Title Rhythm and race in modernist poetry and science : Pound, Yeats, Williams, and modern sciences of rhythm / Michael Golston

Published New York : Columbia University Press, 2008

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Description 1 online resource (xv, 272 pages) : illustrations Contents Introduction: phonoscopic modernism -- Pulsanda tellus: Ezra Pound's absolutist rhythms -- Double registrations in the river of blood -- Machining convictions: W.B. Yeats's sanguineous rhytms -- Singing the crisis itself -- Williams's measured interventions Summary In the half-century between 1890 and 1950, a variety of fields and disciplines, from musicology and literary studies to biology, psychology, genetics, and eugenics, expressed a profound interest in the subject of rhythm. In this book, Michael Golston recovers much of the work done in this area and situates it in the society, politics, and culture of the Modernist period. He then filters selected Modernist poems through this archive to demonstrate that innovations in prosody, form, and subject matter are based on a largely forgotten ideology of rhythm and that beneath Modernist prosody is a science and an accompanying technology. In his analysis, Golston first examines psychological and physiological experiments that purportedly proved that races responded differently to rhythmic stimuli. He then demonstrates how poets like Ezra Pound, W.B. Yeats, Mina Loy, and William Carlos Williams either absorbed or echoed the information in these studies, using it to hone the innovative edge of Modernist practice and fundamentally alter the way poetry was written. Golston performs close readings of canonical texts such as Pound's Cantos, Yeats's "Lake Isle of Innisfree," and William Carlos Williams's Paterson, and examines the role the sciences of rhythm played in racist discourses and fascist political thinking in the years leading up to World War II. Recovering obscure texts written in France, Germany, England, and America, Golston argues that "Rhythmics" was instrumental in generating an international modern art and should become a major consideration in our reading of reactionary avant-garde poetry Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 255-265) and index Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL In English digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL Print version record Subject Pound, Ezra, 1885-1972 -- Knowledge -- Science Williams, William Carlos, 1883-1963 -- Knowledge -- Science Yeats, W. B. (William Butler), 1865-1939 -- Knowledge -- Science SUBJECT Pound, Ezra, 1885-1972 fast Williams, William Carlos, 1883-1963 fast Yeats, W. B. (William Butler), 1865-1939 fast Subject American poetry -- 20th century -- History and criticism Modernism (Literature) Rhythm -- Political aspects Racism in literature. Literature and science -- History -- 20th century Politics and literature -- History -- 20th century LITERARY CRITICISM -- Poetry. American poetry Literature and science Modernism (Literature) Politics and literature Racism in literature Science Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. History Form Electronic book LC no. 2007021125 ISBN 9780231512336 0231512333

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