Beyond Maximus
Subtitle: the construction of public voice in Black Mountain poetry
By: Anne Day Dewey.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Stanford, Calif
Language: eng
Number of pages: 286
ISBN-13: 9780804756471
Subjects: American poetry -- North Carolina -- Black Mountain -- History and criticism; American poetry -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Black Mountain school (Group of poets); Poets, American -- 20th century -- Political and social views; Politics and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century; Black Mountain (N.C.) -- Intellectual life
Description: "Beyond Maximus: The Construction of Public Voice in Black Mountain Poetry is the only study of Black Mountain poets (Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Denise Levertov, and Ed Dorn) to explain their association from the 1950s to their break-up after the Vietnam War. Dewey uses the poets' correspondence and other archival materials to illuminate their mutual influence and the crucial significance of "field poetics" to their careers. While previous criticism has focused on the poetics of the force field as a model of nature, Dewey understands the force field as a model of social force that all five poets articulate and incorporate into poetry in ways that compete with artistic craft. Their different conceptions of social force explain their divergent careers. The development of "field poetics" also sheds light on these poets' attempts to create an alliance between experimental poetics and public voice, a difficult agenda that speaks to Black Mountain poetry's crucial contribution to the artistic and political struggles of New American poetry."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: History as force field in Ezra Pound, Louis Zukofsky, and Charles Olson; title: From natural to social place in Olson and Creeley; title: Creeley, Duncan, and the uses of abstraction; title: Poetic authority and mass audience during the Vietnam War in Duncan and Levertov; title: The problem of political poetry and the polarization of the field in Levertov and Dorn.