European Romanticism, with its turn to the medieval/exotic past and emphasis on wild, tremendous, hidden aspects of human soul, becomes: American Gothic (exploration of Darkness, often metaphysical) Transcendentalism (return to Nature) PHILIP FRENEAU (1752-1832) -Wealthy origins; West Indies, British capture experience sensitizes him towards anti-slavery, anti-British imperialism; journalist and “Poet of the American Revolution”; after savage political activity, died impoverished and unknown. -Didacticism, philosophical spirit and sensuous verse -Influence on later Romantic Primitivism, Gothic, and Transcendentalism “The Indian Burying Ground” 18th-century “Graveyard Poetry” influence Why a Native American graveyard? Vocabulary for Natives Is their mysticism appreciated? Why is burial posture important? “Activity that knows no rest” symbolic of? c/c Keats’s “Ode to a Grecian Urn” Past ghosts vs white visitor--> reciprocal cultural assimilation (final couplet)? History as “trace” (Jacques Derrida) EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849)
From epigrams (“Fire and Ice”) to long dramatic poems (“Death of a Hired Man”) with naturalist themes Poetry as “a momentary stay against confusion” “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” Pairs with “The Road Not Taken” Rhyme and meter: like a children’s/holiday poem—why? Symbols: woods, snow, horse, buggy and rider, season (irony of tradition) Frost’s suicidal tendencies—poem as psychotherapy? “After Apple Picking” Symbols: various apple(s) Winter season activity Ladder (axis mundi motif) Final “sleep” as “woodchuck” or as man? What’s the difference? MODERNISM AND ITS RHIZOMES High (European) vs Low Modernism -Imagism (Ezra Pound, HD, Amy Lowell), Vorticism, Dada WALLACE STEVENS (1879-1955) -Insurance company lawyer in Hartford, Connecticut -Late call to vocation but lasting fame--> Pulitzer prize -Fought with Frost and Hemingway -Poetry an often playful oscillation between the mundane and the imaginative (in a secular way)
EZRA POUND (1885-1972) -Poetical youth prodigy, “Make it new” Initiator, nurturer and guide of top modernist movements/poets -Volatile personality, fascist lapse and harsh imprisonment in 1945, followed by 12 years in mental hospital --> The Pisan Cantos (1948) -Controversial legacy “A Pact” -Form -Why VS Whitman? -Art and/as politics? -The role of tradition (family metaphor) “Let there be commerce” VS “usury” “In a Station of the Metro” -Imagism, orientalist influence -suggested emotion from language choice/contrast/metaphor? S(TEARNS) ELIOT (1888-1965) “Poetry is...an escape from emotion”—here’s why: Childhood health problems (“premature decrepitude”), literary direction a “betrayal” of active male family tradition
-End? Powerful or ghoulish? ANNE SEXTON (1928-74) -From fashion model to creative writing professor -Poetry/psychoanalysis as self-help against life-long depression -Confessional (friendship with Plath unto death) and fairy-tale retellings (Transformations) -Pulitzer followed by suicide “The Truth the Dead Know” -poet as necromancer -who is “my darling” interlocutor? -Ironic contrasts: parents’ (real-life) funeral VS “life goes on” “sea” VS “sky” “weighted,” “stiff” words, “iron gate,” “wind…like stones,” “stone boats” VS “touch” (“entering” it) love, “cultivate” VS “kill,” “die” -last stanza: why “without shoes”? Why “refuse to be blessed”? Significance of “throat, eye and knucklebone” ALLEN GINSBERG (1926-97) -Radical, progressive, high-strung upbringing—> poet, activist, public figure -Columbia scholar; met group who’d become the Beats (“Howl”) beaten/beatific anticonformist live truly, express yourself fully in all ways eastern philosophy, drugs, sex, bebop and jazz VS American Nightmare
“Howl” -“Gallery 6 Reading” (1955), where Beats began -Whitmanesque free verse -apocalyptic vision I. Destruction of the best (shocking definition of the “best” re writer/fellow mental patient Carl Solomon)… II. …as sacrifice to Moloch (symbol of?) III. “I’m with you” refrain as chant, benediction of “lambs” (Solomon) end: pessimistic or optimistic? A second coming? IV. Footnote (added later): “Holy!” mantra of universal benediction/celebration MULTICULTURALISM AND PLURALITY ADRIENNE RICH (1929-2012) -Poet, feminist, anti-war activist, essayist -superb education; Yale Younger award with 1st collection; poet and activist fame yet troubled home life -from formulaic poetry to free-verse, experimental expression -mid-life acknowledgment of Jewish and lesbian identity “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” -“Madwoman in the Attic” motif -symbols: tigers
Female seen through masculine lens described and appreciated through female poet/viewer: a. Motif of “girl” looking at herself in the mirror (ll.36-41) b. Women as “cats,” “porcelain vases,” “iridescent insects,” “plum lips,” finally “dusty ash-winged moths” c. Cliché of geishas (women) as visual lure overturned? d. Printmaker provides “immortality” for women—can he? -Final lines: what does one “paint”? Powdered skin, “drifted/ through the soft gray feathered light” VS “what he had carried home beneath his coat” (l.55)