The First Book : Twentieth-Century Poetic Careers in America / Jesse Zuba.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Zuba, Jesse, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American poetry.

American poetry--20th century--Publishing.

American poetry--20th century--Authorship.

American poetry--20th century--History and criticism.

Poets, American--20th century.

Poets, American.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (231 p.)

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"We have many poets of the First Book," the poet and critic Louis Simpson remarked in 1957, describing a sense that the debut poetry collection not only launched the contemporary poetic career but also had come to define it. Surveying American poetry over the past hundred years, The First Book explores the emergence of the poetic debut as a unique literary production with its own tradition, conventions, and dynamic role in the literary market. Through new readings of poets ranging from Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore to John Ashbery and Louise Glück, Jesse Zuba illuminates the importance of the first book in twentieth-century American literary culture, which involved complex struggles for legitimacy on the part of poets, critics, and publishers alike. Zuba investigates poets' diverse responses to the question of how to launch a career in an increasingly professionalized literary scene that threatened the authenticity of the poetic calling. He shows how modernist debuts evoke markedly idiosyncratic paths, while postwar first books evoke trajectories that balance professional imperatives with traditional literary ideals. Debut titles ranging from Simpson's The Arrivistes to Ken Chen's Juvenilia stress the strikingly pervasive theme of beginning, accommodating a new demand for career development even as it distances the poets from that demand.Combining literary analysis with cultural history, The First Book will interest scholars and students of twentieth-century literature as well as readers and writers of poetry.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

1. Apprentices to Chance Event

2. "Poets of the First Book, Writers of Promise"

3. "Everything Has a Schedule"

4. From Firstborn to Vita Nova

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Pilot project,eBook available to selected US libraries only

Includes bibliographical references (pages 191-202) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)

ISBN:

9781400873791

1400873797

OCLC:

966869317