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Galvin provides a critical look at the intersections between the development of queer consciousness and the poetic experimentations of Emily Dickinson, Amy Lowell, Gertrude Stein, Mina Loy, Djuna Barnes, and H.D., one that places them in a continuum of non-heterocentric existence. While these writers were non-heterocentric in their personal identities, they were also all innovators of modernist poetics. For lesbians and other non-heterocentrically defined writers, the active creation of identity outside the heterosexual economy demands new ways of writing, and this demand manifests itself not only in content, but also in poetic technique.
The basic assumption of this work is that the mind which can imagine other sexual orientations and gender identities can and must also imagine new ways of writing, and that a consideration of the poets' sexualities is central to a fuller understanding of both the message and the medium of their poetic practices. A full-length exploration of the relationship between poetics and queer theory,
Queer Poetics presents a theoretical framework that can illuminate not only the ways we read the specific poetic innovations of these six writers, but also the ways we read literary modernism itself, by placing both in a different social and epistemological context-that of queer existence. This work is important to scholars and researchers in Women's Studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies, feminist criticism, and the study of poetry.
List of contents
Preface: Remembering
Introduction: Lesbian Theory in Poetry
Poltergeist of Form: Emily Dickinson and the Reappropriation of Language and Identity
Imagery and Invisibility: Amy Lowell and the Erotics of Particularity
"This shows it all": Gertrude Stein and the Reader's Role in the Creation of Significance
The Rhythms of Experience: Mina Loy and the Poetics of "Love"
"Dropping Crooked into Rhyme": Djuna Barnes' Use of Form and the Liminal Space of Gender
"A curious secret": H.D. and the Palimpsest of Sexual Identity
Afterword
Works Cited and Consulted
Index
About the author
MARY E. GALVIN has been teaching literature, writing, and women's studies at the State University of New York, Albany, for the past nine years./e Her specialization is in lesbian and gay studies, and poetry, particularly women's poetry.
