ANTAGONISTIC COOPERATION: PROSE IN AMERICAN POETRY by ELIZABETH J. LERUD A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of English and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2017 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Elizabeth J. LeRud Title: Antagonistic Cooperation: Prose in American Poetry This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the English Department by: Karen J. Ford Chair Forest Pyle Core Member William Rossi Core Member Geri Doran Institutional Representative and Scott L. Pratt Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded June 2017. ii © 2017 Elizabeth J. LeRud iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Elizabeth J. LeRud Doctor of Philosophy Department of English June 2017 Title: Antagonistic Cooperation: Prose in American Poetry Poets and critics have long agreed that any perceived differences between poetry and prose are not essential to those modes: both are comprised of words, both may be arranged typographically in various ways—in lines, in paragraphs of sentences, or otherwise—and both draw freely from the complete range of literary styles and tools, like rhythm, sound patterning, focalization, figures, imagery, narration, or address. Yet still, in modern American literature, poetry and prose remain entrenched as a binary, one just as likely to be invoked as fact by writers and scholars as by casual readers. I argue that this binary is not only prevalent but also productive for modern notions of poetry, the root of many formal innovations of the past two centuries, like the prose poem and free verse. Further, for the poets considered in this study, the poetry/prose binary is generative precisely because it is flawed, offering an opportunity for an aesthetic critique. “Antagonistic Cooperation: Prose in American Poetry” uncovers a history of innovative writing that traverses the divide between poetry and prose, writing that critiques the poetry/prose binary by combining conventions of each. These texts reveal how poetry and prose are similar, but they also explore why they seem different and even have different effects. When these writers’ texts examine this binary, they do so not only for aesthetic reasons but also to question the social and political binaries of modern iv American life—like rich/poor, white/black, male/female, gay/straight, natural/artificial, even living/dead—and these convergences of prose and poetry are a textual “space” each writer creates for representing those explorations. Ultimately, these texts neither choose between poetry and prose nor do they homogenize the two, affirming instead the complex effects that even faulty distinctions may have had historically, and still have, on literature—as on life. By confronting differences without reducing or erasing them, these texts imagine ways to negotiate and overcome modes of ignorance, invisibility, and oppression that may result from these flawed yet powerful dichotomies. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Elizabeth J. LeRud GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene Westmont College, Santa Barbara DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, English, 2017, University of Oregon Bachelor of Arts, English, 2007, Westmont College AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Poetry and Poetics Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century American Literature Comparative Multi-Ethnic US Literature PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Graduate Employee, Department of English, University of Oregon, 2011-2017 GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: Sherwood Research Award, English Department, University of Oregon, 2016, 2017 University of Oregon Three Minute Thesis Competition, 2nd Place Winner, 2016 PUBLICATIONS: LeRud, Lizzy. “Living Poems in Thoreau’s Prose.” Nineteenth Century Prose, vol. 44, Fall 2017, pp. 155-176. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My thanks go first to my mentor, Professor Karen J. Ford, whose generous and untiring support sustained me through difficulty and success alike and whose scrupulous attention to my writing is, to me, a cherished gift. I also thank the rest of my dissertation committee, Professor William Rossi, Professor Forest Pyle, and Professor Geri Doran, for their encouragement and insights at each stage of my project and especially for reading my manuscript and offering helpful suggestions toward future revisions. In addition, I am grateful to Professor Courtney Thorsson, Professor Rochelle Johnson, and Professor Elizabeth Witherell, who each provided incisive feedback on earlier versions of certain chapters. Throughout the course of this project, I benefitted greatly from the insights, observations, and camaraderie of the fellow graduate students with whom I shared offices, ideas, drafts, and favorite poems, old and new, and I am happy to thank them here. Finally, my particular gratitude goes to my beloved Ben Wenzel, who would as gamely engage my thinking and aid my work as refresh me with his most welcome and necessary diversions. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. POETRY AND PROSE: TRAVERSING THE DIVIDE ........................................ 1 Notes ...................................................................................................................... 17 II. THOREAU’S POEMS LIVING IN PROSE .......................................................... 18 Notes ...................................................................................................................... 65 III. WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS’ POETRY INCLUDING PROSE ................. 71 Notes ...................................................................................................................... 108 IV. ELIZABETH BISHOP’S POEMS “TEETERING ON THE EDGE” OF PROSE ................................................................................................................... 112 Notes ...................................................................................................................... 153 V. KATE RUSHIN’S “BRIDGE POEM” BRIDGES AND BORROWS PROSE .... 157 Notes ...................................................................................................................... 198 VI. A POETICS OF INCLUSION ............................................................................. 202 REFERENCES CITED................................................................................................ 210 viii CHAPTER I POETRY AND PROSE: TRAVERSING THE DIVIDE Of course, there are no rules: when it comes to poetry and prose, recent discussions—debating the genres, forms, or any versions of either type of signifying practice—support what we already know to be true, that texts of all kinds resist such classifications. “The wisest definition of poetry the poet will instantly prove false by setting aside its requisitions,” Thoreau averred nearly two centuries ago, and we could say the same of prose (A Week 91). Even the most conventional elements of texts change with the times—“The conventions readers bring to texts . are always historically conditioned,” Marjorie Perloff reminds us (189). Separating poetry from prose—saying what one is or what it is not and definitively stating its features and attributes—is, at best, a fraught task. So when Jonathan Culler defines that major subset of poetry, “lyric,” in 2015, he acknowledges Frederic Jameson’s claim that genre criticism is “thoroughly discredited by modern literary theory and practice” (105). But he goes on: “what has been discredited is, first, the notion of a genre as a set of rules that a literary work ought to follow and, second, the idea that the purpose of generic categories is to classify works: to tell us whether this piece of literature is in fact a novel or an anti-novel, for example” (42). Put broadly, what has been discredited is the idea that literary classifications like “poetry” and “prose” are—or have ever been—a litmus test for a text. Dispelling that notion lets us see such classifications for what they are, for indeed, rules and requisitions about poetry or prose, even if falsely ultimate, are generative. Thus, what Caroline Levine asserts about literary and social forms applies also to these two broad organizational groupings in literature: they are “equally real in their capacity to 1 organize materials, and equally unreal in being artificial, contingent constraints” (14). We can easily focus on proving how artificial definitions of poetry are, for example. But I want to consider how these definitions work in the first place, what work particular ideas about “poetry” and “prose” have done over time, and what work they are doing right now. Again, Levine’s words on forms apply more broadly: “too strong an emphasis on forms’ dissolution has prevented us from attending to the complex ways that power operates in a world dense with functioning forms” (9). Too strong an emphasis on dissolving these two literary categories, we might say, prevents us from attending to their complex history and their persistent currency. Thus, distinguishing types from among bodies of literature is useful not to prescribe what literature should be but to understand what it has been; Culler reminds us to ask “which categories are most useful, most likely to provide insight into the history of the literary tradition and the functioning of literature” (44). In the case of poetry and prose, we must admit, the two in tandem have become their own categorical