Synopses & Reviews
Rhetoric and Sexuality explores the poetry of Hart Crane, Elizabeth Bishop, and James Merrill. Nickowitz combines a rhetorical and thematic interpretation, employing close readings and the critical lens of Freudian and Kleinian psychoanalysis, to illustrate an additional way to read American poetry. He argues that the extent to which homosexual desire is problematic for these poets compels them to formulate new ways of expressing issues of homosexuality for which they have no available words.
Rhetoric and Sexuality shows that the logic of identity in twentieth-century American poetry becomes a question of rhetoric.
Synopsis
A study of American 20th century poets Hart Crane, Elizabeth Bishop, and James Merrill.
About the Author
Peter Nickowitz’s poetry has appeared in literary magazines including
The Paris Review,
Slope, and
Barrow Street, and he was a National Poetry Series finalist. He has taught at New York University, The New School University, and The City University of New York and currently teaches at the University of Southern California. He holds a B.A. from Brandeis University and a Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University.
Table of Contents
Introduction * Chrysalis Unbound: Poems of Origin and Initiation * Anatomy of a Mother * Burnt Matches, or The Art of Love * Afterward