Pastoral, Pragmatism, and Twentieth-Century American Poetry

Establishing continuity-between artist and worker, between art and everyday experience-is a condition of "creative democracy," as Dewey understood it, and as Mikkelsen understands the progressive politics that she associates with both modernist pastoral and pragmatism. [...]the pedagogical...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:William Carlos Williams review 2017, Vol.34 (2), p.168-172
Main Author: Diggory, Terence
Format: Review
Language:English
Subjects:
American literature
Beck, John
Creativity
Empson, William (1906-1984)
Frost, Robert (1874-1963)
Modernity
Poetry
Politics
Stevens, Wallace (1879-1955)
Williams, William Carlos (1883-1963)
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Summary:Establishing continuity-between artist and worker, between art and everyday experience-is a condition of "creative democracy," as Dewey understood it, and as Mikkelsen understands the progressive politics that she associates with both modernist pastoral and pragmatism. [...]the pedagogically convenient reduction that pastoral is a city person's idealized version of country life. [...]Williams's hometown and lifelong residence was the middle-class town of Rutherford, which bears a relation to the nearby, predominantly working-class city of Paterson that is analogous to the relationship between artist and worker in William Empson's description of pastoral. The "forces of social determination" in Paterson Book Two would have emerged more clearly if Mikkelsen had paid more attention to the problem of money represented in the interpolated letters from "Cress" (Marcia Nardi), in Klaus Ehrens's sermon, and in the historical accounts of Alexander Hamilton's plans for Paterson as an industrial center.
ISSN:0196-6286
DOI:10.1353/wcw.2017.0012