Poets Beyond the Barricade: Rhetoric, Citizenship, and Dissent after 1960 PDF
Preview Poets Beyond the Barricade: Rhetoric, Citizenship, and Dissent after 1960
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
The list of books you might like
