Mosaic of Fire

Caroline Maun

Description

Mosaic of Fire examines the personal and artistic interactions of four innovative American modernist women writers—Lola Ridge, Evelyn Scott, Charlotte Wilder, and Kay Boyle—all active in the Greenwich Village cultural milieu of the first half of the twentieth century. Caroline Maun traces the mutually constructive, mentoring relationships through which these writers fostered each other's artistic endeavors and highlights the ways in which their lives and works illustrate issues common to women writers of the modernist era.

The feminist vision of poet-activist and editor Lola Ridge led her to form friendships with women writers of considerable talent, influencing this circle with the aesthetic and feminist principles outlined in her 1919 lecture, "Woman and the Creative Will." Ridge first encountered the work of Evelyn Scott when she accepted several of Scott's poems for publication in Others, and wrote a favorable review of her novel The Narrow House. Ridge also took notice of novice writer Kay Boyle shortly after Boyle's arrival in New York, hiring Boyle as an assistant at Broom. Almost a decade later, Scott introduced poet Charlotte Wilder to Ridge, inaugurating a sustaining friendship between the two.

Mosaic of Fire examines how each of these writers was energized by the aesthetic innovations that characterized the modernist period and how each was also attentive to her writing as a method to encourage social change. Maun maps the ebb and flow of their friendships and careers, documenting the sometimes unequal nature of support and affection across this group of talented women artists.

Sujets

• Women Authors
• Literary Criticism
• América
• Burnt Norton
• The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry
• Jane Heap
• The Golden Bowl
• Muriel Rukeyser
• Cleanth Brooks
• General officer
• Surrealism
• Luddite
• Poetry
• General
• Christina Rossetti
• American
• H.D.
• Conrad Aiken
• Hart Crane
• Djuna Barnes
• Theodore Dreiser
• From Hell
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Luddisme
• Allan Bloom

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 23 janvier 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781611172676
• Langue: English

Extrait

Mosaic of Fire
Mosaic of Fire
T HE W ORK OF L OLA R IDGE , E VELYN S COTT , C HARLOTTE W ILDER , and K AY B OYLE
Caroline Maun

T HE U NIVERSITY OF S OUTH C AROLINA P RESS
2012 University of South Carolina
Cloth edition published by the University of South Carolina Press, 2012
Ebook edition published in Columbia, South Carolina, by the University of South Carolina Press, 2013
www.sc.edu/uscpress
22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition as follows:
Maun, Caroline C., 1968-
Mosaic of fire : the work of Lola Ridge, Evelyn Scott,
Charlotte Wilder, and Kay Boyle / Caroline Maun.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61117-086-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. American poetry-Women authors-History and criticism. 2. American poetry-New York (State)-New York-History and criticism. 3. Greenwich Village (New York, N.Y.)-Intellectual life-20th century. I. Title.
PS151.M38 2012
811.009 9287-dc23
2012011196
ISBN 978-1-61117-267-6 (ebook)
This book is dedicated to
Laurette Marie L vesque Maun
(1931-2010)
and Dorothy McInnis Scura
(1933-2009)
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
One
Imagism, Socially Engaged Poetry, and Lola Ridge
Two
Unwieldy with enormous births : Lola Ridge and Evelyn Scott
Three
Women with shining secrets in their eyes : Lola Ridge and Kay Boyle
Four
Important Gifts: Evelyn Scott and Kay Boyle
Five
The mind spins from the mind : Charlotte Wilder and Evelyn Scott
Six
Reflecting bright pain : The Later Poetry of Evelyn Scott
Appendix: The Book of Cincinnati
Kay Boyle
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book was born out of my interest in the Evelyn Scott archives, introduced to me by Robert Welker (1924-2008), Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Welker wrote a 1958 dissertation on Scott, and at her death in 1963 he received many of her effects from her widower, British novelist John Metcalfe. Welker stored papers he received after Evelyn Scott s death in a carriage house at his home in the Twickenham district of Huntsville, Alabama, and when I completed research for my Ph.D., he donated them to the University of Tennessee Libraries, Special Collections, where they are open for research. It was at that carriage house in Huntsville that I first was introduced to Scott and her circle. Reading their surviving letters, I was struck by the level of engagement she shared with her closest female friends.
My subsequent inquiries led me to other library archives. I am grateful to librarians at the New York Public Library, the Morris Library at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, and the State Library of New South Wales. I extend particular thanks to Bill Eigelsbach, University of Tennessee Libraries, Special Collections; Diane Ducharme and Naomi Saito of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Lynda Leahy of the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University; Leslie Fields at the Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections; Richard Workman of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin; and Zephorene Stickney of the Marion B. Gebbie Archives and Special Collections at Madeline Clark Wallace Library, Wheaton College. Karen Kukil of the Wil liam Allan Neilson Library, Smith College, extended outstanding hospitality. I also thank scholars Thomas Austenfeld, John E. Bassett, Michele Leggott, Sandra Spanier, and Mary Wheeling White for information and encouragement.
Those responsible for the Ridge, Scott, Wilder, and Boyle Estates have been extraordinarily generous in granting permissions. I am fortunate in the friendships of Denise Scott Fears, Elaine Sproat, Ian von Franckenstein, and Tappan Wilder.
Quotations from the works of Lola Ridge are by the kind permission of the Lola Ridge Estate; quotations from Evelyn Scott s writings are by the kind permission of the Paula Scott Estate; quotations from Kay Boyle s works are copyright Kay Boyle, reprinted by permission of the Estate of Kay Boyle. The un published letters, writings, and poems of Charlotte Elizabeth Wilder are published with the consent of the Wilder Family LLC c/o the Barbara Hogenson Agency and courtesy of the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. The unpublished letters of Isabella T. N. Wilder are published with the consent of the Wilder Family LLC c/o the Barbara Hogenson Agency and courtesy of the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The unpublished letters of Amos Niven Wilder are published with the consent of the Wilder Family LLC c/o the Barbara Hogenson Agency and courtesy of the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Quotations from The Collected Poems of Evelyn Scott are copyright 2005 National Poetry Foundation, reprinted with permission. Passages of letters by Lola Ridge, Evelyn Scott, and Kay Boyle that are housed at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center are reprinted with permission. Generous permission to publish materials by Ridge, Scott, and Boyle in the Lola Ridge Papers was granted by the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts.
An earlier version of chapter 2 appeared as The Loneliness That Sings: Evelyn Scott s Precipitations in Evelyn Scott: Recovering a Lost Modernist, edited by Dorothy M. Scura and Paul C. Jones (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2001) and the revised version is printed here with the permission of the University of Tennessee Press.
Jim Denton and Linda Fogle of University of South Carolina Press have been outstanding to work with. I could not have invented better editors.
At a key time in my research, I received financial assistance from an Open Grant from the Humanities Center at Wayne State University. I thank the director, Walter Edwards, and I am also grateful for a year-long research fellowship in that oasis for scholarship.
I have had the pleasure of working in two academic departments at Wayne State University, and each of them provided collegial support during different stages of this project. In the Department of English I am grateful for the support of my chairperson, Ellen Barton, and colleagues Bill Harris, Julie Klein, Christopher T. Leland, M. L. Liebler, Lisa Maruca, Ross Pudaloff, Barrett Watten, and Anca Vlasopolos. In the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, which closed in 2007, I was sustained by the friendship and support of my chairperson, Roslyn Schindler, and colleague James Michaels. My partner, Frank Koscielski, deserves a medal for his forbearance, good will, and excellent readership.
Two important women in my life are present in spirit through these pages. I am in debt to my professor and friend Dorothy M. Scura for suggesting this project to me. Her death in 2009 was a severe loss to the many students and colleagues influenced by her generosity, wit, and keen insight. My mother, Laurette Maun, had the opportunity to read and enjoy this book before her death in December 2010. It staggers the mind to recognize all the small and large ways in which loved ones support the writing of books. Her notes of encouragement to me about each chapter she read remain on my desk.
I NTRODUCTION
This book investigates the literary writings and friendships of a group of American women modernists during a period when their interactions and productivity were highest. For many readers Lola Ridge, Evelyn Scott, Charlotte Wilder, and Kay Boyle remain obscure. All of them were fearless in their artistic vocations.
These writers lives and work intersected at various times in New York s Greenwich Village during the 1920s, 1930s, and early 1940s, and their contact was extended through letters and visits. This book is a study of the life span of a social network embedded in broader networks that may be more familiar in narratives of modernism. In examining the writing lives, poetry, and friendships of Lola Ridge, Evelyn Scott, Charlotte Wilder, and Kay Boyle, each of whom participated in the major currents of modern American literature early in their careers, one finds they cohere as members of a network of women authors who primarily thought of themselves as professional writers, who sought to grapple with major social issues in their poetry, and who had direct, personal connections with each other that advanced their careers as writers.
Aesthetically they are linked in their use of personal voice, in their use of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction as platforms to address social justice, and in their tendencies to employ modern, experimental artistic forms in their work. Ridge, Scott, Wilder, and Boyle negotiated paths from Imagism in the early periods of their careers toward alternative aesthetics as they matured, with Ridge Scott, and Wilder moving from free verse toward more formal poetry. While each had an individual trajectory through modernism, with considerable variety in their relationships and in their politics, this study shows how they grew individually and together within the framework of the professional publishing arena and grappled with modernist issues such as machine-age industry, individualism, and depersonalization. They all faced economic hardship for choosing to be professional writers, encountered challenges to their careers unique to women artists, and sought ways to negotiate what was often rocky terrain. The toll of placing writing at the center of their lives could indeed be high in terms of economic, physical, and mental health. On occasion they contemplated other paths because the obstacles to a professional writing life were formidable. They often had nowhere to turn but to each other for the sort of emotional support needed to sustain their dreams.
Their friendships supported and i