Lyric Eye: The Poetics of Twentieth-Century Surveillance

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Abstract

Lyric Eye: The Poetics of Twentieth-Century Surveillance presents the first detailed study of the relationship between poetry and surveillance. It critically examines the close connection between American lyric poetry and a burgeoning US state surveillance apparatus from 1920 to the 1960s. The book explores the myriad ways that poets—Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, W.H. Auden, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Sylvia Plath, Gertrude Stein, Robert Lowell, Allen Ginsberg and others—explored a developing and fraught environment in which the growing power of American investigative agencies, such as the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, imposed new pressures on cultural discourse and personal identity. In analysing twentieth-century American poetry and its various ideas about "the self," Lyric Eye demonstrates the extent to which poetry and surveillance employ similar styles of information-gathering such as observation, overhearing, imitation, abstraction, repurposing of language, subversion, fragmentation and symbolism.
Original languageEnglish
Place of PublicationNew York
PublisherRoutledge, Taylor & Francis Group
Number of pages204
Edition1st
ISBN (Electronic)9781003019954
ISBN (Print)9781032052083, 9780367895709
Publication statusPublished - 6 Aug 2021
Externally publishedYes

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