Title: Erotic reckonings
First published: 1994
Description: Erotic Reckonings explores the problem of tradition and authority in the lives and work of three pairs of twentieth-century American poets - Ezra Pound and H.D., Yvor Winters and Janet Lewis, and Louise Bogan and Theodore Roethke.

Drawing on classical and feminist psychoanalytic theory, Thomas Simmons argues that mentor-apprentice relationships are inescapably erotic, though not necessarily sexual. Pound and Winters manifest profound conflicts between allegiance to a tradition of knowledge and allegiance to apprentices; both tend to master the apprentice, to bind her to a body of knowledge.

In contrast, Bogan and Roethke display a different approach: wary of the value of a tradition of knowledge, Bogan insists that Roethke represent himself as a person of authority. She plays for him a role of sustained reciprocity, rather than of domination.
Subjects: American Poets, American Women poets, American poetry, Apprentices, Authorship, Erotic poetry, History, History and criticism, Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.), Poets, American, Relations with men, Relations with women, Women and literature, Women poets, American, Lehrer, Biografie, Schriftsteller, Fallstudiensammlung, Zweierbeziehung, Schuler, Schüler, American poetry, history and criticism, 20th century, Women poets, Poets
Places: United States
Time periods: 20th century
LC classification: PS323.5 .S56 1994