University of Kentucky UKnowledge Theses and Dissertations--English English 2016 Life Matter: Women Subjects and Women's Objects in Innovative American Poetry Jenna L. Goldsmith University of Kentucky, [email protected] Digital Object Identifier: http://dx.doi.org/10.13023/ETD.2016.288 Right click to open a feedback form in a new tab to let us know how this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Goldsmith, Jenna L., "Life Matter: Women Subjects and Women's Objects in Innovative American Poetry" (2016). Theses and Dissertations--English. 47. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/english_etds/47 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the English at UKnowledge. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations--English by an authorized administrator of UKnowledge. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STUDENT AGREEMENT: I represent that my thesis or dissertation and abstract are my original work. 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Goldsmith, Student Dr. Randall Roorda, Major Professor Dr. Andrew Doolen, Director of Graduate Studies LIFE MATTER: WOMEN SUBJECTS AND WOMEN’S OBJECTS IN INNOVATIVE AMERICAN POETRY ________________________________________ DISSERTATION ________________________________________ A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky By Jenna Goldsmith Lexington, Kentucky Director: Dr. Randall Roorda, Associate Professor of English Lexington, Kentucky 2016 Copyright © Jenna Goldsmith 2016 ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION LIFE MATTER: WOMEN SUBJECTS AND WOMEN’S OBJECTS IN INNOVATIVE AMERICAN POETRY Gertrude Stein, Lyn Hejinian, and Juliana Spahr employ innovative poetic practices attuned to nature and environment in order to understand their personal lives and depict these understandings for readers. My dissertation investigates how these poets enact an inclusive posture toward environment that many innovative and experimental women poets of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries possess, but are rarely recognized for. To this end, my dissertation provides counterarguments to characterizations of innovative or experimental poetic practices as reclusive, language- centric, opaque, and/or disconnected from the material world. I offer readings of poems, prose pieces, film, and art, to illustrate how materially innovative poetry compels an equally material framework for reading that is, at a foundational level, by and about the world. Jenna Goldsmith______________________ 18 April 2016_________________________ Date LIFE MATTER: WOMEN SUBJECTS AND WOMEN’S OBJECTS IN INNOVATIVE AMERICAN POETRY By Jenna Goldsmith _______________Randall Roorda_____________ Director of Dissertation _______________Andrew Doolen_____________ Director of Graduate Studies _______________18 April 2016______________ To my parents and grandparents. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Writing a dissertation is not a solitary activity, though it feels that way much of the time. A dissertation takes a village of generous colleagues, advisors, and friends who while not listed in the Works Cited page, leave their mark in profound ways and deserve thanks. At the heart of this project has been my chief advisor, Professor Randall Roorda. Thank you for your patience and your willingness to run alongside me (sometimes at a sprint and other times at a sort of winded lurch) as I’ve struggled to put my ideas on paper. If even one person is convinced that Gertrude Stein cared about the environment, we win. Thank you to my wonderful committee, Professors Julia Johnson, Pearl James, Melissa Stein, and Lynn Roche Phillips. Each of you has contributed to this project in ways I could not have anticipated. Your passion and professionalism have left an indelible mark on me as a woman, a teacher, and a scholar. I was one of the lucky dissertation writers who arrived at her PhD program with a strong sense of what and who she wanted to write about. A cadre of teacher-writers at Illinois State University introduced me to Gertrude Stein, Lyn Hejinian, and Juliana Spahr, as well as feminism and ecocriticism, sparking a love affair with innovative poetries that sustained me in this program. Thank you to Professors Kass Fleisher, Joe Amato, Kirstin Hotelling Zona, and Alison Bailey for bestowing these gifts and catapulting my thinking about poetry in new directions. And thank you for so much more than that. To my first American literature teacher at Rock Valley College, Professor Molly Sides, thank you. College and graduate school have been a perpetual Kansas City, but an image of you, and the memory of our Introduction to Fiction class, has kept me at this. iii Thank you to those artists and writers who supported this project by granting me an interview: Lisa Congdon, Kate Johnston, and Troy Brooks. Thanks especially to Juliana Spahr, whose generous correspondence with me (2+ years!) bookends this dissertation. Thank you to my mother, Martha A. Trowe, and my grandmother, Dina B. Sorensen, who have provided respite from many storms—academic and otherwise—over the last six years. To the family members, friends, colleagues, and students who have supported me throughout this process, I give the heartiest of thanks. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iii LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION: MATERIALS OF MATTER IN INNOVATIVE AMERICAN POETRY ....................................................................................................... 1 The New Materialisms, Innovative Poetry, and Nature as Feminist Space .................... 3 Arrangement and Form ................................................................................................... 8 “What it means arrangement”: Chapter Summaries ..................................................... 11 CHAPTER II: TALKING DIRTY IN GERTRUDE STEIN’S TENDER BUTTONS ...... 14 Networking Dirty Theory ............................................................................................. 19 Stein’s Natural History ................................................................................................. 23 Housekeeping Tender Buttons ...................................................................................... 29 CHAPTER III: WRITING AS AN AID TO ENVIRONMENT: LOOKING FOR LYN HEJINIAN’S ECO-LANGUAGE IN MY LIFE ............................................................... 40 Open Texts, Open Windows ......................................................................................... 41 Reframing Vision .......................................................................................................... 47 Construction Sights ....................................................................................................... 51 CHAPTER IV: THE INCINERATOR IN THE GARDEN: JULIANA SPAHR’S VIBRANT PASTORAL ................................................................................................... 62 Acknowledging Other Information ............................................................................... 69 Pastoral as Connection .................................................................................................. 77 Conclusion: The Incinerator in the Garden ................................................................... 82 CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION: GERTRUDE STEIN’S NEW MATERIAL IN THE NEW MILLENIUM.......................................................................................................... 87 Introduction: Gertrude Stein’s New Material ............................................................... 87 Compos(t)ition as Explanation, Literary Compost, and Writing Post-Mortem ............ 93 New Edition/Addition ................................................................................................... 99 “Because I didn’t write it”: Ecofeminist Art and Lisa Congdon’s Illustrated Tender Buttons