Criminal Ingenuity: Moore, Cornell, Ashbery, and the Struggle Between the Arts (Modernist Literature and Culture)
"Essential reading for scholars of modernism and inter-arts comparisons, this wide-ranging study reframes mid-century modernism as a power struggle between poetry and painting.  The three protagonists emerge not as victors in the struggle but as bystanders whose 'criminal ingenuity' resists the commodification and institutionalization of their respective arts." --Linda Leavell, Oklahoma State University"This is a penetrating and ambitious study.  Ellen Levy deploys some criminal ingenuity of her own as she tacks back and forth between institution critique on the one hand and close reading on the other, avoiding the sociological reductions of the one and the humanist idealizations of the other. The book is written with rare intelligence and passion, and these qualities show on every page." --Langdon Hammer, Yale University