Rebound: The American Poetry Book (Textxet 44)

217 Pages·2004·0.86 MB·English

by  Stephen Matterson

T T
EX X E
T
Studies in Comparative Literature 44
Series Editors
C.C. Barfoot and Theo D’haen
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R
EBOUND
T A
HE MERICAN
P B
OETRY OOK
EDITED BY
MICHAEL HINDS AND STEPHEN MATTERSON
AMERICAN BOOKS ARE DIFFERENT FROM EUROPEAN BOOKS,
EVEN WHEN THE AMERICAN SETS OFF IN PURSUIT OF TREES.
GILLES DELEUZE AND FÉLIX GUATTARI
THE DUSTJACKET’S TOO GOOD FOR A DUSTJACKET
AND OUGHT TO BE ON MY TOMB.
RANDALL JARRELL
Amsterdam - New York, NY
2004
Cover photo: Michael Hinds
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of
‘ISO 9706: 1994, Information and documentation - Paper for
documents - Requirements for permanence’.
ISBN 90-420-1712-0
© Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2004
Printed in The Netherlands
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thepoem“Anarrowfellowinthegrass”isreprintedbypermissionofthepublishers
andtheTrusteesofAmherstCollegefromThePoemsofEmilyDickinson,editedby
RalphW.Franklin,Cambridge,MA:TheBelknapPressofHarvardUniversityPress,
Copyright © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright ©
1951, 1955, 1979 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, and by permission
of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from The Poems of Emily
Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of
HarvardUniversityPress,copyright©1951,1955,1979bythePresidentandFellows
of Harvard College.
Quotations from Emily Dickinson’s correspondence are reprinted by permission
ofthepublishersfromTheLettersofEmilyDickinson,editedbyThomasH.Johnson,
Cambridge,MA:TheBelknapPressofHarvardUniversityPress,copyright©1958,
1986 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
“A Whitman’s Birthday Broadcast with Static” from Collected Poems by Frank
O’Hara,copyright©1971byMaureenGranville-Smith,Administrixoftheestateof
FrankO’Hara.UsedbypermissionofAlfredA.Knopf,adivisionofRandomHouse,
Inc.
The lines from “From the Reformation Journal” from Swarm by Jorie Graham,
copyright © 1999 by Jorie Graham, are reprinted by permission of HarperCollins
Publishers Inc.
“The Book As Architecture”, © Charles Bernstein, is reprinted here with his
permission. The copyright of “Empire, Sublimity and the Look of Things
in Amy Clampitt’sThe Kingfisher” is assigned to Justin Quinn.
We would like to acknowledge our gratitude to the series editor Cedric Barfoot,
Marieke Schilling at Rodopi, and to Maria Johnston for her invaluable help in
preparing the final version.
Thanks to Christine, Henry, Jean.
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CONTENTS
Introduction: A Speaking Whole
Michael Hinds and Stephen Matterson 1
1 Binding Emily Dickinson
Domhnall Mitchell 11
2 Fit Compositions: Whitman’s Revisions to Drum-Taps
Eldrid Herrington 29
3 “Tomake it meanme”: Narrative Design in North of Boston
Stephen Matterson 45
4 Lustra:Work and Text
Stephen Wilson 57
5 Intentionality as Sensuality in Harmonium
Charles Altieri 81
6 The Accidental Bridge: Hart Crane’s Theory of the Lyric
Maria Irene Ramalho de Sousa Santos 89
7 William Carlos Williams’sAn Early Martyr: The Descent Beckons
Ron Callan 99
8 Selected Poems (The1955): Randall Jarrell’s Book of the Dead
Michael Hinds 115
9 It’s life in death to be bound, delivered, published”: Robert
Lowell’s Revisions of Notebook 1967–68
Gareth Reeves 131
10 “Our lives inseparable”: The Contingent World of Adrienne Rich’s
Twenty-One Love Poems
Lucy Collins 141
11 Empire, Sublimity, and the Look of Things in Amy Clampitt’s
The Kingfisher
Justin Quinn 155
12 “What I wanted was nothing to do with monuments”: Erring and Lyn
Hejinian’sThe Guard
Nerys Williams 169
13 Prometheans Unbound: Touching Books in Jorie Graham’sSwarm
and Susan Howe’s “Scattering As Behaviour Toward Risk”
Nick Selby 183
Afterword: The Book as Architecture
Charles Bernstein 197
Notes on Contributors 199
Index 201
INTRODUCTION: A SPEAKING WHOLE
MICHAEL HINDS AND STEPHEN MATTERSON
I felt, even before I learned to read, that a book was a holy object;
this awe perpetuates itself in each attempt to make, of a pile of
poems, a speaking whole.1
Louise Glück
This book consists of thirteen original articles on individual books of American
poetry. The original motivation behind our commissioning of these essays was two-
fold,beinginsomemeasurecorrectiveaswellasexploratory.Thecorrectiveelement
arose from a near-axiomatic belief that critical and pedagogical mediations of
American poetry, as well as its material transmission, have been and are dominated
(perhapsincreasinglyso)byanemphasisontheindividualpoem.Thereasonsforthis
dominationarevaried.TheyincludethecontinuinghegemonyofNewCriticismasa
pedagogic practice and as a conceptual approach through which the poem is
privileged and individuated as an autonomous entity; the reading of poetry from
anthologies, whereby the context for the individual poem is not made available;
classroompracticeswhichconcentrateonthedecontextualizedpoem,andthecultural
tendency for subjective investment in poetry that leads to concentration on the
individual lyric. Our feeling was that this investment in the individual poem was
problematic, in that it contradicted the terms in which poets have presented their
work. These terms are often implicit in poetic practice, since poets present their
poems as a book collection. Some poets have drawn attention to the fact that they
perceivethebookastheunit,andothershaveinsistedthattheirpoemsdonotexistas
individualunits.Forexample,LouiseGlück’sinsistenceonthereprintingofherearly
volumes intact in the collection The First Five Books of Poems is founded on two
principles. One is that “the idea of revising old work seems odd to me, the spirit
animating that work being no longer accessible”, and the other is formal: “much
thoughtwentintotheirshaping.”2InheressayforthiscollectionLucyCollinsquotes
Adrienne Rich saying exactly that she was “finished with the idea of a poem as a
single, encapsulated event, a work of art complete in itself”.3
Although many poets have explicitly or implicitly expressed this view of the
poem, the weight of pedagogical and publication practice still tends to work against
such an apprehension from becoming part of a critical approach. William Carlos
1. Louise Glück, The First Five Books of Poems, Manchester, 1997, xiv.
2.Ibid., xiii, xiv.
3.AdrienneRich,“Blood,BreadandPoetry:TheLocationofthePoet”,inBlood,BreadandPoetry:
Selected Prose 1979–1985, London, 1987, 180.