Cinematic Projections in the Poetry of H.D., Marianne Moore, and Adrienne Rich by Adèle Véronique Barclay B.A., Queen’s University, 2009 M.A., McGill University, 2011 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the Department of English © Adèle Véronique Barclay, 2016 University of Victoria All rights reserved. This dissertation may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author. ii Supervisory Committee Cinematic Projections in the Poetry of H.D., Marianne Moore, and Adrienne Rich by Adèle V. Barclay B.A., Queen’s University, 2009 M.A., McGill University, 2011 Supervisory Committee Dr. Luke Carson, Department of English Supervisor Dr. Iain Higgins, Department of English Departmental Member Dr. Émile Fromet de Rosnay, Department of French Outside Member iii Abstract This dissertation examines the influence of film on the poetry of H.D., Marianne Moore, and Adrienne Rich. It builds on scholarship by Susan McCabe (2005), Lawrence Goldstein (1994) and others, who have traced the way twentieth-century American poets reacted formally to film culture in their writing. My project responds to the call of the editors of the volume of Close Up 1927-1933: Cinema and Modernism for critics to interrogate how authors harnessed the aesthetic and political possibilities opened up by cinema. This study draws from theories of feminist film phenomenology by Vivian Sobchack and Laura U. Marks to analyze the aims and arguments of the texts. The literary works studied include: H.D.’s Sea Garden, “Projector” series, Trilogy, Helen in Egypt, and film essays; Marianne Moore’s animal poems from the 1930s and early 1940s and film essays; and Adrienne Rich’s The Will to Change. This dissertation argues that the poets drew from film to renovate their poetic vision and forms and ply at questions of power, visuality, and bodies. The poems articulate an awareness of the filmic gaze and how it constructs feminine or animal others. Through careful analysis of the poems, this dissertation locates each poet’s particular rapport with film and how it influenced her literary style and prompted her to challenge dominant patriarchal scripts. This dissertation makes several original contributions to twentieth-century Anglo- American poetry scholarship. It sets these three authors alongside one another to reveal how their engagements with film inspired their poetics and politics at various points throughout the twentieth century. The conclusions herein determine how the poets turned to film to construct their poetic projects. The dissertation offers new readings of the work of H.D., Moore and Rich as queer women poets invested in film culture. Keywords: H.D., Marianne Moore, Adrienne Rich, poetry, film, cinematic poetry, twentieth- century American poetry, modernism. iv Table of Contents Supervisory Committee ............................................................................................................ ii Abstract ................................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents .................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. v Dedication ………................................................................................................................... vi Introduction: Cinematic Projections in Poetry ............................... ......................................... 1 Overview ...................................................................................................................... 1 The Moving Picture in Poetry....................................................................................... 3 The State of the Field ................................................................................................. 11 The Cinematic Projections of H.D., Moore and Rich ................................................ 17 Chapter One: Cinematic Visionary: H.D.’s Filmic Consciousness ....................................... 24 1.1 Overview .............................................................................................................. 24 1.2 Sea Garden’s Hard Femmes ................................................................................ 28 1.3 Close Up & Borderline: H.D.’s Filmic Passage................................................... 44 1.4 The Filmic Epic: Trilogy and Helen in Egypt ...................................................... 53 Chapter Two: “A [re]visionary of natural creatures”: Marianne Moore’s Haptic Poetics...... 84 2.1 Overview ............................................................................................................. 84 2.2 The Animal Spectacle in Documentary Film ....................................................... 89 2.3 Moore, Film, and the ars poetica ......................................................................... 98 2.4 The Ethical Gaze and Spectacle of the Animal Other ........................................ 107 Chapter Three: “To know the extremes of light / I sit in this darkness:” Adrienne Rich and the Filmic Mood ......................................................................................................................... 142 3.1 Overview ............................................................................................................ 142 3.2 Rich and the Film (Re)generation ...................................................................... 146 3.3 The Will to Change’s Filmic Threads ................................................................ 153 3.4 Rich’s Feature-Length Poetics in Shooting Script ............................................. 176 Coda: Cinematic Projects in Poetry ..................................................................................... 201 Works Cited ......................................................................................................................... 207 v Acknowledgements First and foremost, this research was made possible in part by the generous Canadian Graduate Doctoral Scholarship awarded to me by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and additional awards from the University of Victoria’s Faculty of Humanities and Department of English. I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Luke Carson, who has been a great support throughout the research and writing of this dissertation. I would also like to thank the other members of the examining committee, Dr. Iain Higgins and Dr. Émile Fromet de Rosnay, for their helpful feedback at various stages and for reading the final work. Dr. Angus Cleghorn also warrants a warm thanks for volunteering to act as an eternal examiner and for thoughtfully reading the dissertation. My research benefited from the Michael Smith Foreign Travel Study Supplement from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. This award allowed me to conduct crucial archival research in the US in fall of 2014. I would like to thank Dr. Ellen Levy of The Pratt Institute for kindly offering me guidance during that time. A number of my colleagues and friends have supported this dissertation research in various ways, and there are too many to thank all individually. But I would like to thank Alex Christie and Katie Tanigawa for contributing to my work by way of vital conversation and enthusiasm. Dr. Miranda Hickman also warrants a special thanks for her mentorship and for inducting me into the field of twentieth-century Anglo-American poetry during my M.A. at McGill. Finally, the support of my family has been absolutely invaluable and I cannot thank them enough. Dominique and Scott Barclay have backed my scholarly pursuits for my entire life. I thank them for their unwavering encouragement and for instilling in me a profound respect for lifelong learning. My sister, Elissa, is a constant source of inspiration. I thank her for being a radical voice and advocate for social justice in practice. I would also like to thank Irene Rieley for welcoming me into her family and for proffering wisdom and shelter. My network of friends and chosen family, though scattered around the world, have provided me with empathy and sustenance—I thank them for coming through. vi Dedication “When I was alive, I aimed to be a student not of longing but of light.” —Maggie Nelson For Dominique Barclay, Lorraine Barclay, and Huguette Marti, who bequeathed to me pragmatism and empathy. 1 Introduction: Cinematic Projections in Poetry The screen becomes a page. —Cinepoetry, Christophe Wall-Romana 54. Long before either wave or particle, some (Pythagoras, Euclid, Hipparchus) thought that our eyes emitted some kind of substance that illuminated, or “felt,” what we saw. (Aristotle pointed out that this hypothesis runs into trouble at night, as objects become invisible despite the eyes’ purported power.) Others, like Epicurus, proposed the inverse—that objects themselves project a kind of ray that reaches out toward the eye, as if they were looking at us (and surely some of them are). Plato split the difference, and postulated that a “visual fire” burns between our eyes and that which they behold. This still seems fair enough. —Bluets, Maggie Nelson Overview This project investigates the writing of the modernist poets Marianne Moore and H.D. and the modernist-influenced