The American Mode of Seeing: William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore
The water drives a wedge
Of iron through the iron edge
Of the cliff; . . .
Marianne Moore, ‘The Fish’ |
Every civilization evolves its own peculiar social practices, customs, habits of feeling and thought. American civilization is no exception. The evolution of this bundle of practices and dispositions includes specific ways of seeing. Over the nineteenth century we can begin to discern what might be called a specifically American mode of seeing (Whitman, Dickinson). In the first few decades of the twentieth century, this form of visuality was consolidated in the arts of the United States, but specifically in poetry. Imagery, the object world, the way a poem looks on the page, dis-location, the aesthetic gaze, ‘seeing eye-to-eye’, language and visual representation, and the fate of ut pictura poeisis ‘in Tennessee’ (Stevens, ‘Anecdote of the Jar’) are some of the topics we will consider. The seminar will explore these ideas with reference to the writings of William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, and Marianne Moore.
Texts:
- William Carlos Williams, Selected Poems
- Wallace Stevens, Collected Poems
- Marianne Moore, Complete Poems
Assignments:
- Two short assignments: 40% (January and February)
- One term paper: 60% (April)
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