Laureates and Heretics

Robert Archambeau

Description

Robert Archambeau examines the influence of the poet and critic Yvor Winters on his final generation of graduate students at Stanford in the early 1960s: Robert Hass, Robert Pinsky, James McMichael, John Matthias, and John Peck. Archambeau divides the poets into two groups, laureates and heretics. Hass and Pinsky, each of whom served multiple terms as United Sates Poet Laureate, achieved both popular recognition and institutional renown. In contrast, the poetic accomplishments of Matthias, McMichael, and Peck (and to some extent Winters himself), the "heretics," have not resulted in wide readership or institutional canonization.

Archambeau begins with the context of the modernist poetics Winters first espoused and then rejected. The story that follows--of how his five most prominent students accepted, rejected, or transformed Winters's poetics, and how these poets went on to greater or lesser degrees of success in the field of late twentieth-century letters—illuminates the cultural politics of poetry in our own day. The author provides close readings of poems by this diverse group of poets, places their careers and works in the context of their times, and traces the relationship between American literary history and American canons of literary taste from the 1930s to the present day. Laureates and Heretics is an important contribution to American literary history and American poetry.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• América
• John Peck
• James McMichael
• John Matthias
• Yvor Winters
• Robert Hass
• American poetry
• General officer
• Stanford University
• Poetry
• General
• American
• Robert Pinsky
• Université Stanford

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 mars 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268074708
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

L A U R E A T E S A N D H E R E T I C S S I X I N C A R E E R S A M E R I C A N P O E T R Y

R O B E R T A R C H A M B E A U

L A U R E AT E S A N D H E R E T I C S

L A U R E AT E S A N D H E R E T I C S

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







Yvor Winters

Robert Pinsky

James McMichael

Robert Hass

John Matthias

John Peck

R O B E R T A R C H A M B E A U

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana

Copyright © 2010 by University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu All Rights Reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

From “Meditation at Lagunitas” and “Picking Blackberries with a Friend Who Has Been Reading Jacques Lacan” inPraiseby Robert Hass, Copyright © 1979 by Robert Hass, by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

From “Spring Drawing” inHuman Wishesby Robert Hass, Copyright © 1989 by Robert Hass, by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Ohio University Press/Swallow Press, for poetry of John Matthias and Yvor Winters.

Excerpts from the poems by James McMichael inThe World at Large,Copyright © 1996 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

Excerpts from John Peck,Collected Shorter Poems(Evanston, Ill.: TriQuarterly, 2004), by permission of Northwestern University Press.

From “The Figured Wheel” inThe Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems, 1966 –1996by Robert Pinsky, Copyright © 1996 by Robert Pinsky, by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

From “The Geysers” inCollected Poemsby Thom Gunn, Copyright © 1994 by Thom Gunn, by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Archambeau, Robert Thomas, 1968– Laureates and heretics : six careers in American poetry / Robert Archambeau. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN13: 9780268020361 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN10: 0268020361 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. American poetry—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Winters, Yvor, 1900–1968—Influence. I. Title. PS323.5.A73 2010 811'.5—dc22 2009053249

This book is printed on recycled paper.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Works Cited

Index

247

vii

Introduction 1

Yvor Winters: A Journey into the Dark 7

Robert Pinsky: American Laureate 35

James McMichael: Caging the Demon 83

Robert Hass: Statement and Image 99

John Matthias: Homing Poems 135

John Peck: The Road to Zurich 189

Epilogue 227

235

Acknowledgments

First, my thanks go to the poets themselves: to James McMichael, for all his work; to Robert Pinsky, for meeting with me in Lake Forest and in South Bend; to Robert Hass, for talking with me in Chicago and for his comments on the manuscript; to John Peck, for his correspondence and his patience; to John Matthias, for his generosity and for his feedback along the way; and to the late Yvor Winters, for leaving his mark on all of his students. Also to Michael Anania of the University of Illinois–Chicago, who read much of the manuscript and made many important sug gestions; to Alan Golding of the University of Louisville, for his attention to the papers I gave at the Twentieth Century Litera ture Conferences over the years; to David Kellogg of Northeast ern University, for providing a paradigm and a sympathetic ear; to Charles Altieri, for finding my early work on Pinsky irritating and telling me why; to Piotr Gwiazda of the University of Mary land, for disagreeing with Altieri; and to Keith Tuma of Miami University of Ohio, the last honest man in literary criticism. I would also like to thank the contributors toWord Play Place: Es says on the Poetry of John Matthias, especially Romana Huk of the University of Notre Dame and Vincent Sherry of Washington Uni versity, without whom at least one chapter of this book would not have been possible. I would be remiss in not thanking the formidable Joe Francis Doerr, Michel Delville, and Christine Pagnoulle of the University

vii

viii

|Acknowledgments

of LiÈge, Belgium; LarsHåkan Svensson of the University of Lund, Sweden; David Sanders of Ohio University Press; Burt Kimmelman of New Jersey Institute of Technology, the editors ofMantis,theChicago Review, and theNotre Dame Review, and Don Bogen atCincinnati Re view; the staffof the Modernist Studies Association; the English De partment at the University of Copenhagen; the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of London; and all the editors and confer ence organizers who provided support for this project as it developed. I would be remiss, too, in not citing Philip Clover of Malmö Univer sity and Stefan Hollander of Finnmark University College for keeping me sane, if not always sober, during a year in Scandinavia. Let me also thank Ron Ellingson of Chicago’s muchmissed Aspidistra Bookshop, a graduate school in its own right. Closer to home, I would like to thank Lake Forest College for sup porting me in this project in a number of ways, not the least being a sabbatical and a year’s leave. At Lake Forest, let me particularly thank Dan LeMahieu for providing a model of intellectual integrity. Thanks also to Caleb Gordon, Doug Light, and Ben Golubofffor knowing how to take my mind offthe book, and to Derek Lambert for under standing the meaning ofgemeinschaft. Also Dave Park, sort of. Still closer to home, let me thank Valerie, for everything, always. This book is for her, and for Lila.

Introduction

Laureates and Heretics of the American Poetic Field

Gertrude Stein, in her essay “Composition as Explanation,” has said almost everything that I want to say in this book:

No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who also are creating their own time refuse to accept.

The things refused are only important if unexpectedly somebody happens to need them. (521)

In just two sentences, Stein lays out a whole theory of literary composition (creating the time), and a theory of canonization and marginalization, with a sidebar on the recovery of neglected works. In one sense, this book is a series of footnotes to Stein’s observations about literature and literary reputations, an applica tion in practical criticism of her condensed theory of poetry and its reception. Other recent critics share similar concerns, and one of these, David Kellogg, has been of particular use to me in the writing of this book. When I first read Kellogg’s essay “The Self in the Po etic Field,” I knew I had found a paradigm for understanding po etry that would make the project I had in mind possible. Kellogg’s

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