Synopses & Reviews
A study of relations between American radicalism and modernism in the 1930s, focusing on Wallace Stevens.
Synopsis
This book is about the experience of the American modernist poet Wallace Stevens in the 1930s. Using the archives of many little-known political poets, Alan Filreis demonstrates that the radicals knew and appreciated modernism more than has been generally recognised, and that Stevens's poetry - as well as that of other then-eminent modernists, was significantly influenced by political poets and critics on the left.
Synopsis
This book is about the experience of the American modernist poet Wallace Stevens in the 1930s. Using the archives of many little-known political poets, Alan Filreis demonstrates that the radicals knew and appreciated modernism more than has been generally recognised, and that Stevens's poetry - as well as that of other then-eminent modernists, was significantly influenced by political poets and critics on the left.
Synopsis
'Part biography and part literary history, this book is about the experience of the American modernist poet Wallace Stevens in the 1930s. Using the archives of many little-known political poets, Alan Filreis demonstrates that the radicals knew and appreciated modernism more than has been generally recognised, and that Stevens\'s poetry - as well as that of other then-eminent modernists was significantly influenced by political poets and critics on the left. This book is a contribution to the cultural history of the American 1930s as well as a novel approach to an oft-studied figure.\n
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Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 293-365) and index.
Table of Contents
List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. Which side are you on?; Part I. Arrogations: 2. The poet and the depression; 3. What superb mechanics; Part II. Convergences: 4. The rage for order; 5. Turmoil in the middle ground: politicizing the lyric; 6. Toward a rhyming of opposites: 'Owl's Clover'; 7. A million people on one string; Notes; Index.