ENG 3272 Final Exam

The Mid-Century Moment (1940s-50s)

• Modernism, as a literary movement, began to evolve as World War II and its aftermath dominated American life in the 40s and 50s.

• Cultures involved in major wars tend to promote conformity, and although conformity would not have been at all associated with the experimental modernism of the teens and twenties, the postwar period’s “midcentury modernism” is a kind of consensus modernism - keeping some of the same aesthetic, but without the rough edges of experimentation.

• “Modernism without experiment” might be a decent way to summarize the mid-century moment in American literature.

New Critics

• Influenced by the criticism of I.A. Richards T.S. Eliot.

• Advocated an objective theory of art that emphasized a “close reading” of the text as a self-enclosed artifact and that identified various formal properties.

• Eschewed cultural or biographical interpretations of texts.

• Key players: Randall Jarrell, Cleanth Brooks, William Empson, W.K. Wimsatt, and the Fugitives.

• Key terms: The Intentional Fallacy, Affective Fallacy, and The Heresy of Paraphrase.

The Fugitives (aka Fugitive-Agrarian)

• Group of southern writers, mostly associated with Vanderbilt University, who reacted against northern industrialist capitalism and urged a return to rural, agrarian socio-economic policies and traditional values.

• Manifesto: I’ll Take My Stand (1930)

• Established The Southern Review, along with other journals in an effort to promote poetry and criticism that emphasized complicated rhetoric, irony, and formal verse prosody.

• Many of the Fugitives became associated with the New Criticism.

• Key members: John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, and Donal Davidson.

Formalism

• Poetry that utilizes traditional poetic forms in terms of stanza, meter, and rhyme.

• New Formalism is a term that is often applied to poets of the later 20th century who, in the face of a literary culture that is quite accepting of free verse, advocate for the power of more traditional forms of prosody.

• Key players: X.J. Kennedy, Richard Wilbur, John Hollander, Robert Pinsky, Gertrude Schnackenburg, Dana Gioia, Miller Williams, and Anthony Hecht

The New Yorker Story

• By the mid-1950s, The New Yorker became the most prominent place for the literary short story

• So many of the most famous writers of the era published there that the magazine has earned its own genre tag: “The New Yorker Story”

John Updike

• Born in Shillington, PA, a town which became the material for his first literary successes.

• Begins his literary career as a writer for The New Yorker

• Settles in Ipswich, MA and leads a quiet life while producing a consistently compelling oeuvre

• First of two appearances on the cover Time; 1982 is his second appearance

• Separates from his first wife, divorces her, and marries another woman in 1977

• Wins Pulitzer Prize for Rabbit is Rich

• Wins Pulitzer for Rabbit at Rest

John Updike Works

The Centaur (1963) - National Book Award

Couples (1968) - Frank representations of 60s sexuality gets him on the cover of Time

The Rabbit Tetralogy - Four novels about Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, high school basketball player in a small PA town, from youth to his death. Many consider this to be his finest achievement. Each book is intended as a portrait of the decade past. Harry is an Everyman figure.

Rabbit, Run (1960) - the tranquilized 50s

Rabbit Redux (1971) - the turbulent 60s

Rabbit is Rich (1981) - the entropic 70s

Rabbit at Rest (1990) - the prosperous, moribund 80s

Also, his trilogy retelling The Scarlet Letter may be of interest:

A Month of Sundays (1975) - from Dimmesdale’s perspective

Roger’s Version (1986) - from Chillingsworth’s perspective

S. (1989) - from Prynne’s perspective

In the Beauty of Lilies (1996) - generational family saga full of religious themes

John Updike Significance

Being a post-war realist: keen eye for detailed verisimilitude as well as a shrewd sense of moral and social concerns.

An ability to blend his realism with tasteful figurative or symbolic description.

Being a chronicler of contemporary American middle-class life, especially as it concerns the changing nature of the family and religion. He once said, “I am elegiacally concerned with the Protestant middle-class.”

John Cheever

• Born in Quincy, MA - prosperous family - fell into hard times as he grew older

• Expelled from his prestigious private high school, he writes a story about it that is published in The New Republic

• Lives in NY and tries to make living from writing - from 35 to 82, has 121 stories published in The New Yorker

• After marriage to a woman from notable family - joins army and serves in WWII

• While in the Pacific, first book of stories, The Way Some People Live, is published with good reviews

• Writes and win many awards - maintains a rocky relationship with his wife and family - struggles with infidelity, bouts of depression, alcoholism, and drug addiction

• Placed in a rehab center for alcoholics

John Cheever Works

The Way Some People Live (1943) - His first book - short stories

The Enormous Radio, and Other Stories (1953) - critically acclaimed

The Wapshot Chronicle (1957) - wins the National Book Award

The Brigadier and the Golf Widow (1964) - includes “The Swimmer”

Bullet Park (1986) - some consider this his best novel, perhaps his most ambitious

The Falconer (1977) - set in a prison, this late novel deals with many of the problems of his own life, such as addiction, family strife, and homosexuality

John Cheever Significance

Acute depictions of the American suburbs: “Chekhov of the exurbs.”

Representing the flagging of the American dream as it dissolves luxury of upper-middle class existence

Imaginative use of farce and mild surrealism built on a solid base of realistic description

Clever uses of nostalgia

Philip Roth

• Born in Newark, NJ - town that figures prominently in his fiction

• After college (MA from U of Chicago) - joins army but injures his back and is discharged

• Joins University of IA’s Writer’s Workshop as faculty member - later teaches at U of PA (retires in 91)

• late 80s and early 90s - heart surgery - failed marriage (Claire Bloom) - poor reviews send him into some nervous breakdowns

Philip Roth Works

Goodbye, Columbus (1959) - short stories, National Book Award

Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) - in the mode of stand-up comedy (lots of dirty jokes) - young Jewish man’s coming of age story, of sorts

Zuckerman Bound: A Trilogy (1985) - Nathan Zuckerman - professor and writer - Roth’s alter ego - is the main character in nine of Roth’s novels

The Counterlife (1986) - another Zuckerman novel; a complex metafictional narrative with five variations on the same set of experiences

American Pastoral (1997) - Pulitzer Prize

The Plot Against America (2004) - alternative history that imagines Charles Lindberg, the famous aviator (and Nazi sympathizer), winning the 1940 presidential election

Philip Roth Significance

Examination of the tensions associated with being Jewish in America

A tone or attitude toward sex or morals in general that could be described as “serio-comic”

A career that began with skillful, realistic portrayals of middle-class Jewish life but which becomes much more experimental, even postmodern, in its fondness for play, its mixing of high and pop culture, and its tendency toward metafiction

Alternative History

Speculative fiction that is set in a world in which history has significantly diverged from the actual course of events as we know them

James Baldwin

• Born in Harlem, NY - born name was James Jones - born to unwed mother

• Mother marries David Baldwin - preacher - James adopts the Baldwin name and never suspects that David is not his dad - grows up with eight step-siblings

• Attends Frederick Douglass Junior High - taught and encouraged by poet Countee Cullen

• At 14 - begins preaching at Fireside Pentecostal Assembly

• Graduates high school - leaves church because of religious doubt

• Richard Wright helps him secure writing fellowship

• Fed up with racism in US - Baldwin moves to Paris

• Returns to US as correspondent for Harper’s Magazine - write about civil rights situation in the South

• Appears on cover of Time magazine - leads civil rights demonstrations in Paris

• Purchases home in St. Paul-de-Vence, France

• Teaches in various American universities - traveling back to home in France - continues publishing essays - working on artistic projects and documentaries

• Dies of cancer

James Baldwin Works

Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) - novel, published to good reviews - often regarded as Baldwin’s best novel

Notes of a Native Son (1955) - essays, the genre for which he is best known

Giovanni’s Room (1956) - novel, published to mostly negative reviews - often seen as a pioneering work in race and queer studies - main character is white homosexual

Another Country (1963) - novel, published to mostly negative reviews - none of his novels after this attract attention

The Fire Next Time (1963) - perhaps most celebrated book of essays

Going to Meet the Man (1965) - his only book of short stories (includes “Sonny’s Blues”)

The Devil Finds Work (1976) - essays on the film industry

James Baldwin Significance

Essays, which vary widely in tonal range from fiery and motivational, to blunt and moralistic, to poetically impressionistic

Essays focus on art, popular culture (especially film) and politics.

Most famous in his time for essays that detailed the Civil Rights movement, always with an eye towards the complex inner workings of individual identity within the sweep of larger political or cultural movements

Deep tension in essays and stories between the aesthetic and political - against much of the African-American literary tradition, he insisted upon the primacy of the aesthetic, even as his essays and stories consistently provide scathing critiques of American culture and politics

Long seen as a key figure in African-American literature and history - has increasingly been the subject of queer studies

Giovanni’s Room, in particular, has been singled out as an early, overt exploration of homosexual identity in fiction

Flannery O’Connor

• Born in Savannah, GA - family moves to farm outside Milledgeville, GA in 1940 - father dies of lupus one year later - her and her mother stay on farm

• Attends college in Milledgeville - Georgia State College for Women - graduated with a double-major in sociology and English - regularly contributes cartoons to the school newspaper

• Two years in IA MFA program - launches her writing career

• Makes writer/publisher friends - learns more about her craft in NY and CT

• Moves back to GA after contracting lupus in 1950

• Raises peacocks - writes her celebrated body of work until her death from lupus

Flannery O’Connor Works

Wise Blood (1952) - Novel

A Good Man is Hard to Find (1955) - short stories

The Violent Bear It Away (1960) - novel

Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965) - short stories

Flannery O’Connor Significance

short stories that draw upon American conventions such as Southern Gothic and the grotesque in the manner of Poe

Religious symbolism reminds some of Nathaniel Hawthorne

Characteristically “misfit” characters outdo Faulkner

Enduring popularity with Christian audiences; she was a devout Catholic and an outspoken critic of secularism

Dark humor

Ability to represent, with sharp irony, mundane, cliche-ridden dialogue

Dark Humor/Comedy

the combination of the morbid, grotesque and/or absurd with the farcical or comic

Donald Allen’s The New American Poetry (1960)

anthology is celebrated as “the coming out party” for the postwar American avant-garde

Black Mountain School

group of poets associated with Black Mountain College - Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, and Robert Duncan

The San Francisco Renaissance

flowering of poetic activity that occurred in San Francisco in the mid-1950s - Many of the Beats (Ginsberg and Kerouac) migrated west and found groups of like-minded individuals

Poets associated - Philip Whalen, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, Kenneth Rexroth, Jack Spicer, Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Kerouac, and Robin Blaser

The Beats

proto-hippie, non-conformist group of writers who, in both their writings and lifestyles, celebrated vagabond adventure and romantic rebellion against affluent American culture

Associated with Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Gregory Corso

Confessional

poetry that display private, personal matters (often painful experiences) directly, or without the intervention of a poetic persona

Associated with John Berryman, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton

Deep Image

very loose affiliation of writers believes the image, especially the surreal dream image, the image from deep within the imagination, to be the central aspect of the poem.

An image should not be considered mere ornament or conceit, but should respond to or reflect that which is most essentially human, or most primal within imaginations

Associated with John Berryman, Louis Simpson, Charles Simic, Mark Straud, W.S. Merwin, Louise Gluck, and Charles Wright

The Black Arts Movement

group of politically motivated African-American writers (mostly poets), who claimed that art should be in service of politics - has been credited with popularizing slam poetry or performance poetry

Associated with Gwendolyn Brooks, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, and Audre Lorde

Language Poets

group of poets located on the West Coast during the 80s, 90s, and into the 21st century, whose work demonstrates a radical suspicion, even cynicism, about the ability of language to represent or communicate anything other than its own material features

Influenced by Marxism - attempt to break free from already commodified conceptual structures

Associated with Charles Bernstein, Susan Howe, Michael Palmer, Lyn Hejinian, and Rae Armantrout

Richard Wilbur

• Born in NY - grew up in NJ countryside

• Taught by Robert Frost - attending Amherst Collegge

• Served in Army during WWII - saw action in Italy and France

• Celebrated translator of Moliere’s Tartuffe (1955) and The Misanthrope (1963)

• Named US Poet Laureate 87-88

Richard Wilbur Works

The Beautiful Changes and Other Poems (1947)

Things of This World (1956) - Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award

New and Collected Poems (1988) - Pulitzer Prize

Richard Wilbur Significance

Long career - one of the foremost formalist poets of his time - represents the values of the mid-century “New Critics” - as well as the “New Formalists” of the later 20th Century

Stringent adherence to formal stanzaic and metrical patterns - rhyme

Religious sensibility in poetry - popular with culturally conservative readers - poems often celebrate possibility of incarnate spirituality - balancing fresh and spirit

Gwendolyn Brooks

• Born in Topeka, KS - grows up on south side of Chicago

• Poet from youth - encouraged by editor of Poetry magazine to read more experimental moderns - Pound and Eliot

• First two volumes garnered acclaim and Pulitzer

• 67 - attending conference at Fisk University - decides to write poetry “about Blacks, to Blacks” - becomes involved in the Black Arts Movement

• Decides to leave major publisher - Harper and Row - support black-owned presses - Riot (1970) is published by Broadside Press

• Was very active in life - teacher and speaker - mostly focusing her work in Chicago

Gwendolyn Brooks Works

A Street in Bronzeville (1945)

Annie Allen (1949) - Pulitzer Prize (first African-American to win it)

The Bean Eater (1960)

In The Mecca (1968)

Riot (1970)

Gwendolyn Brooks Significance

Early poems that are interesting on formal, technical level - later poems are held together by striking, powerful, authentic voice rather than traditional form

A lot of alliteration and unusual rhymes

Movement from early work that was meant to “vivify the universal fact” - later poems she admitted sacrificed complexity for accessibility - poetry for the black underclass

Charles Olson

• Grew up in Worcester, MA - summered with family in Gloucester

• Strong student - worked on a doctorate in American Civilization at Harvard - quit when he broke down over revisions of his dissertation

• After publishing a few poems - influential book on Melville - heavily revised version of dissertation - asked to teach at Black Mountain College

• Publishes Projective Verse - continues working at BMC - serving as rector until it closes in 57

• Maximus Poems are success - becomes a celebrity of the avant-garde and is asked to speak at various events and to take teaching positions - becomes a sage-like figure for many young poets of the 60s

Charles Olson Works

Call Me Ishmael (1947) - an influential and unorthodox study of Herman Melville

In Cold Hell, In Thicket (1953)

The Maximus Poems (1960) - his epic, epistolary sequence

Charles Olson Significance

Projective Verse - probably the most influential essay on poetics in the latter half of 20th century - essay inspired many poets to explore new avenues of phenomenological expression

Use of the epistolary form for his epic sequences with powerful imagery

A tone has been criticized as locker-room machismo by some - didactic - sometimes confrontational

Composition by Field

writer “puts himself in the open” and “can go by no other track other than the one the poem under hand declares”

Form is never more than the extension of content

Kinetics

poem as an energy discharge, organic in that it is gathered from the poet’s environment, the line is registered through the poet’s breath, then discharged to the reader

Process

what is most important to a poem is the process of its composition, not the final product - emphasizes the “truth” of the present moment - phenomenological

Breath

poet’s own breath determines the metrics of the poem

Speed -

intensity of feeling is emphasized over exposition, meditation, restraint

Phenomenology

study of perceptual experience in its purely subjective aspect - new branch of philosophy was coming into vogue throughout the early and mid-20th centuryk

Allen Ginsberg

• Grew up in Paterson, NJ - father was a high school English teacher and poet - mother was eventually placed in a sanitarium for mental illness

• Studied under famous critic Lionel Trilling at Columbia - expelled from there in 1945 - graduated in 48 - between the years spent time in sanitarium - claimed to have had a vision of William Blake reciting “Ah, Sunflower”

• Rambunctious friends at Columbia - Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs

• Ends up in San Fran - reads “Howl” in 55 - ushers in San Francisco Renaissance

• Courts determine Howl not obscene

• Travels the world - engages heavily in political activism - studies Buddhism

• Helps found first accredited Buddhist college in US - The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poets at the Naropa Institute

• Enjoyed celebrity status throughout the last two decades of his life

Allen Ginsberg Works

Howl and Other Poems (1956)

Kaddish and Other Poems (1961)

Planet News (1968)

The Fall of America (1973)

Allen Ginsberg Significance

Whitmanesque - long lines that have a rather biblical, King James rhythm

Blakean denouncement of the “dark satanic mills” of Western consumer culture

Powerful confessionalism - unafraid to reveal his troubled psyche

Being part of the “godhead” of the Beat movement

Jeremiad

a literary work that mourns and condemns society for its evil

Anaphora

repetition of a word or phrase to begin lines of a poem

Robert Lowell

• Born into prominent Boston family which rebelled against various ways

• Transferred from Harvard to Kenyon College - studied under prominent New Critic - John Crowe Ransom

• Graduate work at Louisiana State University under tutelage of Robert Penn Warren - Cleanth Brooks

• Conscientious objector during WWII - spent time in prison

• Vociferous opponent of Vietnam War

• Like many famous poets - suffered strenuous marital relationships as well as psychological and religious turmoil

Robert Lowell Works

Lord Weary’s Castle (1947) - Pulitzer Prize - heavily religious symbolism and themes

Life Studies (1959) - conversion to confessional poetry - shook the foundations of American verse

For the Union Dead (1964) - title poem is his most beloved poem exploring American history

Notebooks 1967-1968 (1969) - non-traditional sonnets

The Dolphin (1973) - Pulitzer Prize

Robert Lowell Significance

Producing successful verse both in the highly structured, formalist mode and in the more - more loosely structured confessional mode

Being the pulse of American poetry from the late 40s through the mid 70s - perhaps America’s best postwar poet

Influence on many poets - especially in implicit endorsement of more informal verse wit the publication of Life Studies

Ability to integrate both personal and cultural history into his poems

Being an outspoken, public figure on political and social matters

Elizabeth Bishop

• Practically an orphan - lived with maternal grandparents in Nova Scotia - paternal grandparents in Worcester, MA after father died and mother sent to insane asylum

• Parents left her great wealth - after graduating from Vassar College - traveled the world

• Spent years living in Brazil after falling in love with woman who nursed her back to health - after allergic reaction to a cashew fruit

• Had close, complicated relationships with both Marianne Moore, who saw Bishop as disciple - Robert Lowell

Elizabeth Bishop Works

Poems: North and South - A Cold Spring (1955) - combination of first two books win Pulitzers

Questions of Travel (1965)

Geography III (1976)

Elizabeth Bishop Significance

Poems use geography and landscape as descriptive material - self’s relationship to these as thematic material

Well-crafted poems (she worked on some for years) that often make use of traditional forms, but yet have an air of insouciance and spontaneity

Continued dismissal of confessional poetry, even as own style tended to become more personal in later years

Key Characteristics of Confessional Poetry

Exposure of intense personal pain

Willingness to share family history

Loose, expressive style

Use of public events - social, political - as a way to ground the speaker’s identity and crises within larger contexts

Sylvia Plath

• Born and raised in MA to father who was professor of both German and entomology - mother who taught high school - father dies when she’s eight

• Fantastic student - shows promise as young writer - winning awards

• Early twenties - undergoes electro-shock therapy for depression and attempts suicide shortly thereafter

• Marries Ted Hughes - English poet

• First volume receives critical acclaim - husband’s infidelity forces separation from him - deciding factor in suicide in 63

Sylvia Plath Works

The Colossus (1960)

The Bell Jar (1963) - novel

Ariel (1965) - posthumous

Sylvia Plath Significance

Poems that demonstrate technical skill with traditional verse forms - which lack restraint in emotion, tone, and sensibility

Being either herald for feminist movement through daring poems of psychological complexity that respond to unfair treatment of women by all kinds of patriarchal institutions (husbands, fathers, churches)

Or, obviously skilled but sadly mixed-up young lady who was insufferably egocentric and childish

Adrienne Rich

• Born in Baltimore, MD - medical doctor father and a mother who was gifted pianist

• Recognized as poetic talent in restrained, formalist, New Critical vein

• Less formal, confessional, Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law is roundly denounced as failure

• Begins teaching in remedial English program for poor students in NY and increasingly involved in political movements

• Feeling her marriage implicated her in inescapably patriarchal institution - put her at odds, philosophically, with feminist politics, leaves her husband - months later, he commits suicide

• Begins committed lesbian relationship with editor Michelle Cliff

• Been tireless advocate for what she calls the dispossessed of the country - poor, racial minorities, women, and LGBT

Adrienne Rich Works

The Diamond Cutters (1953) - formalist poetry

Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law (1963)

The Will to Change (1971)

Diving into the Wreck (1973)

Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976) - influential prose work

An Atlas of the Difficult World (1991)

Dark Fields of the Republic (1995)

Adrienne Rich Significance

Being one of the foremost politically engaged poets of era with poems that powerfully express dissatisfaction with the status quo

Serious tone (some say too serious) that often challenges readers as they are confronted with often unpleasant images of American reality

Being important cultural critic in prose as well as poetry - “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence”

Identity Poetics

poetry that celebrates cultural heritage or which takes as a basic theme the poet’s cultural affiliations as woman, Native American, African American, Chicano American, LGBT - poetry often explicitly supports the aims of as well as more radical political agendas

Frank O’Hara

• Born in Baltimore, MD - raised in Worcester, MA

• Serves in Navy

• Earns a BA from Harvard

• Earns MA in Comparative Literature from U of Michigan - moves to NY and works at the Museum of Modern Art

• Becomes associate editor of Art News - which he often wrote

• Dies from complications resulting from being hit by a dune buggy

Frank O’Hara Works

A City Winter and Other Poems (1952)

Meditations in an Emergency (1956)

Second Avenue (1960)

Lunch Poems (1964)

Frank O’Hara Significance

“Personism” - poetry that seems informal, breezy, conversational, cordial, and fun

Sense of humor that often shines through poems

Poems that, though casual and humorous, often end in a kind of bittersweet wisdom

John Ashbery

• Born in Rochester, NY - attends an all-boys academy, graduates from Harvard in 1949, and from Columbia in 1951

• Lives in France - works as an editor for European edition of NY Herald Tribune

• Executive editor of Art News

• Professor of English at Brooklyn College and art critic for Newseek

John Ashbery Works

The Tennis Court Oath (1962)

A Double Dream of Spring (1970) - includes “Soonest Mended” and “Farm Implements”

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975) - Pulitzer Prize

Houseboat Days (1977)

A Wave (1985)

Flow Chart (1991) - book-length poem

John Ashbery Significance

Generally unserious attitude of O’Hara - but with more of philosophical bite

Quick shifts in focus, tone, diction, theme - almost imperceptibly moves from concept to unrelated concept

Poems that embrace everything from high-toned philosophical and poetic rhetoric to cliche and pop-culture references

Being poet who perhaps best represents the postmodern impulse in literature in his nonchalant attitude toward all things artistic and philosophical (despite his obvious facility with the discourse of these disciplines) - blending of the sacred and profane, the high-brow and low-brow