INTERPOETICS: RESPONSES TO ISSUES IN TAIWANESE AND AMERICAN POETRY, 1980-2002 by YIHSUAN TSO (Under the Direction of Ronald Bogue and Kam-ming Wong) ABSTRACT My dissertation proposes a new theory, interpoetics, to explain the common traits of four poets who have published works of preeminent quality and quantity during the last two decades—Taiwanese Lo Fu, Jewish American Jorie Graham, Asian American Cathy Song, and Latino American Martín Espada. Using these poets as examples, I argue that the greatness of these poets resides in their crossing the boundaries between poetry and self, between poetry and the body, and between poetry and politics. The theoretical framework of interpoetics is broader and more inclusive than Harold Bloom’s influence theory in that interpoetics expounds poetic creation from an intercultural and interdisciplinary perspective, taking into account both the synchronous (connecting terrains) axis and the diachronic (responding to a tradition) axis of a creative process, thus escaping Bloomian androcentric, uni-cultural, and diachronic constraints. Moreover, each chapter of this dissertation challenges and revises extant philosophies or theories. Chapter One borrows Zhuangzi’s notions and Chan to resolve the content-form dualistic dilemma in theories of transcendence. In Chapter Two, I argue that the evolution of Cathy Song’s poetry presents one of the expressions of inbodied girlism critical to the third wave American feminism’s demarcation from the second wave. Inbodied girlism is a phrase I coined to name my theory, which seeks to connect theories of the body and girl studies. Chapter Three explains Martín Espada’s political poetry, in his words, as “an act of political imagination” written by the poet as a prophet and political “visionary” in response to poetry’s waning influence on public life (Zapata’s 11). In this chapter, I employ my poetics and globalization theories to examine the permeability between Espada’s poetry and politics. Through these interdisciplinary, interlinguistic, and intercultural reflections, this dissertation claims that the poetry of Lo Fu, Graham, Song, and Espada has encoded social and cultural concerns that challenge existing boundaries. INDEX WORDS: Contemporary American poetry, Contemporary Taiwanese poetry, Poetics, Chan, Taoism, Feminism, Globalization, Lo Fu, Jorie Graham, Martín Espada, Cathy Song INTERPOETICS: RESPONSES TO ISSUES IN TAIWANESE AND AMERICAN POETRY, 1980-2002 by YIHSUAN TSO B.A., National Chengchi University, Taiwan, 1987 M.A., National Taiwan University, Taiwan, 1990 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2004 © 2004 Yihsuan Tso All Rights Reserved INTERPOETICS: RESPONSES TO ISSUES IN TAIWANESE AND AMERICAN POETRY, 1980-2002 by YIHSUAN TSO Major Professors: Ronald Bogue Kam-ming Wong Committee: Betty Jean Craige Katharina Wilson Barbara McCaskill Susan Rosenbaum Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2004 iv DEDICATION To my family and humanity v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My family supported me without many complaints during the writing process. I have benefited from the invaluable comments of my advisors Professors Ronald Bogue and Kam-ming Wong as well as Professors Betty Jean Craige, Katharina Wilson, Barbara McCaskill, and Susan Rosenbaum. The plates before the introduction could not have been done without the generosity of Lo Fu, who lent me his manuscript and allowed me to conduct an interview with him and take photos. I am also thankful for the funding of the Graduate School Dissertation Completion Assistantship and for the nurturing environment my department and the University have created. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.................................................................................................v LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... vii INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………...1 CHAPTER 1 INTERSELF: POETICS OF THE LOTUS .......................................................8 POETICS OF THE LOTUS........................................................................10 LO FU..........................................................................................................24 JORIE GRAHAM .......................................................................................64 NEW PHILOSOPHICAL POETRY.........................................................118 2 INTERSOMATIC: INBODIED GIRLISM...................................................159 INBODIED GIRLISM IN THIRD WAVE FEMINISM ..........................161 INBODIED GIRLISM IN POETRY ........................................................199 3 INTERPOLITICAL: POETICS OF POLITICAL ACTION.........................238 POETICS OF POLITICAL ACTION.......................................................240 GLOBALIZATION THEORIES AND LITERATURE...........................242 ESPADA’S POETICS...............................................................................252 VERSE POLITICS....................................................................................263 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………....307 WORKS CITED ..............................................................................................................312 vii LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1: Photographs of Lo Fu, Lo Fu’s wife, and Yihsuan Tso ................................... viii Figure 2: The fair copy of the first page of Driftwood ...................................................... ix Figure 3: The fair copy of page 31 of Driftwood.................................................................x Figure 4: The fair copy of the last page of Driftwood ....................................................... xi Figure 5: The Self’s Freedom ............................................................................................13 viii Figure 1. Photographs of Lo Fu, Lo Fu’s wife, and Yihsuan Tso. Left: Lo Fu standing in his backyard shaded with white poplars. Right: Lo Fu and his wife in front of his residence, the Snow Pavilion, in Vancouver. Bottom: Lo Fu and I on the first floor of the Snow Pavilion. All photographs were taken during my research trip in June, 2003. I express my gratitude to the host and hostess for their hospitality and their permission to take these photos. ix Figure 2. The fair copy of the first page of Driftwood. “An elegy” (“一曲輓歌”) has been crossed out and replaced with “a sunflower” (“一株向日葵”). Courtesy of Lo Fu. x Figure 3. The fair copy of page 31 of Driftwood. In the fair copy, the fifth line reads: “Solely silence a thousand fathoms below / is regarded as the primitive language for communication” (“被視為溝通的原始語言 / 只有千噚以下的寂靜”). In publication, these lines were changed to: “Here no bells are heard. / Wind and rain are the only language” (“這裡不聞鐘聲 / 風雨是唯一的語言”) (Driftwood 31). Courtesy of Lo Fu. xi Figure 4. The fair copy of the last page of Driftwood. Section 69 becomes the ending while the original last section is moved one section forward in publication. Courtesy of Lo Fu. INTRODUCTION My theory defines interpoetics as a poetic strategy to create a new strain of poetry by connecting heterogeneous and incongruous terrains. Advancing globalizing and interdisciplinary synergism in poetry, interpoetics suggests that important poets respond to dominant issues by composing poetry of a diverse nature, which, as a product of interdisciplinary thought, would revitalize language, literature, and culture with new paradigms. This theory of interpoetics explains poetic creation from a comparative, intercultural, and interdisciplinary perspective while taking into account the synchronous (connecting terrains) axis and the diachronic (responding to a tradition) axis of a creative process. In this way, interpoetics offers a broader view than Harold Bloom’s influence theory, in that Bloom interprets poetic creation in an androcentric, uni-cultural, and diachronic manner. Moreover, interpoetics can not be reduced to universalism, pluralism, or the performativity of postmodern re-appropriations, since interpoetics does not propose or promote in theory a single unity, an amalgamation of heterogeneous ingredients, or ongoing appropriating activities. Leaving other levels for future explorations, this dissertation seeks to decipher the enactments of interpoetics at three levels, namely, interself, intersomatic, and interpolitical levels, in Taiwanese and American poetry published since the 1980s. 2 The period from 1980 to 2002 is chosen as the time frame because in this post-postmodern epoch in Taiwan and in the United States, there is no single poetry theory that can be said to have reached sole preeminence in literary criticism; meanwhile, boundary crossing among nations, cultures, languages, and disciplines is at its height caused by immigration and migration, imperialism, global capitalism, and the accepted definition of a culture as multi-cultures. Thus, it is interesting to consider boundary crossing in poetry under the system of interpoetics and to observe this poetics’s effects in more than one national literature. To expound on the textual implications of interpoetics, this dissertation selected poems from the oeuvres of four contemporary poets who have published works of considerable quality and weight during the last two decades and whose artistic achievements and innovative creativity