Making Something Happen: American Political Poetry between the World WarsUniv of North Carolina Press, 2003年1月14日 - 288页 Poetry makes nothing happen," wrote W. H. Auden in 1939, expressing a belief that came to dominate American literary institutions in the late 1940s--the idea that good poetry cannot, and should not, be politically engaged. By contrast, Michael Thurston here looks back to the 1920s and 1930s to a generation of poets who wrote with the precise hope and the deep conviction that they would move their audiences to action. He offers an engaging new look at the political poetry of Edwin Rolfe, Langston Hughes, Ezra Pound, and Muriel Rukeyser. Thurston combines close textual reading of the poems with research into their historical context to reveal how these four poets deployed the resources of tradition and experimentation to contest and redefine political common sense. In the process, he demonstrates that the aesthetic censure under which much partisan writing has labored needs dramatic revision. Although each of these poets worked with different forms and toward different ends, Thurston shows that their strategies succeed as poetry. He argues that partisan poetry demands reflection not only on how we evaluate poems but also on what we value in poems and, therefore, which poems we elevate. |
目录
1 | |
Edwin Rolfe | 42 |
Langston Hughes | 86 |
Ezra Pound | 135 |
Muriel Rukeyser | 169 |
The Age Demanded | 211 |
Notes | 223 |
249 | |
265 | |
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Adams Cantos Adams’s aesthetic African American American Culture anti-Communist anti-Semitic appear argues articulate Auden bombing book’s Canto 65 Christ in Alabama collective Communist Coughlin critical Dead death discourse discussion documentary early edited Edwin Rolfe Eliot essay example Ezra Pound Fascist figure forces Franco Gauley Bridge Hughes writes Hughes’s ibid important International Brigades Italy Jews John Jones’s Kalaidjian Langston Hughes lines literary literature Love lyric Madrid magazine Masses memory ment modern modernist Muriel Rukeyser Mussolini Negro Nelson partisan Partisan Review poem poem’s poet’s poetic poets political poetry position Pound’s proletarian published quoted race racial Rampersad readers Revolution revolutionary rhetorical rhyme Rolfe’s Rolfe’s poetry Rukeyser Sacco and Vanzetti Scottsboro Limited silicosis social songs sonnet Spain Spanish Spanish Civil War speaker specific struggle suffering testimony textual tion Tom Mooney tradition tunnel United verse voice workers wrote York