Poets Beyond the Barricade: Rhetoric, Citizenship, and Dissent after 1960

198 Pages·2012·2.646 MB·English

by  Dale Martin Smith

Poets Beyond the Barricade
Rhetoric, Culture, and Social Critique
Series Editor
John Louis Lucaites
Editorial Board
Richard Bauman
Barbara Biesecker
Carole Blair
Dilip Gaonkar
Robert Hariman
Steven Mailloux
Raymie E. McKerrow
Toby Miller
Austin Sarat
Janet Staiger
Barbie Zelizer
Poets Beyond the Barricade
Rhetoric, Citizenship, and Dissent
after 1960
DALE M. SMiTH
THE UnivERSiTy of ALABAMA PRESS
Tuscaloosa
Copyright © 2012
The University of Alabama Press
Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487- 0380
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Typeface: Bembo
∞
The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of
American national Standard for information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, AnSi Z39.48- 1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smith, Dale, 1967–
Poets beyond the barricade : rhetoric, citizenship, and dissent after 1960 / Dale M.
Smith.
p. cm. — (Rhetoric, culture, and social critique)
includes bibliographical references and index.
iSBn 978-0-8173-1749-2 (cloth : alk. paper) — iSBn 978-0-8173-8592-7 (elec-
tronic) 1. Protest poetry, American—History and criticism. 2. American poetry—
20th century—History and criticism. 3. American poetry—21st century—History
and criticism. 4. Literature and society—United States. 5. Politics and literature—
United States. 6. War and literature—United States. 7. Dissenters—United States. 8.
Persuasion (Rhetoric) in literature. 9. Persuasion (Psychology) in literature. 10. Poets,
American—20th century—Political and social views. i. Title.
PS309.P7.S65 2012
811′.54093587392—dc23
2011027438
Cover image: “Protest,” Jaume ventura, 2006
Cover design: Suloni Robertson
it is that we are told we are free, and that we are shaping
our common destiny; yet, with varying force, many of us break
through to the conviction that the pattern of pub lic activity has,
in the end, very little to do with our private desires. indeed the main
modern force of the distinction between “the individual”
and “society” springs from this feeling.
—Raymond Williams, from The Long Revolution (1961)
The nation is like our selves, together
seen in our various scenes, sets where ever we are
what ever we are doing, is what the nation
is
doing
or
not doing
is what the nation
is
being
or not being
—Amiri Baraka, from “The nation is Like ourselves” (1970)

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
introduction 1
1. “Dear Gloucester” 22
2. Rhetorics of “Advantage” and “Pure Persuasion”: Robert Duncan,
Denise Levertov, and vietnam 48
3. Public Witness/Public Mind: Media, Citizenship, and Dissent in the
Poetry of Lorenzo Thomas and Edward Dorn 75
4. Poets Against War 109
Afterword: Poetry as a Modality of Rhetoric in Modernist
inquiry 135
notes 139
Bibliography 169
index 177

Acknowledgments
Poets Beyond the Barricade addresses the rhet ori cal and cultural strategies of
poetry during an era in which revolutionary events are noticeably absent.
As i stress throughout this book, poetry after 1960, when used to respond
to pub lic situations, intervenes to engage our awareness, to challenge our
assumptions about civic space and civil action, and to provoke us to act on
behalf of our convictions. While writing this book, i often recalled those
moments in my own experience when i had been moved by words i en-
countered in a poem and had thus been urged toward some better attitude
or apprehension of the ethical possibilities that existed for me in pub lic
contexts. if, as Kenneth Burke argues, literature is “equipment for living,”
then i am gratified to have encountered it through the attentive efforts of
my teachers and friends—men and women who took seriously the inqui-
ries of art that alerted me to self-c apacities i had yet to realize. it is, per-
haps, this constant tension between the personal and public, between com-
munal enjoyment and popular comprehension that drew me into this study.
So in a sense, it is to the deliberate, though often random, encounters with
the authors and instructors of my adolescence and undergraduate years that
i owe the most gratitude for this project.
Continuing in this vein of camaraderie and social exchange, many friends,
colleagues, and teachers have read portions of this manuscript as it devel-
oped along the way. But i want to give special thanks to Jeffrey Walker,
whose care and attention to this project helped me realize the full scope
of my arguments throughout the writing process. His own work in rheto-
ric and poetics provided me with a model for scholarly investigation, and
his encouragement along the way has been invaluable. i would also like to
thank Marjorie Perloff for her critical insights and challenges through many
stages of this project, and Robert J. Bertholf for his conversations and com-
ments that helped me more carefully attend the disciplinary divisions be-
tween rheto ric and literature. on that account, too, i want to acknowledge