearances, whose existence we must grant—cannot be known. In discovering this limitation of reason, reason proves its power to itself, over itself. (5) Moreover, since it is unavoidable for our reason to be drawn to think about this unknowable ground of appearance, reason reveals itself to itself in this necessity also.5 No matter how you put it, though, the disappointing fact here is that, as Cavell explains, “[t]o settle with skepticism…to assure us that we do know the existence of the world or, rather, that what we understand as knowledge is of the world, the price Kant asks us to pay is to cede any claim to know the thing in itself, to grant that human knowledge is not of things as they are in themselves” (63). Thus, “Thanks for nothing,” Cavell says, because, in effect, Kant has left us in two incommensurable worlds, “in one of them determined, in the other free, one of which is necessary to the satisfaction of human Understanding, the other to the satisfaction of human Reason” (64). Or, rather, to follow this thought out, as Cavell does, because we are not fully at home in either world, we are, ultimately, in neither world, or, “as it is said, between worlds” (64). 4 Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, with Selections from the Critique of Pure Reason, ed. Gary Hatfield (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 61-62. 5 Stanley Cavell, “Emerson, Coleridge, Kant (Terms as Conditions)” in Emerson’s Transcendental Etudes, ed. David Justin Hodge (Stanford University Press, 2003), 62. All further references will be given parenthetically. 3 In short, then, my disappointment stems from the fact that, for all intents and purposes, we are caught between worlds, knowing, on the one hand, that things do in fact exist, but, on the other, that direct knowledge of them is beyond our ken. But, more than this—which, once you get used to it, seems entirely reasonable and not at all worth being disappointed about—my disappointment stems from the fact that there have been so few viable suggestions as to how philosophical thought should proceed in the wake of Kant’s settlement.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Forms of Polyphonic Communication in John Ashbery's Poetry
    “That you too were the I”: Forms of polyphonic communication in John Ashbery’s poetry Elina Siltanen Pro Gradu Thesis English philology Department of English University of Turku April 2008 TURUN YLIOPISTO Englannin kielen laitos / Humanistinen tiedekunta SILTANEN, ELINA: “That you too were the I”: Forms of polyphonic communication in John Ashbery’s poetry Pro gradu -tutkielma, 114 s. Englantilainen filologia Huhtikuu 2008 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tarkastelen tutkimuksessani amerikkalaisen John Ashberyn (1927–) runoudessa ilmenevää moniäänisyyttä. Runoutta pidetään yleensä yksiäänisenä puheena, kun taas romaanin ajatellaan erityisesti Mihail Bahtinin vaikutuksesta olevan luonnostaan moniääninen kirjallisuudenlaji. Ashberyn postmoderni runous haastaa tämän käsityksen. Ashbery tunnetaan vakiintuneita runouskäsityksiä vastaan kirjoittavana avantgarde-runoilijana. Pääasiallisina tutkimuskohteinani ovat Ashberyn pitkä runoelma nimeltä ”Litany” (1979) sekä lyhyiden runojen valikoima Your Name Here (2000). Vertailukohtana tarkastelen Ashberyn yhdessä James Schuylerin kanssa kirjoittamaa romaania A Nest of Ninnies (1969). Teoreettisena pohjana on käytetty Ashberyä käsittelevän muun tutkimuksen lisäksi muun muassa jälkistrukturalistisiin teorioihin liittyviä ajatuksia pronominien vaikutuksesta siihen miten lukija muodostaa käsityksen subjektiivisesta läsnäolosta runossa. Ashbery käyttää persoonapronomineja ilman selkeitä viittaussuhteita. Viittaussuhteiden hämärtymisen
    [Show full text]
  • I. the Metler of NOTHINGNESS 2. Samuel French Morse, Quoted By
    Notes I. THE METlER OF NOTHINGNESS 1. My title alludes to a phrase in 'Seventy Years Later" (CP 525-6), the whole of which late poem is suggestively relevant to this chapler. Sources of quotations from Stevens's published writings will be given in the running lext, using the abbreviations already described. 2. Samuel French Morse, quoted by Peter Brazeau in his Parts of a World: Wallacr Stevens Rt'IIJembi'rrd (New York: J{andom House, 1983), p. 152. Subsequent references to this book wil! be incorporated in Ihe running h.'xl as (Brazeau, p. -), 3. WI' Dream of Honour: John Berryman '5 Letters to his Mother, ed. I{ichard J. Kelly (New York & London: W.W. Norton, 1988), p. 207;'So Long? Stevens' can be found in the collection His Toy, His Dream, His Rest (London: Faber & Faber, 1969), p. 148. 4. Thomas C. Grey, The Wallace Stevws Case: Law alld the Practice af Paetry (Cambridge, Mass. & London: Harvard University I'ress, 1991), p. 12. 5. Pound's remarks about Stevens date from 1933, and are quoted by Alan Filreis in Modernism from RiXI1t to Left: Wal/ace Stevells, the Tllirties & Literary Radicalism (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 147. 6. John Timberman Newcomb, Wallace StePt'lls alld Literary Callons (Jackson & London: University Press of Mi5Sis$ippi, 1992), pp. 3--4. 7. Henry James, HllwtilOrne, ed. Tony Tanner (London: Macmillan, 1967), pp. 55, 56. 8. D.H. Lawrence, Stlldies ill Classic Amrricall Literatllff! (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), p. 70. [n citing Sacvan Bcrcovitch, I am thinki ng principally o f The Rites of Assent: Transformations in the Symbolic COllstruction af America (New York & London: Routledge, 1993).
    [Show full text]
  • “Putting My Queer Shoulder to the Wheel”: America's Homosexual
    1 “Putting my Queer Shoulder to the Wheel”: America’s Homosexual Epics in the Twentieth Century Catherine A. Davies University College London UMI Number: U592005 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U592005 Published by ProQuest LLC 2013. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 2 I, Catherine Davies, 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 Index Pages 4 Abstract 5 Introduction 47 “Stranger in America”: Hart Crane’s Homosexual Epic 105 “It occurs to me that I am America”: Ginsberg’s Epic Poems and the Queer Shoulder 165 “Narcissus bent / Above the gene pool”: Merrill’s Epic of Childlessness 203 John Ashbery’s Flow Chart: “The natural noise of the present” 247 Postscript 254 Bibliography 4 Abstract This thesis examines five poems by four twentieth-century poets who have explored the epic tradition. Some of the poems display an explicit concern with ideas of American nationhood, while others emulate the formal ambitions and encyclopaedic scope of the epic poem.
    [Show full text]
  • Fall 2000 the Wallace Stevens Journal
    The Wallace Stevens Journal Special Issue: Stevens in Late 20th-Century Culture A Publication of The Wallace Stevens Society, Inc. Volume 24 Number 2 Fall 2000 The Wallace Stevens Journal Volume 24 Number 2 Fall 2000 Special Issue: Stevens in Late 20th-Century Culture Edited by Angus Cleghorn Contents Charles Baxter, August Kleinzahler, Adrienne Rich: Contemporary Stevensians and the Problem of “Other Lives” —Stephen Burt 115 Mark Strand’s Inventions of Farewell —Christopher R. Miller 135 Wallace Stevens, Armand Schwerner, and “The The” —Norman Finkelstein 151 Wallace Stevens and A. R. Ammons as Men on the Dump —Gyorgyi Voros 161 Wallace Stevens’ “Second Selves”and the Nostalgia of Discursiveness —Willard Spiegelman 176 Wallace Stevens’ Influence on the Construction of Gay Masculinity by the Cuban Orígenes Group —Eric Keenaghan 187 The Theoretical Afterlife of Wallace Stevens —Anca Rosu 208 Poems 221 Reviews 225 News and Comments 228 Cover Art from “The Man on the Dump” Charcoal drawing by Alexis W. Serio The Wallace Stevens Journal EDITOR John N. Serio POETRY EDITOR ART EDITOR BOOK REVIEW EDITOR H. L. Hix Kathryn Jacobi George S. Lensing EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS EDITORIAL BOARD Thomas O. Hodgson Milton J. Bates A. Walton Litz Maureen Kravec Jacqueline V. Brogan James Longenbach Hope Steele Robert Buttel Glen MacLeod Eleanor Cook Marjorie Perloff TECHNICAL ASSISTANTS Alan Filreis Joan Richardson Richard Austin B. J. Leggett Melita Schaum Claudette J. VanEss George S. Lensing Lisa M. Steinman The Wallace Stevens Society, Inc. PRESIDENT ADVISORY BOARD John N. Serio Milton J. Bates Joseph Duemer Owen E. Brady Kathryn Jacobi Robert Buttel George S.
    [Show full text]
  • The Poetics of John Ashbery
    The Poetics of John Ashbery Gargi Bhattacharya Rabindra Bharati University Abstract John Ashbery (1927- ) takes the postmodernist polysemy of meaning in interpreting a work of art and the polyphony of styles in composing as his forte. He questions the various linguistic codes and makes us aware of the artificiality of the language. All political, ethical and aesthetic imperatives are rhetorical constructs. The writer uses language to persuade the reader to accept the formulated truth and he intervenes in the process of perception by his/her politics of representation. Though his iconoclastic approach towards writing and individuality of style has kept him aloof from mainstream academic syllabi, yet he has now become a prominent figure in Contemporary American Literature. It is interesting to note how Ashbery’s poetry revives the Romantic sensibility while applying the digitalized methods and the postmodern syndromes of immediacy, indeterminacy, disjunctive syntax, open-ended and multiplicity of interpretations. This paper explores the aesthetics of John Ashbery’s poetry. [Keywords: (De)Construction, Aesthetics, Poetics, Response, Contextualism, Digital media.] It is interesting to note how contemporary American poetry is zanus-faced. It is specially noted for innovation and experimentation. Although it gives new interpretation to life, inaugurates new styles of composing, evolves new poetics, yet it looks back at its predecessors for reviving the imagination and reflects the spirit of Emerson, Wallace Stevens or Poe. Several experimental aesthetic movements- Romanticism, Symbolism, Vorticism, Imagism, Surrealism, modernism, post- modernism, and post-structuralism have influenced different genres of poetry. However, the innovative spirit of the contemporary poets is not yet abated. If we distinguish between the aesthetic self, social self and the inner self, then Ashbery’s ruminations are mostly related to this third category or unconsciousness.
    [Show full text]
  • The Creation of Space for Engaged Reading and Creative Interpretation in the Collected Works of Wallace Stevens
    Cleveland State University EngagedScholarship@CSU ETD Archive 2017 The Creation of Space for Engaged Reading and Creative Interpretation in the Collected Works of Wallace Stevens Lauren Cannavino Cleveland State University Follow this and additional works at: https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/etdarchive Part of the Literature in English, North America Commons How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! Recommended Citation Cannavino, Lauren, "The Creation of Space for Engaged Reading and Creative Interpretation in the Collected Works of Wallace Stevens" (2017). ETD Archive. 1010. https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/etdarchive/1010 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by EngagedScholarship@CSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in ETD Archive by an authorized administrator of EngagedScholarship@CSU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE CREATION OF SPACE FOR ENGAGED READING AND CREATIVE INTERPRETATION IN THE COLLECTED WORKS OF WALLACE STEVENS Lauren Cannavino Bachelor of Arts in English Cleveland State University December 2006 Submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH at CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY December 2017 THIS THESIS IS HEREBY APPROVED FOR Lauren Cannavino candidate for the Master of Arts degree in English for the Department of English & CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY’S College of Graduate Studies by ____________________________________________________ Thesis Chairperson, Dr. Frederick J. Karem _______________________________________
    [Show full text]
  • A Magazine of Verse Edited by Harriet Monroe October 1921
    Vol. XIX No. I A Magazine of Verse Edited by Harriet Monroe October 1921 Sur ma Guzzla Gracile by Wallace Stevens Hesperides, by H. D. From City Lanes by Loureine Aber Karle Wilson Baker Maurine Smith 543 Cass Street, Chicago $3.00 per Year Single Numbers 25c Your June number renewed me wonderfully—an absolutely joyous thing! Go to it, hammer and tongs! Infuse a little beauty, joy, spirit, pain into the life of today. Did I say a little?—Oceans of them !—A Canadian subscriber Vol. XIX No. I POETRY for OCTOBER, 1921 PAGE Sur ma Guzzla Gracile Wallace Stevens I Palace of the Babies—Misery of Don Joos,t—Doctor of Geneva—Gubbinal—Snow Man—Tea at the Palaz of Hoon—Cuban Doctor—Another Weeping Woman—Man­ ner of Addressing Clouds—Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb—The Load of Sugar-Cane—Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores From City Lanes Loureine Abcr 10 City Wed—If—Elevator Man—Bereft—Old Man—Girl-- Death Poems Maurine Smith 14 Joy—Ceremony—First Comer—Wind—Swallows Brush a Pool Three Small Poems Karle Wilson Baker 16 To Get Wisdom.—Meekness and Pride—Courage Not in the Whirlwind Karle Wilson Baker 17 Keep My Hand Louise Driscoll 17 Under the Cliff Miriam Allen deFord 18 Shadow Canyon—Themes—Will it be Like This? Sic Passim—Recalled Joseph Andrew Galahad 10 Sea Quatrains I-V Grant H. Code 23 Fragilities Nelson Antrim Crawford 24 Song—Lake—Companionship—Impotence—Branches Hesperides H. D. 26 Fragment XXXVI—Song—At Baia Poetry and the Allied Arts H.
    [Show full text]
  • Modernism from Right to Left: Wallace Stevens, the Thirties, and Radicalism
    Syracuse University SURFACE The Courier Libraries Spring 1992 Modernism from Right to Left: Wallace Stevens, the Thirties, and Radicalism Alan Filres University of Pennsylvania Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/libassoc Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Filres, Alan, "Modernism from Right to Left: Wallace Stevens, the Thirties, and Radicalism" (1992). The Courier. 293. https://surface.syr.edu/libassoc/293 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Libraries at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Courier by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY AS SOC lATE S COURIER VOLUME XXVII, NUMBER 1, SPRING 1992 SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ASSOCIATES COURIER VOLUME XXVII NUMBER ONE SPRING 1992 Modernism from Right to Left: Wallace Stevens, the Thirties, and Radicalism By Alan Filreis, Associate Professor ofEnglish, 3 University ofPennsylvania Adam Badeau's "The Story ofthe Merrimac and the Monitor" By Robert]. Schneller,Jr., Historian, 25 Naval Historical Center A Marcel Breuer House Project of1938-1939 By Isabelle Hyman, Professor ofFine Arts, 55 New York University Traveler to Arcadia: Margaret Bourke-White in Italy, 1943-1944 By Randall I. Bond, Art Librarian, 85 Syracuse University Library The Punctator's World: A Discursion (Part Seven) By Gwen G. Robinson, Editor, Syracuse University 111 Library Associates Courier News ofthe Syracuse University Library and the Library Associates 159 Modernism from Right to Left: Wallace Stevens, the Thirties, and Radicalism BY ALAN FILREIS Author's note: In writing the bookfrom which thefollowing essay is ab­ stracted, I need have gone no further than the George Arents Research Li­ brary.
    [Show full text]
  • An Examination of the Implications of Wallace Stevens* '^Central Poetry"
    i OSCILLATIONS OF THE ABSOLUTE: An Examination of the Implications of Wallace Stevens* '^Central Poetry" by Keith Darrel Eccleston B.A., The University of British Columbia, 1959 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF Master of Arts in the Department of English We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA September, 196k. In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study* I further agree that per• mission, for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his representatives. It is understood that, copying or publi• cation of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission* Department of Ibri^lisL The University of British Columbia, Vancouver 8, Canada Date 11 ABSTRACT The Inadequacy of the image has ever been the besetting problem of idealist esthetics. The discrepancy between the absolute and the contingent, between the thing, the idea of the thing and the experience of the thing provides common cause for the compositions of hermetic art. The basic affir• mation of this thesis is that the theory of Wallace Stevens offers a demonstrable solution to the problem and that his relational use of images in The Collected Poems overcomes the inadequacy of those images. In practice, however, this thesis involves the delinea• tion of that solution less than the dialectics necessary to determine its nature.
    [Show full text]
  • German Romantic Tradition in John Ashbery's Where Shall I Wander
    Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensis No 3920 Anglica Wratislaviensia LVII, Wrocław 2019 DOI: 10.19195/0301-7966.57.6 Paweł Marcinkiewicz ORCID: 0000-0002-7086-1805 University of Opole [email protected] Daniel Pietrek ORCID: 0000-0002-1582-6070 University of Opole [email protected] German Romantic Tradition in John Ashbery’s Where Shall I Wander Abstract: In popular critical and readerly reception, the New York School of poetry was shaped mostly by what Marjorie Perloff calls the tradition of indeterminacy. This was started by Arthur Rimbaud and, a few decades later, developed by Dadaists and Surrealists. Therefore, the tradition of French modernism seems to have been vital for John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, James Schuler, and Barbara Guest, and the poets themselves appeared to confirm this fact. They often visited France privately and as scholars, and lived there for extended periods of time. In the case of John Ashbery, his year-long Fulbright fellowship was prolonged to a decade. Moreover, the New York School poets contributed to the propagation of French literature, being translators, critics and editors of French authors. However, as John Ashbery’s late works prove, literary genealogies are far more complex. German Romantic tradition always exerted an important influence on John Ashbery, and it inspired the New York experimenter to contribute two major poems to the twenty-first century American literature: “Where Shall I Wander” and “Hölderlin Marginalia”. Keywords: New York School poetry, John Ashbery, Where Shall I Wander, Caspar Friedrich, Fried- rich Hölderlin, German Romanticism In terms of its philosophical background and thematic scope, as well as the artistic methods it developed, the New York School of poetry—very much like its visual analogue, Abstract Expressionism—was probably the most genuinely American of all the twentieth-century avant-garde movements.
    [Show full text]
  • Digital Media, Remediation, and North American Poetry in the Twenty-First Century
    1 BORROWED COUNTRY: DIGITAL MEDIA, REMEDIATION, AND NORTH AMERICAN POETRY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY A dissertation presented by Jim McGrath to The Department of EngLish in partiaL fuLfiLLment for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the field of English Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts August 2015 2 BORROWED COUNTRY: DIGITAL MEDIA, REMEDIATION, AND NORTH AMERICAN POETRY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY A dissertation presented by Jim McGrath ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Submitted in partiaL fuLfiLLment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the CoLLege of SociaL Sciences and Humanities of Northeastern University August 2015 3 ABSTRACT How have our ideas about reading and writing poetry been transformed by digitaL media? In “’Borrowed Country: DigitaL Media, Remediation, and North American Poetry in the Twenty-First Century,” I discuss five American poets who have variousLy discussed and made use of particuLar forms of digitaL media in their work: John Ashbery, Anne Carson, Kevin Young, Steve Roggenbuck, and Patricia Lockwood. I am interested in these poets because they circuLate work via traditionaL sites and networks of pubLication – individuaL voLumes and poetry journaLs in print – whiLe maintaining investments in the ways digitaL modes of writing and pubLishing have both changed these conventionaL sites of transmission and created additionaL venues in which to circulate poetry: e-books, web sites, sociaL media networks. The work of Ashbery, Carson, Young, Roggenbuck, and Lockwood reminds us in various ways that constant remediation is a condition of our hypermediated Lives. The poets surveyed here aLL write about culturaL objects as they change over time: they demonstrate how works are overshadowed or otherwise obscured by historicaL imperatives that desire broad strokes and tidy narratives, fragmented or erased by poor care or inattention over the passage of time, reprinted and resituated across various print and digitaL editions.
    [Show full text]
  • ENG 351 Lecture 13 1 Well, I Made an Outrageous Statement When We Got
    ENG 351 Lecture 13 1 Well, I made an outrageous statement when we got to Robert Frost and quoted one of my favorite professors who stated Robert Frost was probably the best American poet of the 20th century so far. Well so far. The 20th century is over. You wouldn’t know it sometimes. But as far as that goes, the next two poets that we’ll be reading, Stevens and William Carlos Williams, who are different writers but who share some similarities. They’re my favorites. I would hate to do without Frost, but I think in the long run I’d hate more to do without Stevens. I’ll try to convince you of some of that. Born in 1879 and died in 1955, 76. Much has been made about Stevens — the fact that Stevens was an insurance man. Well, he wasn’t exactly an insurance man but he was an executive at the Hartford in Connecticut. His father was an attorney. He went to Harvard for three years but he studied modern languages and then later realized that he needed to make money so he went to law school. It was New York University law school. He practiced for a while, the partnership failed, and then he went into the legal department of the Hartford Insurance Company and he was, apparently, a successful insurance executive. He was vice-president of that firm. There’s a legend that the people that Wallace Stevens worked with didn’t even know he was a poet until he won the Pulitzer Prize, that he kept it from them, that it was all top secret.
    [Show full text]