Multicultural Poetics: Re-visioning the American Canon

Description

Argues that multiculturalism and hybridity are key components of the nation’s poetry and its culture. Contents List of Figures Preface Acknowledgments Copyright and Permissions Introduction In “the American Strain” Hybridity American Culture: a History of “Two” “Strains” “A Nation of Nations”? “Nothing is Beyond Poetry” “The Social Function of Poetry” Chapter One: Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman The “Beginners” The Hybrid Revolution “Their Presidents Shall Not Be Their Common Referee so Much as Their Poets Shall.” “A Revolution in Form and in the Traditional Conceptions of Literature Itself” “I See—New Englandly” Poetry and “Possibility” “Strange and ‘Dreadful’ to Their Place and Time” Poetic Identity “The Friendly Flowing Savage” “My Business Is Circumference” “Poets to Come” Chapter Two: William Carlos Williams “A Sort of Song” “Saxifrage is My Flower” “Are you for American Poetry or for Poetry?” Hybridity Fellow Revolutionaries A Hybrid Structure to House the American Language “We Cannot go to the Country” Pastorals and Paterson Chapter Three: Adrienne Rich “A Whole New Poetry Beginning Here” A Re-Visionary American Eve “Perpetual Translation” “Sources”: Creating a “Usable Past” Leaflets and Ghazals A “Social Instrument” in the Shape of a Woman Poet “The location of the Poet” Chapter Four: Marilyn Chin “The End of a Beginning” “We are the Ones Who are ‘Making it New’ ” A New American Mode “Blues on Yellow” Poetic Inheritance “A Portrait of the Self as Nation” “Where we Live Now” Chapter Five: Sherman Alexie “Tradition Is Repetition” “The Great American Movie” “Watch This Guy. He’s Making Myth.” “The Reservation of My Mind” “Translated from the American” “Fry Bread Power” Primitive/Progressive Car Wrecks and Ceremonies Dreaming of a “New Shape” Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index