The Lyric/Antilyric Paradigm, Hybridity, and Engaged Poetry in American and Post-Yugoslav Literature

Abstract

The central theme of this article is hybridization in the field of American and post-Yugoslav poetry. Hybridization raises the question of the status of experimentation in the field of poetry production, and with that in mind, I juxtapose American and post-Yugoslav poetry. I posit that a strong anti-lyrical paradigm was established in post-World War II American poetry, especially in the 1970s. This was possible thanks to the activity of the Language poets who simultaneously emerged as theorists, which coincided with the turn toward theory. The hybrid poem was the result of the response of mainstream poets who took up the procedures of Language poetry and hybridized them with the lyric paradigm. On the other hand, I argue that in post-Yugoslav cultures, where the lyric paradigm has reigned almost continuously since World War II (with a brief interruption in the 1960s) elements of the experiment have returned in an amalgam of hybrid poetic procedures. Therefore, I discuss here four books by post-Yugoslav women writers Snežana Žabić, Ana Seferović, Ivana Sajko, and Nina Dragičević, highlighting the constitutive elements in their hybrid structures. Since their books are socially and politically engaged and contain documentary material, and since an important source of their hybridity is the stimulus coming from the performing arts, I place their work in the broader context of these contemporary trends.