Unexpected Affinities: Modern American Poetry and Symbolist Poetics

Unexpected Affinities: Modern American Poetry and Symbolist Poetics studies the impact of Stevensian and Valeryan poetics, and symbolist poetics more broadly, on a range of Anglo-American poets in untypical fashion. Pairing poets who are not usually studied in their relation to one another reveals mutuality and dissimilitude. Chapter I looks at Stevens and Valery from the vantage point of the senses as opposed to the more usual lens of their similar cerebral or philosophical temperaments. Although critics have largely and justifiably seen Stevens and Eliot in oppositional terms, Lisa Goldfarb asks what happens when we look at them from the vantage point of their mutual interest in creating a musical poetics. With Stevens' and Auden's mutual appreciation of Valery as a starting point, Chapter IV turns to a closer comparative study of Auden and Stevens, two poets who have traditionally been seen as operating in distinct poetic spheres. A fifth chapter addresses Elizabeth Bishop's poetic music in relation to French symbolist poetics. A sixth and final chapter examines Stevens' musical legacy, in large part derived from the symbolists, and addresses the work of a range of modern and contemporary poets, including, Susan Howe.