Poetic Obligation: Ethics in Experimental American Poetry after 1945

283 Pages·2008·1.23 MB·English

by  G. Matthew Jenkins

literary criticism
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With implications for a host of social “This is a very fine study of the complex . m poetic obligation
issues, including ethnicity and immigration, issues surrounding an ethical practice of a
t ethics in experimental american
t poetic obligation
economic inequities, and human rights,
American avant-garde poetry. In both its h
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Jenkins’s imaginative reconciliation of poetry
theoretical model centering on ethics and w
by g. matthew jenkins
and ethics will provide stimulating reading for
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its attention to a range of authors from e ethics in experimental
teachers and scholars of American literature n
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Oppen to Hejinian, Poetic Obligation has t k Since at least the time of Plato’s Republic,
as well as advocates and devotees of poetry h i american poetry after 1945
n the relationship between poetry and ethics
something important to say.” i
in general. Poetic Obligation marshals ample c s
s has been troubled. Through the prism of
evidence that poetry matters and continues to — Peter Baker, author, iP g. matthew jenkins
n what has been called the “new” ethical
speak to the important issues of our day. Obdurate Brilliance O
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G. Matthew Jenkins is an assistant Through the prism of what “This is an interesting and important erT the works of Objectivists, Black Mountain
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professor in the Department of English mI
project. That reading poststructuralist
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and director of the writing program at the e
ethical criticism, inspired poetries challenges prior ways of n their full potential to reshape this ancient
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construing the relation of ethics relationship.
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poets, and Language poets— understanding of how changes in nT
of Louis Zukofsky, Charles Reznikoff, George
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particularly Louis Zukofsky, conceptualizing ethical categories might oI
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Charles Reznikoff, George elucidate new poetics, and vice versa.” trN Howe, and Lyn Hejinian in terms of the
Photo © Thinkstock Oppen, Edward Dorn, Robert — Joan Retallack, author, Memnoir y philosophical notion of ethical obligation to
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Duncan, Susan Howe, and Lyn and The Poethical Wager f the Other in language. Jenkins’s historical
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full potential to reshape the university of iowa press 19 breadth of ethical topics that have driven
4 theoretical debate since the end of World
ancient relationship between 5
www.uiowapress.org
War II. This original approach establishes an
poetry and ethics.
ethical lineage in the works of twentieth-
century experimental poets, creating a way
to reconcile the breach between poetry and
the issue of ethics in literature at large.
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University of Iowa Press
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University of Iowa Press, Iowa City 52242
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Contents
Preface ix
Introduction: The Double-Double Turn 1
part 1 Objectivist Poethics 23
1. Saying Obligation: George Oppen’sOf Being Numerous 33
2. A Phenomenology of Judgment: Charles Reznikoff’s Holocaust 61
part 2 Excess and Eros 87
3. The Ethics of Excess: Edward Dorn’s Gunslinger 91
4. The Body Ethical: Robert Duncan’s Passages 118
part 3 An Ethics of Sexual Alterity 151
5. The Nearness of Poetry: Susan Howe’s The Nonconformist’s Memorial 159
6. Permeable Ethics: Lyn Hejinian’s The Cell 182
Conclusion: What Difference Does Poetic Obligation Make? 215
Notes 229
Bibliography 243
Index 259

Preface
audrey.I do not know what ‘poetical’ is. Is it honest in deed and
word? Is it a true thing?
touchstone.No, truly; for the truest poetry is the most
feigning, and lovers are given to poetry; and what they
swear in poetry may be said as lovers they do feign.
(As You Like It,III.iii)
In Plato’s Republic,Socrates famously perpetuates what he calls
“the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry” by banishing imitative
poetry from the real work of society—the pursuit of the True, the Just, and
the Good. These values, of course, are best pursued by philosophers who
by all means should rule the new State. In that text, Socrates essentially
lays claim to ethics and justice as the sole propriety of philosophy, which
unfailingly avoids the emotionalism and ruse inherent in other forms of dis-
course.1Poetry, he argues, is the worst of any of the arts because it is too far
removed from truth to do any good in the polis, unless that be singing the
epic tales of military heroes who bring glory to the State and to higher truth.
In fact, poetry distracts from the pursuit of justice and virtue.2 For many
centuries, as Shakespeare’s satire of Touchstone’s position above indicates,
this interpretation of Plato’s rejection of poetry has dominated not only the
theory and criticism of poetry but its public perception as well.
But beginning with the likes of Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heideg-
ger, philosophy increasingly draws, particularly after World War II, on art
and literature for its inspiration and models for new ways of thinking. For
Heidegger, it is Rainer Maria Rilke and Heinrich Heine, for Jacques Derrida
it is Francis Ponge, for Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, it is Franz Kafka
and Samuel Beckett, for Julia Kristeva it is James Joyce and Stéphane Mal-
larmé. In conjunction with many avant-garde American poets’ penchant for
theory, the new respect for the critical power of creative discourse within
twentieth-century philosophy is a key condition in the possibility of a new
ethics and poetics.3
To chart this changing relation between poetry and philosophy, this proj-
ect explores a “double-double turn” in writing and thought circa 1960that