TERRA (IN)COGNITA: THE PRACTICE OF PLACE IN POSTWAR POETICS AND BEYOND KATE SIKLOSI A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ENGLISH YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO MARCH 2017 © KATE SIKLOSI, 2017 ii Abstract In response to the spatial turn in critical and scientific discourses, this dissertation examines the reassertion of space and place in the work of Black Mountain poets Charles Olson and Robert Duncan, Black Mountain affiliate Amiri Baraka, and Tish writers Fred Wah and Daphne Marlatt. The critical reassertion of space in the postwar period produced poetries that rigorously explore the transgressive potential of the spatial subject and the spatial community “in place.” The most significant poetic counterpart to come about in response to the spatial turn in North America is Olson’s and Duncan’s fundamental poetic theory of “composition by field,” wherein the poem is conceived of and created as a kinetic field of interacting elements. The field poetic influenced a New American open verse form that was highly influential in the United States in the 1960s and produced a new generation of projective poets in Canada thereafter. Primarily, this project traces the foundation and development of, and significant challenges to, the projective open field poetic as a means of producing place both on and off the page. As a mode of (re)producing locality, the field poetic gave Olson and Duncan a sense of poetry’s reflection of, and participation in, the dynamic surrounding environment both within the poem and in the world. By means of projective verse, poem and poet became imbricated in a responsive system whereby the processes of the poem and those of the local environment are co- constructive, forming a dynamic hermeneutic of the place from which the poet writes. Composing poetry in this way extends beyond an aesthetic form to become, using Joan Retallack’s term, a poethic—a practice of living and creating in place. The field model as established by Olson and Duncan—and adapted and extended by Baraka, Wah, and Marlatt— thus links experimental poetic process with social awareness through a practice of place, a concept I adopt from Michel de Certeau and develop poetically in the project to mean the act of iii reading, writing, and producing place against structures of spatial control such as the nation, the multicultural agenda of the State, and patriarchy. iv Dedication For my family, both fleshy and furry. And to all the world’s warriors, everywhere, imagining and practicing other worlds, fighting for a place to land. v Acknowledgements To name everyone who has touched this project from near or afar would be impossible. This project came to be, and came to be better, thanks to the careful guidance of my supervisory committee. First and foremost, I owe many thanks to Andy Weaver—without your careful supervision and unconditional support and friendship, this project would have been lost to the abyss and me with it. Thanks to Stephen Cain for always pushing my thoughts further with your wondrous insights and archival mind. And thanks to Leslie Sanders for nurturing me from my days as a baby grad student to today, and for your grand ability to distill meaning from what I say when I can’t seem to. Many thanks to my colleagues in arms that made my PhD journey memorable and full of needed support and encouragement. I am lucky to have weathered the graduate school storm with the greatest of minds and the most loving of friends. Thanks in particular to Thom Bryce- McQuinn, Dani Spinosa, Matt Risling, Myra Bloom, Paul Barrett, Eric Schmaltz, Mel Dalgleish, Angela Facundo, Jonathan Vandor, and Matt Carrington, for sitting with me in the library, and/or over wine, and for creating such a wonderful community of minds to draw from and contribute to. Virtuosos and game-changers, all. Thanks to M. NourbeSe Philip for those nights of reasoning with me over poetry and prosecco—the result of which many of these thoughts flow. Thanks also to Gregory Betts, Lesley Higgins, and Thomas Loebel, for mentoring me early on in my years as a diffident student eager with ideas and a yet undefined interest in experimental poetry. To my parents, my friends, and my family, thanks for your unconditional support, and for always prodding me further into the fire. Thanks for equipping me with the wherewithal to pursue what I love and complete what I started. Without you this all would simply not have been vi possible. I am forever indebted to you and the sacrifices you have made so that I could realize this wondrous adventure, and I’m grateful that you came along for the ride. Last, but certainly not least, for Richard—this project would not have been realized without lending me your daily poethic of love, care, and greater good for all. I cannot thank you enough for carefully pruning down my word jungles, and for your mutual understanding of what this crazy life means, can mean. My PhD was generously supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS). To these and other funding programs from which I have benefited, many thanks. vii Table of Contents Abstract ..........................................................................................................................................ii Dedication......................................................................................................................................iv Acknowledgements........................................................................................................................v List of Figures ............................................................................................................................ viii The Poetry of Place, the Place of Poetry .....................................................................................1 “come into space”: The Spatial Turn and Postwar Place....................................................................12 “A Locality of the Living”: The Practice of Resistant Place ..............................................................28 The Opening of the Field: Articulating a Poethic Practice of Place ...................................................42 The Field of Places: Chapter Breakdown ...........................................................................................49 Through a View, Maximally: Digging into Place in Charles Olson’s The Maximus Poems.61 The “Mu-sick” of Pejorocracy: The Problems With and Within (Postwar) Place..............................66 “I am making a mappemunde”: Siting the Space of the Polis ............................................................86 “I am an archaeologist of morning”: Citing Place in the Field.........................................................116 “THE PURE PLACE is POLIS”: A Conclusion ..............................................................................152 “having bounds out of bound”: The Created and Creative Grounds of Resistance in Robert Duncan’s Anarchic Imaginary.................................................................................................163 Working “It”: Laying Ground Work in the Field .............................................................................170 Space as Practiced Place: The Grand Collage of “It” .......................................................................174 Derivative “Anarchitecture”: Rodia’s Towers..................................................................................190 “the inbinding, the return”: In-forming Individual and Communal Space and Place.......................196 Household of the Whole: Communitas in Ecopoethic Space ...........................................................211 “Created and Creating Forms”: Ground Work as Spatial Work.......................................................239 “Savage Geographies”: Amiri Baraka’s Urban Groundwork..............................................244 Local Anxieties: Greenwich Village and Baraka’s Black Mountain................................................250 The Soundings of Revolution: Cuba Libre and the Harlem Move ...................................................267 “Polis is This”: Baraka’s New Ark ...................................................................................................298 It’s Nation Time: New Ark’s Transformation ..................................................................................318 “Returning & the Journeys”: Translocal Place in the Work of Fred Wah and Daphne Marlatt........................................................................................................................................338 Laying Groundwork, Mobilizing the Field: Wah’s and Marlatt’s Black Mountain .........................339 “The sureness of shifting”: Experimenting with Local Place in Wah’s Early Works ......................349 “never pure, never sure”: Synchronous Foreignicity in the Hyphe-Nation ......................................370 “swing the gate, hyphen the blood”: The Door(way)s of chineseHYPHENcanadian Identity.........383 Signifying Hybrid Trans- Space: Resistance in Experimental Form................................................395 ‘her not here’: Marlatt’s (Re)covery of the Local in Language........................................................405 ‘on the absent ground of her literal’: Place-Making in the Labyrinth ..............................................416 The