A Poetics of Impasse in Modern and Contemporary American Poetry by Susan M. Schultz

Abstract

I 152 Reviews after World War II. In opposition to thosewho deplore thekind ofnostalgia embodied in theheritage industry,or perhaps in the idyllic childhood memories celebrated by negritude poets like Senghor, he cites Svetlana Boym's recent The Future ofNostal gia, which explores theways inwhich nostalgia can be either restorative or reflective, shaping a certainway of thinkingabout a particular time and place, and granting such memories a transformative and reconstructive power. But whereas Boym focuses on artists exiled fromRussia and Eastern Europe (including Nabakov, Brodsky, Stravin sky,and Benjamin), Su takes a broad range ofCaribbean, African American, Native American, Nigerian, and British writers. Through detailed analysis of textsby Toni Morrison, JeanRhys, V. S. Naipaul, Kazuo Ishiguro, IanMcEwan, Chinua Achebe, N. Scott Momaday, JoanRiley, Leslie Marmon Silko,Wole Soyinka, Paule Marshall, and Evelyn Waugh, Su argues for theconstructive role ofnostalgia fora lostor distant homeland in establishing ethical ideals in a fragmented and dispersed society. Rejecting what he sees as an ethics centred on individualism, Su chooses amodel based on the philosophy of Levinas and his emphasis on the interactive encounters between individuals and responsibility for the 'other',while recognizing the 'other's' difference. This model works particularly well in the analysis ofMorrison, Native American, Caribbean, and Nigerian writers, but seems less appropriate to the com parison of Waugh and Ishiguro in thechapter on theBritish 'estatenovel' (which also refers to Mansefield Park and Howard's End). Su could have discussed more fully the differences between thesewriters and one might have expected him also to link this discussion to the analysis ofNaipaul's Enigma ofArrival in an earlier chapter. One difficulty in reading thisbook is itsshiftingdefinitions of 'nostalgia'. It begins by establishing place as the key point of reference, arguing persuasively for the sig nificance of 'theClearing' (as a place forcommunal gatherings and gradual healing), inMorrison's Beloved. But in the final chapter it is not place but an imagined ideal community which becomes the focus of nostalgia, Abazon inAchebe's Anthills of the Savannah and Aiyero in Soyinka's Season ofAnomy. Nevertheless, both the general argument linking specific kinds ofnostalgia with theethics ofLevinas and thedetailed analysis of thiswide range of texts are suggestive and often illuminating. UNIVERSITY OFKENT, CANTERBURY LYN INNES A Poetics of Impasse in Modern and Contemporary American Poetry. By SUSANM. SCHULTZ. Tuscaloosa: University ofAlabama Press. 2005. Viii + 247 pp. ?28.50. ISBN 978-o-8I73-5i98-4. It isno easy task to survey contemporary poetry, ofwhich there are countless practi tioners and schools. It is also a question of criticalmethod, ofwhat language we shall use in speaking of the texts of our choice. The Italian Eugenio Montale once wrote thatpoetry is in theclutches of those thatare less fittounderstand it, meaning profes sional critics.On theother hand, who but a professional critic reads 'advanced' poetry? Susan M. Schultz's A Poetics of Impasse is a good example of the ongoing debate on poetry, ofwhich it isdifficult tograsp thebeginning and the conclusion. A professor at theUniversity ofHawai'i and a poet herself, she devotes the introduction (written inverse) and Chapter 7 ('Hawai'i's Pidgin Literature, Performance, and Postcolonial ity') to the relation of poetry and academic politics, e.g. to the rightof local 'pidgin' poets tobe accepted within the 'canon'. Some of this,given thegravity of the discus sion, borders on involuntary parody, and could well be quoted in a fictional satire on academics: 'I do not want to suggest that silence, a focal point in this conversation With myself (a silent one, except for the tapping of thekeys) is a univocal I(as it were) term, for silence needs to be stripped away from silencing [... .]' (p. 21). Impasse, the MLR, I02.4, 2007 II53 titularsubject, has a notable history in twentieth-century literature,fromSam Beckett toHenry Roth. Schultz follows itspresence perceptively in some figuresofmajor, or disputed, standing: the little-known last poems ofHart Crane, thatattempt to break away from his emphatic earlier lyricism (Chapter i), 'Laura Riding's Essentialism' (Chapter 2), the disregarded poems ofGertrude Stein (Chapter 3), and 'JohnAsh bery's Critique ofHarold Bloom' (Chapter 4). Some of thecomments here are astute, and Schultz moves into territories that to some extent are of her own making. There isno...