Situating Poetry

<p><b>A retelling of American modernism through the lines of solidarity and division within and among ethnic and religious identities found in poetry.</b></p><p>What happens if we approach the reading and writing of poetry not as an individual act but as a public one? Answering this question challenges common assumptions about modern poetry and requires that we explore the important questions that define genre: Where is this poem situated and how did it get there?</p><p>Joshua Logan Wall's <i>Situating Poetry</i> studies five poets of the New York literary scene rarely considered together: James Weldon Johnson Charles Reznikoff Lola Ridge Louis Zukofsky and Robert Hayden. Charting their works and careers from 1910-1940 Wall illustrates how these politically marginalized writers from drastically different religious backgrounds wrestled with their status as American outsiders. These poets produced a secularized version of America in which poetry rather than God governed individual obligations to one another across multiethnic barriers.</p><p>Adopting a multiethnic and pluralist approach Wall argues that each of these poets--two Black two Jewish and one Irish-American anarchist--shares a desire to create more truly democratic communities through art and through the covenantal publics created by their poems despite otherwise sitting uncomfortably at best within a more standard literary history. In this unique account of American modernist poetics religious pluralism creates a lens through which to consider the bounds of solidarity and division within and among ethnic identities and their corresponding literatures.</p>