A ground-breaking analysis of the short form lineage in twentieth-century American poetry Proposes a new genealogy of 20th century and contemporary American verse Contains in-depth discussion of key ...American poets and movements Will appeal to graduates and scholars in both the modernist and contemporary fieldsReading a century of American poetry through the prism of short form, this book analyses the centrality of an aesthetic of brevity to American modernist verse. It begins with Imagism and devotes chapters to William Carlos Williams, George Oppen, Lorine Niedecker, Robert Creeley, Larry Eigner, Robert Grenier and Rae Armantrout. Montgomery combines his larger argument, which takes issue with epic-driven narratives of Modernist poetry, with sensitive and original readings of numerous short and short-lined poems. Suggesting a reappraisal of key movements as objectivism, Black Mountain poetry and Language Writing, he opens new lines of discussion around the major poets of the period
Three modernist women, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961), Mina Loy (1882-1966), and Nancy Cunard (1896-1965), came to define the interwar avant-garde through their experimental writing and ...unconventional pursuits. In Staging Modernist Lives, Sasha Colby dramatizes these women's lives and writing in three new plays that traverse the origins of modernism, Parisian literary circles, two world wars, the Spanish Civil War, and race and gender relations in the first half of the twentieth century. Leveraging each writer's autobiographical materials, the plays explore the work of H.D., Loy, and Cunard as artists, publishers, and activists, their quests for self-definition amid political and historical upheaval, and their development as modernists among mentors, detractors, lovers, and friends including Bryher Ellerman, Ezra Pound, Sigmund Freud, Gertrude Stein, Arthur Cravan, D.H. Lawrence, and Pablo Neruda. Navigating the emerging field of research-creation, Staging Modernist Lives maps the critical terrain for dramatized literary inquiry. Bridging scholarship and creative practice, extant biographical drama and the possibilities of research-theatre, Staging Modernist Lives demonstrates how performance can deliver literary history to new audiences - and how research in turn reinvigorates itself through performance.
H.D. and Modernity Aji, Hélène; Cazé, Antoine; Derail-Imbert, Agnès ...
02/2014
Book
En 1912, sous l’impulsion d’Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle devient « H.D. Imagiste », et son nom, l’éternelle pierre de touche d’un des mouvements fondateurs du premier modernisme. Pourtant, Hilda ...Doolittle est, dans la durée, l’auteur d’une œuvre riche et diversifiée (poésie, essais, fiction, traduction, écrits autobiographiques), qui traverse un demi-siècle chaotique, de son entrée sur la scène littéraire dans les pages de la revue Poetry en janvier 1913 à sa mort en 1961.
Comment cerner les rapports ambivalents qui s’établissent entre la fascination qu’entretient H.D. pour les cultures antiques et sa confrontation quotidienne avec une modernité déroutante, quand elle n’est pas radicalement déstabilisante ?
Helléniste accomplie, traductrice d’Euripide, passionnée de religion et de mythologie, H.D. situe l’ensemble de son œuvre sous l’égide d’Hermès, le dieu messager cryptique. De « Hermes of the Ways » (1913) à Hermetic Definition et à Helen in Egypt (1961), H.D. compose des textes complexes où la modernité se donne à comprendre entre les lignes (entre les signes) de l’atavisme archaïque, livrant une nouvelle lecture du monde, à la fois révélatoire et médusante.
In 1912, at Ezra Pound’s instigation, Hilda Doolittle became “H.D. Imagiste”, her name forever tied to one of the crucial, albeit short-lived aesthetic movements adumbrating High Modernism. Yet H.D. subsequently produced a rich and varied body of work comprising poetry, essays, translations, fiction and autobiographical writings, spanning an exceptionally chaotic half-century, from her first poems published in the January 1913 issue of Poetryuntil her death in 1961.
How should one appraise the ambivalence lying in H.D.’s fascination for ancient cultures and her daily struggle with a baffling, at times even deeply unsettling modernity? A gifted classicist and translator of Euripides with a passion for religions and mythologies, H.D. places her whole literary production under the sign of Hermes, the cryptic god messenger. From “Hermes of the Ways” (1913) to Hermetic Definition and Helen in Egypt (1961), H.D. produces a whole range of complex writings, where modernity emerges between the lines (between the signs) of her atavistic archaism, thereby offering a new hermeneutics, both revelatory and mesmerizing.
