Title: The colonial moment : discoveries and settlements in modern American poetry /
Authors: Westover, Jeffrey W.
Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press,
Year: 2004
Subjects: American poetry History and criticism; Colonies in literature.; Nationalism and literature United States History; Postcolonialism in literature.; Imperialism in literature.
Abstract: "In The Colonial Moment, Jeffrey Westover shows how five major poets - Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, Hart Crane, and Langston Hughes - drew from national conflicts to assess America's new role as world leader." "Sensitive to the nation's memory of colonial brutality, these poets mingled their pride in America with moral protest against racism. Some identified a dark side to the nation's history, particularly in the conflicts between white pioneers and Native Americans, that haunted their otherwise confident celebrations of patriotism. Others used poetry as a vehicle of discovery to challenge existing historical accounts, or to criticize the failures of American democracy. Investigating these five major writers in terms of their cultural and political moment, Westover demonstrates how they dramatized the process of nation-building." "Colonization inevitably results in a sense of displacement. Each of these five poets struggled with such cultural alienation - especially those who belonged to a racial, sexual, or gender minority. They endeavored to unite their voices in a "vocabulary of the national," a search to define the concept of "we" that would encompass all modern readers while recognizing those whom previous generations had dismissed. In this way, each writer hoped to redeem the country's losses symbolically through language."--Jacket.
Contents: Introduction : discoveries and settlements in modern American poetry -- Marianne Moore's geography of origins -- Nation and enunciation in the work of William Carlos Williams -- National forgetting and remembering in the poetry of Robert Frost -- Empire and America in the poetry of Hart Crane -- Fragmentation and diaspora in the work of Langston Hughes -- Epilogue : "We the People" in an imperial republic.