Poetic machinations : allegory, surrealism, and postmodern poetic form

266 Pages·2015·1.316 MB·English

by  Golston, Michael

poetic machinations
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Michael Golston
Columbia University Press New York
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p o et i c m ac h i nat i o n s
allegory, surrealism, and postmodern poetic form
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columbia university press
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new york chichester, west sussex
copyright © 2015
columbia university press
all rights reserved

Grateful acknowledgment is made Special thanks to
to reprint the following: Peter Inman, for permission to quote from
Excerpt from John Ashbery, T he Tennis Court Oath , Think of One , copyright © 1986.
© 1962 by John Ashbery. Reprinted by permission Myung Mi Kim, for permission to quote from
of Wesleyan University Press. Dura , copyright © 1998.
“From a Photograph.” By George Oppen, Craig Dworkin, for permission to quote from
from New Collected Poems , copyright © 1962 by Strand , copyright © 2005.
George Oppen. Reprinted by permission of New Charles Bernstein, for permission to quote from
Directions Publishing Corp. A Poetics , copyright © 1992.
“The Red Wheelbarrow.” By William Carlos Clark Coolidge, for permission to quote from
Williams, from T he Collected Poems : vol. 1: Own Face , copyright © 1978; Polaroid © 1975;
1909–1939, copyright © 1938 by New Directions Quartz Hearts , copyright © 1978; Smithsonian
Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of Depositions/Subject to a Film , copyright © 1980;
New Directions Publishing Corp. Space , copyright © 1970; T he Maintains ,
“Excerpt.” By Susan Howe, from P ierce-Arrow , copyright © 1974.
copyright © 1999 by Susan Howe. Reprinted by
permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. Library of Congress
Exerpts from Lorine Niedecker, C ollected Works , Cataloging-in-Publication Data
copyright © 2002. Reprinted by permission of Golston, Michael.
University of California Press. Poetic machinations : allegory, surrealism, and
All Louis Zukofsky material copyright © Paul postmodern poetic form / Michael Golston.
Zukofsky; the material may not reproduced, pages cm
quoted, or used in any manner whatsoever Includes bibliographical references and index.
without the explicit and specifi c permission ISBN 978-0-231-16430-6 (cloth : acid-free paper)—
of the copyright holder. Reprinted by permission ISBN 978-0-231-53863-3 (ebook) 1. American
of New Directions and Wesleyan University Press. poetry—20th century—History and criticism.
A version of chapter 1 was published as “Petalbent 2. Allegory. 3. Surrealism (Literature)
Devils: Louis Zukofsky, Lorine Niedecker, and the 4. Poetics. I. Title.
Surrealist Praying Mantis,” M odernism/Modernity PS323.5.g65 2015
13, no. 2 (2006): 325–347. Copyright © 2006 811′.509—dc23
The Johns Hopkins University Press. Reprinted 2014045626

with permission by The Johns Hopkins

University Press.
Columbia University Press books are printed
A version of chapter 2 was published as “At
on permanent and durable acid-free paper.
Clark Coolidge: Allegory and the Early Works,”
This book is printed on paper with
American Literary History 13, no. 2 (2001): 295–316.
recycled content.
Part of chapter 3 was published as “Mobilizing
Printed in the United States of America
Forms: Lyric, Scrolling Device, and Assembly
Lines in P. Inman’s ‘nimr,’ ” in Mark Jeffries, ed., c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

New Defi nitions of Lyric: Theory, Technology, and
References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were
Culture , 3–15 (Levittown, Pa.: Garland, 1998).
accurate at the time of writing.
Neither the author nor Columbia University Press
is responsible for URLs that may have expired or
changed since the manuscript was prepared.
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This one’s for Cork.
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Self-portrait, by the author’s father, Lawrence (Tuck) Golston (1940)
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contents
Polemical Preface ix
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction: Etymologies, 1980—the Allegorical Moment 1
1. Entomologies: Louis Zukofsky and Lorine Niedecker 43
2. Epistemologies: Clark Coolidge 67
3. A=L=L=E=G=O=R=I=E=S:
Peter Inman, Myung Mi Kim, Lyn Hejinian 101
4. Semiologies: Susan Howe 145
5. Fictocritical Postlude: The Melancholy of Conceptualism 185
Notes 197
Works Cited 231
Index 245
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polemical preface
The great misunderstandings. Yes. That’s a whole history of art, isn’t it?
—Clark Coolidge, “An Interview with Clark Coolidge”
This book sets out to describe a line or, perhaps more accurately, a practice
of postmodern American poetry that I maintain is fundamentally allegori-
cal and that early on fi nds its inspiration in certain aspects of surrealism,
to which it later maintains varying degrees of affi liation. The trope plays a
key role in American avant-garde poetry in nearly every decade from the
1930s to the present, and poets as distant in time and style as the objectivist
Lorine Niedecker, the language writer Lyn Hejinian, and the conceptualist
Craig Dworkin can, I argue, be classifi ed as allegorists. During this same
ninety-year period, allegory also consistently appears in critical discussions
and period histories: it is alternately pronounced the “armature” of mod-
ernism (Walter Benjamin, Angus Fletcher); the characteristic signature of
postmodernism (Fredric Jameson, Craig Owens); and the principal mode
of a kind of post-postmodernism (Robert Fitterman and Vanessa Place).
Every time a new direction in poetry is announced or discerned over the
past hundred years, the trope is invoked: some confi guration, whether
critical or creative, of the literary avant-garde periodically declares alle-
gory its principal mark of difference.
This claim immediately calls for qualifi cation: American avant-garde
writers have more often than not condemned allegory as artifi cial, antique,
formalist, reactionary, painterly, “European,” or otherwise degraded. The
most familiar branches of experimental or innovative poetry in America—
that is, those deriving from Ezra Pound and imagism or from the early
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