Lyric and Liberalism in the Age of American Empire

Abstract

AbstractLyric and Liberalism in the Age of American Empire considers, in the work of five exemplary poets, a particular tension between the lyric representation of individual consciousness and a sense (individual, but part of a wider collective anxiety) that these representations justify, dignify, or ornament the American state, even when raised to the pitch of dissent. The poets discussed are Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (taken together), Amiri Baraka, John Ashbery, and Jorie Graham. This book examines how questions about the nature of the individual in liberal thought animate poems, and how poets were driven to ask these questions when confronting the nature of American empire. The book argues that each poet saw a resemblance between their own understanding of what poems do, and the liberal idea of the individual. It shows that each poet was able to make use of techniques associated with making a person visible in a lyric poem, in order to stage a critique of liberalism, and to distinguish the subject of a lyric poem from the liberal subject of rights.