Grad - Bloch

Abstract

Twentieth-century long poems are said to bear a heightened relationship to citizenship: as Adalaide Morris writes, “Epic composers speak as citizens to other citizens, engaging a tribe, community, nation, or alliance.” Yet there is a distinct tension between the formal demands of a poem that seeks to “speak for the tribe” and the boundaries of the individual poetic voice. Even if, as Adorno tells us, we conceive of the individual lyric voice as social, it is not always clear what makes the individual poetic voice at once a voice of plurality. In this paper, I argue that the late modernist poet Lorine Niedecker constructed new poetic forms that multiplied the individual poetic voice, in turn reimagining what it means for citizens to speak to other citizens.