Inventing an ancestor

the scholar-poet and the sonnet

Edward Brunner

pp. 71-95

in: Verena Theile, Linda Tredennick (eds), New formalisms and literary theory, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013

Abstract

The increase since the 1990s in book-length sequences of poetry that construct a historical setting within which a central character speaks shows contemporary poets ready to interact productively with two related impulses. One impulse is intellectual, theoretical: these extended sequences reveal the current centrality of cultural studies and the prestige of revisionist scholars of history, such as Walter Benjamin, who have identified a historical narrative marred by gaps; haunted by silenced voices, this historical archive cries out for genealogical and archeological reconstructions that identify forgotten ancestors. The other impulse is practical, material: based in considerations of past times, the historical sequence repositions the poet as a scholar-poet at a moment when the academy has become the site where verse receives its strongest appreciation, when the PhD vies with the MFA as the terminal degree for creative writers, and when university or foundation-subsidized presses provide the largest resources for the distribution of poetry following the retrenchment of commercial publishers.

Cited authors

Benjamin Walter