Handmade by Poverty: Worker Correspondence, Objectivist Poetics and the Pathos of the Readymade

2015 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 1089-1107 ◽  
Author(s):  
SIMON COOPER
Keyword(s):  
Free Verse ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Louis Zukofsky ◽  
George Oppen ◽  
Current Thinking ◽  
Charles Reznikoff ◽  
Found Poetry ◽  
Literary Left ◽  
The Way ◽  
Radical Left

Worker correspondence was a form of found poetry employed by radical left writers during the 1930s. Readers' letters to publications such as New Masses and the Daily Worker were reworked with end stops and presented as free verse. This essay examines the practice of worker correspondence as a form of readymade, a consciously avant-gardist collision of politics and “high” culture. This examination is put forward as a reflection on current thinking on the literary left of the Depression decade and – along the way – suggests points of contact with the Objectivist poetics of George Oppen, Louis Zukofsky and Charles Reznikoff.

The Objectivists

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Jaussen
Keyword(s):  
Second Generation ◽  
William Carlos Williams ◽  
Louis Zukofsky ◽  
George Oppen ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
Charles Reznikoff ◽  
Lorine Niedecker ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Many ◽  
First And Second Generation

The Objectivist poets were a group of first- and second-generation modernist writers who emerged in the USA during the 1930s. The writers most commonly associated with the movement are Louis Zukofsky (who first used the term ‘objectivist’ to describe poetry), Charles Reznikoff, George Oppen, Charles Rakosi, the British poet Basil Bunting, and Lorine Niedecker (other poets, such as William Carlos Williams, however, were published under the banner of ‘objectivist’). Most objectivist writing was characterized by an attention to specific particulars and the belief that poems could be material or social objects. Beyond these broad tendencies, however, each writer associated with the movement offered different definitions of ‘objectivist,’ and developed divergent writing practices. Consequently, the term has historical, critical, and evolutionary implications, referring both to specific literary publications, a core of poets whose relationships and affinities continued beyond the early 1930s, and the many subsequent attempts by poets and critics to use ‘objectivist’ as a critical concept.

Objectivity and Objectivities

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benoît Turquety
Keyword(s):  
Ezra Pound ◽  
William Carlos Williams ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Louis Zukofsky ◽  
George Oppen ◽  
Charles Reznikoff ◽  
History Of

This chapter defines what the concept of “objectivity” meant for Straub and Huillet and the history and recurrence of the term in modern literature. It details the history of the Objectivists, a group of formally radical, leftist, and mainly Jewish poets who emerged in 1930s America under the influence of William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound and whose major representatives include Louis Zukofsky, George Oppen, and Charles Reznikoff. They received little attention in their time and only marginal attention decades later, but their working methods and philosophies are strikingly similar to the cinematic practices of Huillet and Straub.

What Is the Tradition of Chinese Prose Poetry?

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Admussen
Keyword(s):  
Prose Poetry ◽  
State Socialism ◽  
Free Verse ◽  
Rabindranath Tagore ◽  
Fourth Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
May Fourth ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines, rejects, and revises the traditional history of the genre of prose poetry. Through a reading of Agamben, it demonstrates that during the May Fourth period, writers called a wide variety of work by the name prose poetry, including lineated free verse, lyric essays, and even fiction. By contrast, the writers of the 1950s wrote generically coherent work, and in the 1980s those same writers produced the focused, meaningful genre definitions that we use today. Because contemporary prose poetry has its roots in the obedient socialist poetry of the 1950s, it is not an inherently subversive form; its acts of refusal often serve to humanize or personalize the dictates of state socialism. The end of the chapter finds that the greatest stylistic influence on early prose poetry were Bing Xin’s translations of Rabindranath Tagore, and the way she made his transcendental music into vernacular prose.

scholarly journals Beaches as borders and Beaches overcoming Borders: An Appeal of the Humanities for more Humanity

Oceánide ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 72-77
Author(s):  
Peter Osterreid
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Ivory Tower ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Practical Impact ◽  
The Way

This article investigates the cultural potential of the beach as a concrete place, a meaning-laden space, and finally as a metaphorical setting of idealistic vision. In conjunction with the politically heated dimension of beaches as borders to fugitives, the relevance that the humanities play in society is discussed placing particular emphasis on the role of cultural studies. Quite a number of cultural products both from the canon of high culture and from popular culture reaching wider audiences will be examined in the way they centre on the pivot of the beach. Cultural studies, it will turn out, is able to significantly contribute to discussions on morals and, beyond that, to the question of what attitudes in Western societies can be considered ethically acceptable. Thus, in contrast to many other academic disciplines, cultural studies is closely linked to reality and politics so that it is a discipline away from the ivory tower of academia because it deals with life and, most importantly, can have a practical impact on it.

Skills and Concepts for Ethics beyond the Lifespan

2020 ◽  
pp. 137-150
Author(s):  
Larry R. Churchill
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Ethical Problem ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Current Thinking ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Mechanistic View ◽  
The Way

The skills and concepts presented in previous chapters are here illustrated for their relevance for the problem of global warming, a calamity whose full effects will occur beyond the lifespan of many readers. This is arguably the most urgent ethical problem we now face. Five debilitating features of our current thinking are described: our focus on the present; political ineptness; the idea that humans are the crown of the creation; consumerism; and our mechanistic view of nature, including our own physical bodies. It is argued that the way forward is not through correcting our concepts but recognizing our grounding in Earth and embracing it. This kind of love of Earth and other life forms is related to but distinguished from that of scientists such as E. O. Wilson and Stephen J. Gould.

The Oxford Handbook of the Ancien Régime

2012 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Precise Definition ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
Current Thinking ◽  
New Directions ◽  
The World ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
The Way

In this book, a team of contributors surveys and presents current thinking about the world of pre-revolutionary France and Europe. The idea of the Ancien Régime was invented by the French revolutionaries to define what they hoped to destroy and replace. But it was not a precise definition, and although historians have found it conceptually useful, there is wide disagreement about what the Ancien Régime's main features were, how they worked, how old they were, how far they stretched, how dynamic or inert they were, and how far the revolutionaries succeeded in their ambitions to eradicate them. In this collection, old and newer areas of research into the Ancien Régime are presented and assessed, and there has been no attempt to impose any sort of consensus. The result shows what a lively field of historical enquiry the Ancien Régime remains, and points the way towards a range of promising new directions for thinking and writing about the intriguing complex of historical problems that it continues to pose.

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