Title: Improvisation and the making of American literary modernism /
Authors: Wallace, Rob, 1976-
Publisher: Continuum,
Year: 2010
Subjects: American poetry History and criticism; Modernism (Literature) United States; American poetry; Modernism (Literature); United States
Contents: Introduction: Writing improvisation into modernism. Modernisms ; Improvisations ; Afrological and Eurological improvisations ; Literary improvisations, jazz, and modernism ; Pragmatist improvisations ; Chapter outline -- Ezra Pound: music, history, time. Pound's songs ; Pound's life in/and music ; Antheil, Pound, and the African (American) Paideuma -- Langston Hughes: "How to take the impossible and make it dance". Hughes and jazz consciousness ; Blues imagism and bluesnik poetics ; The abstract truth -- Listening to Gertrude Stein's saxophone. Primitivism, improvisation, language ; The pragmatics of improvisation ; Melanctha and the limits of language ; Eighty-eight tender buttons: the sound of Stein's objects ; When the saints go marching in ; Epilogue: Stein on the Mic -- Banjos, blackbirds, and blue guitars: the soundworld of Wallace Stevens. Music, feeling, sound: listening to Stevens ; Improvising Wallace Stevens -- Conclusion: Further questions, other improvisations.