Talk to Me: An Apology for Poetry PDF
Preview Talk to Me: An Apology for Poetry
UUnniivveerrssiittyy ooff TTeennnneesssseeee,, KKnnooxxvviillllee TTRRAACCEE:: TTeennnneesssseeee RReesseeaarrcchh aanndd CCrreeaattiivvee EExxcchhaannggee Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 5-2014 TTaallkk ttoo MMee:: AAnn AAppoollooggyy ffoorr PPooeettrryy Christian Anton Gerard University of Tennessee - Knoxville, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Poetry Commons RReeccoommmmeennddeedd CCiittaattiioonn Gerard, Christian Anton, "Talk to Me: An Apology for Poetry. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2014. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/2761 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Christian Anton Gerard entitled "Talk to Me: An Apology for Poetry." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English. Arthur Smith, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Marilyn Kallet, Robert Stillman, Robert Sklenar Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official student records.) Talk to Me: An Apology for Poetry A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Christian Anton Gerard May 2014 Copyright © 2014 by Christian Anton Gerard All rights reserved. ii DEDICATION For Lucy, Without your patience, strength, encouragement, hope, and unending willingness to be my partner, this project never would have been completed. Thank you for all you are to me, for me, and with me. I love you. And for my parents, Stephen and Dedra Gerard, Thank you for giving me the gift of choice, for teaching me to believe in myself, and for your constant love, support, and encouragement. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For their time, patience, energy, criticism, and encouragement, I am deeply indebted to my teachers and mentors: Misty Anderson, Steven Bauer, Linda Gregerson, Luisa A. Igloria, Richard Jackson, Marilyn Kallet, Ron Offen, Janet Peery, Jim Reiss, Sheri Reynolds, William Pitt Root, Tim Seibles, Art Smith, Robert Stillman, Pam Uschuk, and Anthony Welch. Many, many thanks are due to the following friends who have seen these poems and this book through in part or in full in every possible capacity: Dexter L. Booth, Paula Bohince, Katherine Davis, Stephanie Dugger, Joe Hall, Natalia Holtzman, Darren Jackson, Rebecca Lauren, Andrea Nolan, Charlotte Pence, Michael C. Peterson, Josh Robbins, Mike Scalise, and Carolyn Stice. Grateful Acknowledgement is made to the editors of the following publications where these poems first appeared (sometimes in different forms or with different titles): 2014, Spring (Forthcoming): “Writing Hand” in Thrush 2014, Spring (Forthcoming): “Defense of Poetry XI; or The Poet Explaining Himself” in Thrush 2014, Spring (Forthcoming): “Defense of Poetry 1” in Post Road 2014, Spring (Forthcoming): “Defense of Poetry 2” in Post Road 2013, Fall: “Operator’s Manual” in The Collagist 2013, Fall: “Water Skiing With Robert Creeley” in The Collagist 2012, Fall: “Twenty-Something Boy Makes A Mix Tape” in B O D Y 2012, Fall: “Confessional” in B O D Y 2012, Fall: “Rhinoceri” in Pank iv ABSTRACT Talk to Me: An Apology for Poetry, explores the intersection between readers and writers of poetry in the past and the present, the idea of the teaching poet, and poetry’s more formal defenses as articulates the twenty-first century poet’s responsibility. The poems are informed by the critical introduction’s examination of Philip Sidney and Percy Shelley’s formally titled defenses of poetry alongside Milton, Wordsworth, and Whitman’s defense-prefaces as well as many individual poems participating in what I call the defense tradition: a tradition predicated on trans-historical reading practices turned writing practices; a tradition assuming poetry begets poets who beget poetry because the art is based in teaching through dialogue. The further I move into the world of English letters, the more I sense the discord (voiced or not) between those identifying as “creative writers” and “scholars.” Such discord suggests poets have stopped communing with poetry in the defense tradition, understand poetry’s defenses as historical documents, and take poetry’s cultural and educational place for granted. Such discord is indicative of the crisis I sense in poetic and educational practices reinforcing the conception of poetry as an isolated activity, which has allowed poets the possibility to disregard the reader’s place in the act of poetic making and, risky as it is to suggest, the role of craft in the poet’s act of making. I suggest, in response to such discord, that teaching writers to read and readers to write is the responsibility inherent in both poetry and the poet’s vocation. My aim is to re-open the poetic past in the contemporary moment so I am not just reading in the past, but communing with poetry’s past as a present: a practice I offer as a response to my perception that contemporary poetry is relatively defense-less. Engaging poetry trans- historically, however, highlights the teacher/writer duality so often assumed by Early Modern writers and helps defend poetry’s existence in the twenty-first century. Talk to Me relies on the dialogic nature of critical inquiry and creative making to apply the Early Modern assumptions that poetry’s ultimate end is to teach and delight. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Critical Introduction to Talk to Me: An Apology for Poetry .................................................... 1 Thesis ............................................................................................................................ 2 Inquiry: The State of the Union (Poetically Speaking) ........................................................ 4 Inquiry: What Does A Usable Past Look Like in The Present? ............................................ 7 Temporal Mash-Ups: Trans-Historicity and Poetic Defenses ............................................ 14 Inquiry: How Does the Defense Tradition Translate into Making and Teaching? ................ 26 Process and Form: The Defense Tradition at Work in My Poems ....................................... 35 Critical Introduction Works Cited ................................................................................... 55 Talk To Me: An Apology for Poetry ................................................................................... 58 Notes ......................................................................................................................... 147 Vita ............................................................................................................................... 152 vi CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO TALK TO ME: AN APOLOGY FOR POETRY 1 Thesis Talk to Me: An Apology for Poetry explores my approach to poetry and the intersection between readers and writers of poetry in the past and present, the idea of the teaching poet, and poetry’s more formal defenses as I try to articulate how I understand my responsibility as a poet in the twenty-first century. This critical introduction works in tandem with the following collection of original poems to explore my relationship to my poetic predecessors, the relationship between teaching and delight in contemporary and historical poetry, and the counterfactual (fictional)/trans-historical properties that have kept and continue to keep poetry relevant and alive in the twenty-first century. My dissertation’s primary ambition is to examine defenses of poetry in an attempt to stimulate both prose and poems that understand the past as intentionally usable as I demonstrate that, in the English tradition, defenses of poetry proceeding from Philip Sidney understand poetry as a trans-historical undertaking ultimately aimed at teaching poets to be poets. Intellectual discussions concerning the historical defenses of poetry often seek to align the defense writer’s theory with his practice, deconstruct and analyze the defense’s form/structure, or to compare and contrast other writers of the genre with the aim of producing a temporally linear understanding of English poetry’s “progression” from the early modern period to our contemporary moment. While such discussions have been productive in helping scholars understand what to do with these texts in the traditional academic setting, these discussions have done just that: relegated these texts to the traditional academic setting. The contemporary poet, though, can 2
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