“NO KEY TO THE TANGLE”: HISTORY AND POETIC CONSCIOUSNESS IN LOUIS ZUKOFSKY’S “A” A Thesis by GRIFFIN ROWE Submitted to the Graduate School at Appalachian State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS August 2019 Department of English “NO KEY TO THE TANGLE”: HISTORY AND POETIC CONSCIOUSNESS IN LOUIS ZUKOFSKY’S “A” A Thesis by GRIFFIN ROWE August 2019 APPROVED BY: Christopher Meade, Ph.D. Chairperson, Thesis Committee Joseph Bathanti Member, Thesis Committee Jill Ehnenn, Ph.D. Member, Thesis Committee Jessica Martell, Ph.D. Member, Thesis Committee Leonardo Flores, Ph.D. Chairperson, Department of English Mike McKenzie, Ph.D. Dean, Cratis D. Williams School of Graduate Studies Copyright by Griffin Rowe 2019 All Rights Reserved Abstract “NO KEY TO THE TANGLE”: HISTORY AND POETIC CONSCIOUSNESS IN LOUIS ZUKOFSKY’S “A” Griffin Rowe B.A., Florida State University M.A., Appalachian State University Chairperson: Christopher Meade This thesis explores the question of poetry’s relationship with history. My inquiry is centered on the epic poem “A” (1974) by American author Louis Zukofsky, considering the ways in which Zukofsky reconceptualizes the role that the past – its events, people, art – plays in the construction of a modern poetic consciousness. The project is divided into two sequences: historical representation of movements “A”-22 and “A”-23 in the poem and historical engagement in movements “A”-21 and “A”-24. The first sequence is a survey of the ways in which Zukofsky recreates the last 6,000 years of history in a manner that resists linearity and narrative. I read his poetry alongside Walter Benjamin’s “On the Concept of History” (1940) and Gilles Deleuze’s Essays Clinical and Critical (1997) in order to consider the extent to which Zukofsky problematizes historical and literary language, and their limits of communication and expression in the poetic-now. The second sequence focuses on the historical materials with which Zukofsky engages, primarily the iv Roman playwright Plautus, as well as Zukofsky’s own previous writing. I contend that Zukofsky method of participating with history in his work is a kind of creative engagement with the past, one that acknowledges history as a living thing and seeks to absorb it into the formation of a new poetics. This is a performance of escape- work, so that texts, through active historical participation, resist textual totality and begin to reconnect themselves to the world outside of their binding in order to work within our contemporary reality. v Acknowledgments This project would not have been possible without the staggering patience and support of my director, Dr. Chris Meade. Dr. Meade’s insight and involvement throughout this process have without a doubt made me into a more critical and passionate thinker, writer, and teacher. I would also like to thank my committee members, Joseph Bathanti, Dr. Jessica Martell, and Dr. Jill Ehnenn, for their enthusiasm and helpful feedback towards my work. I would like to extend a special thank you to Olivia Buck and Bekah Ballard for their contributions to my mental and physical health in the final stages of my work, and especially to Joshua Wharton for staying up through the night on many occasions to hear out all of my tired poetic rambling. Finally, I would never have been in the place to complete this project or pursue my education without the undying support of my wonderful mother and father, without whom I would be nothing. vi Dedication For my brother, Chris. vii Table of Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iv Acknowledgments................................................................................................................ v Dedication .......................................................................................................................... vi Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter I: “A”-22/23 and Historical Representation ......................................................... 35 Chapter II: “A”-21/24 and Historical Engagement ............................................................ 72 Coda: Looking Beyond “A” ............................................................................................ 118 Works Cited ..................................................................................................................... 123 Appendix .......................................................................................................................... 127 Vita ................................................................................................................................... 131 viii Rowe 1 End of page, end of this company – wee notebook kept my mind in hand, Let the world stay open to me day after day, words to say, things to be. Robert Creeley, “The End” Rowe 2 Introduction “let me live here ever”: Louis Zukofsky’s Poetics of History The intersection of philosophy and history engenders a certain problem of reading. We often consider history as a record, a flawless, objective account of things that have come before. This information is meant to educate us on the manner of our arrival into the present moment and, like the cold, mathematical equation, justifies the outcomes of events that create the contemporary state of things without the opportunity or worse the necessity for doubt or reconsideration. But philosophy recognizes that things cannot be reduced to such basic components, that history is as much a product of conflicting ways of thinking. It has taught us that to read history is akin to reading any other text and necessitates a critical eye and skepticism towards the reductionism of grand, sweeping, and politically powerful historical narratives. This is not to say, however, that these narratives do not hold some influence regardless of their validity. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche posed this issue in an essay in which he describes the pressure of the historical on the contemporary individual through the allegory of looking at an animal: [the human] also wondered about himself and how he was unable to learn to forget and always clung to what was past; no matter how far or how fast he runs, that chain runs with him. It is a cause for wonder: the moment, here in a flash, gone in a flash, before it nothing, after it nothing, does, after all, return as a ghost once more and disturb the peace of a later moment. (“On the Utility and Liability of History for Life,” 126) This is a haunting that is fundamentally inescapable because it is not a physical presence, even in a future where there is no written history, the memory carried by society will linger and permeate into new policy, culture, economy. Walter Benjamin, an ardent student of Nietzsche’s work, took the opposite view when constructing his drafts and notes for the Rowe 3 unfinished Arcades Project (Passagenwerk), a historical and philosophical explorations of the Paris Arcades as an emblem for the culture of the 19th century. Benjamin considered his goal for the book to be the building of a “dreaming city,” and while the text was never finished, its current state is a testament to the value of collecting and collaging historical material as a means of understanding the way the present is shaped and the social responsibility contemporary individuals possess today to the future. One place to read this same tendency is in the poetry which seeks to tell or retell history, particularly the epic poem, which has historically served as an artistic monumentalizing of nationalist pride and narrative, as in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene or Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. But if we are to postulate a writing which does not flatten the complexities of historical and social narratives along national lines, then it is necessary to find an adequate example in a different kind of epic poem. Louis Zukofsky is a poet whose work, despite its contributions to the second- generation modernist aesthetics, carries a tendentious and under-appreciated relationship to high modernism. During the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, Zukofsky seemed on the verge of breaking through into the mainstream of American avant-garde poetry, but alas, his publishing output was limited, and the financial constraints forced to him to take up employment in schools and for the WPA project until his retirement in the 1960’s. His writing went largely ignored throughout his career, though his post-retirement period proved to be the time of his most prolific output. Although Zukofsky was not fully embraced by the movements of early modernism, his work is nevertheless a stunning instance of this era of literary and artistic production and therefore provides a productive source of inquiry into an under-discussed practitioner of experimental writing: his writing is historical, of its moment. Rowe 4 Zukofsky’s magnum opus, the epic poem “A”, was written in a period stretching from 1928 to 1974. It is one of the most ambitious and experimental long poems of the twentieth century. It is also one of the most challenging. Zukofsky’s project is concerned with the concepts of historiography, poetic tradition, and the limits and potentials of language. At over 800-pages, “A” is composed of 24 “movements”, like Homer’s epics, but there is no semblance of any overarching narrative or plot. It is a poem concerned