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The Social Life of Poetry: Appalachia, Race, and Radical Modernism PDF

281 Pages·2009·4.36 MB·English
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The Social Life of Poetry Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics promotes and pursues top- ics in the burgeoning field of twentieth- and twenty-first-century poetics. Critical and scholarly work on poetry and poetics of interest to the series includes social location in its relationships to subjectivity, to the construc- tion of authorship, to oeuvres, and to careers; poetic reception and dissem- ination (groups, movements, formations, institutions); the intersection of poetry and theory; questions about language, poetic authority, and the goals of writing; claims in poetics, impacts of social life, and the dynamics of the poetic career as these are staged and debated by poets and inside poems. Topics that are bibliographic, pedagogic, that concern the social field of poetry, and reflect on the history of poetry studies are valued as well. This series focuses both on individual poets and texts and on larger movements, poetic institutions, and questions about poetic authority, social identifica- tions, and aesthetics. Language and the Renewal of Society in Walt Whitman, Laura (Riding) Jackson, and Charles Olson: The American Cratylus By Carla Billitteri Modernism and Poetic Inspiration: The Shadow Mouth By Jed Rasula The Social Life of Poetry: Appalachia, Race, and Radical Modernism By Chris Green Also by Chris Green Radicalism in the South since Reconstruction (co-editor, 2006) Coal: A Poetry Anthology (editor, 2006) The Social Life of Poetry Appalachia, Race, and Radical Modernism Chris Green THE SOCIAL LIFE OF POETRY Copyright © Chris Green, 2009. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-61093-4 All rights reserved. First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-37656-8 ISBN 978-0-230-10169-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230101692 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Green, Chris, 1968– The social life of poetry : Appalachia, race, and radical modernism / Chris Green. p. cm.—(Modern and contemporary poetry and poetics) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. American poetry—20th century—History and criticism. 2. American poetry—Appalachian Region—History and criticism. 3. European Americans—Race identity. 4. Whites—Race identity— United States. 5. Cultural pluralism—United States—History. 6. United States—Race relations. 7. Modernism (Literature)— United States. I. Title. PS323.5G735 2009 813'.509974—dc22 2009023756 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: December 2009 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Jenny Hobson Contents List of Illustrations ix Series Editor’s Foreword xi Acknowledgments xiii Permissions xv Introduction 1 Part I Appalachia, Race, and Pluralism Chapter 1 E vangelizing an Anglo Equality (1883–1908) 17 Chapter 2 N ew York City’s Cultural Pluralists (1906–1930) 41 Chapter 3 R eactionary Regionalism versus Critical Quarterlies (1925–1945) 69 Part II The Social Life of Poetry Chapter 4 Racing the Land with Jesse Stuart’s Man with a Bull-Tongue Plow (1934) 97 Chapter 5 “ Authentic Folk Feeling” in James Still’s Hounds on the Mountain (1937) 125 Chapter 6 Rebinding “The Book of the Dead” into Muriel Rukeyser’s U.S. 1 (1938) 161 Chapter 7 The Tight Rope of Democracy and Don West’s Clods of Southern Earth (1946) 199 Notes 231 Bibliography 237 Index 261 Illustrations Figures I.1 The Social Life of Poetry 6 4.1 Front Cover of Man With a Bull-Tongue Plow 98 4.2 Page 348, Poems #677 and #678, Man With a Bull-Tongue Plow 112 4.3 Distribution of Lines-per-Poem in MWBTP 121 5.1 Front Cover of Hounds on the Mountain 126 5.2 Page 55, “Heritage,” Hounds on the Mountain 141 6.1 Front Cover of U.S. 1 162 6.2 Page 27, “Absalom,” U.S. 1 178 7.1 Front Cover of Clods of Southern Earth 200 7.2 Page 28, “What Shall a Poet Sing,” Clods of Southern Earth 201 Tables 2.1 New York Jewish Literary Publishers and Editors, 1900–1950 44 6.1 Structure of U.S. 1. 168 Series Editor’s Foreword T he Social Life of Poetry concerns the multiple dimensions and uses of U.S. poetry; it is a work contributing to our knowledge of cultural pluralism and regional diversity. Chris Green has made a model archival, textual, institutional, and cultural study of four books of progres- sive poetry coming from and standing with Appalachia—works of the 1930s and 1940s by West, Stuart, Still, and Rukeyser. Green offers the socially and politically textured story of a richly articulated circuit from production to dissemination/circulation and then to conditions of reception, at every step weighing motives, goals, contexts, and agents, and with acute scrutiny eval- uating poetry’s uses, applications, interventions in this region and beyond. Looking at socially active groups, the ideology of cultural pluralism and its defenders, educational institutions with high regional stakes, individual poetic producers, publishers involved in the marketing of mountain writ- ing, and critics and commentators interpreting texts for a variety of social goals—Green’s book illuminates the intermeshing of their resources, poli- tics, and hopes. The book reads the network of motives and outcomes with a great sense of their intricacy, treating white ethnic and African American communities in Appalachia and Jewish and progressive communities in New York and e lsewhere. Green views regionalist activist poetry as a mode of cultural intervention. This methodologically acute work of literary criti- cism in the mode of cultural studies examines a specific historical moment in which poetry became a mode of social explanation, educational enrich- ment, and local engagement. Rachel Blau DuPlessis Acknowledgments D rawing together insights from my work as a poet, a teacher of poetry (to people of all ages), an editor, a reviewer, a scholar, and a theorist, this book is the result of a single inquiry I made as a young Kentuckian in 1985: Where do I live and how does poetry live here? Foremost, I extend deep appreciation to Dale Bauer whose belief, direc- tion, laughter, and wherewithal allowed me to pursue that inquiry while working on my dissertation. I thank her for all she has done to make room for world-loving scholarship in the academy. For aid in developing the manuscript, I extend thanks to Janet Badia, Edwina Pendarvis, Jim Gifford, Erin Kazee, Susan Barnett, Thomas De Pietro, John Young, Lachlan Whalen, Even G. Ward, Jim Lorence, Rachel Rubin, Jeff Biggers, James Smethurst, Janet Eldred, and Gordon Hutner. For their help in chasing down material I could not otherwise reach, I thank Kimmerle Green, Thomas DePietro, and Craig Hobson. And for his work in making Marshall University’s English department the place that I was able (and wanted) to write this book, I extend my deep gratitude to David Hatfield. For their endless, blessed work, I extend appreciations to the ILL librar- ians at the University of Kentucky (2002–2004) and Marshall University (Fall 2004–Spring 2009), without whom this work could not have been done. I also thank Ann Salter, head librarian at Oglethorpe University, who opened up new parts of the college archives at my asking. And I heap thanks upon Donna Baker, head of special collections, at Morehead State University for her aid in my work with images of James Still’s book and for her work with Still’s and Stuart’s archives, for which she is a hero. For their grounding and guidance in Appalachian studies, I recognize Dwight Billings (whom can best be labeled a sage), Herb Reid, Shaunna Scott, Gurney Norman (whom we dare not label), and the entire Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative (past, present, and future).

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From Jewish publishers to Appalachian poets, this cultural study reveals the role of 'Southern Mountain Whites' in American racial history and poetics.
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