Everyday Reading

Poetry and Popular Culture in Modern America

Bibliographic Data

ID7307436
AuthorsLisa M Steinman (Reed College, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume100
Issue3
Pages878-878
Publication date2013-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of American History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/jahist/jat385
OpenAlexW2064989813
LanguageEN
Citations received10

Everyday Reading draws on recent work in literary and cultural studies to argue that until about 1950 ordinary readers of popular and commercial poetry in America were “self-aware, discerning, creative, and socially engaged” (p. 9). Detailing “what poetry signified in a culture that read [across the usual cultural distinctions] and what it contributed to and fulfilled for that culture” (p. 10), and demonstrating that popular and commercial poetry was “more various ... more aesthetically and culturally complex” than most “mainstream literary histories would suggest” (p. 11)—influencing both “the work of now-canonical modernist writers and the development of popular culture more broadly”—Mike Chasar also examines “poetry's intersections with commercial America” (p. 13). The first of five chapters, not counting the introduction and a brief epilogue, looks at the practice of scrapbooking, paying particular attention to one scrapbook (that of Joyce F Fitzgerald. “an aspiring and probably teenage writer”), offering a close reading of the expressive and political implications of the juxtaposed clippings and images—fifty illustrations are included—to find in Fitzgerald's scrapbook a “deeply individual” expression of anger and a kind of “community making,” specifically part of the collective formation of an identity for a generation of women authors. Framing Fitzgerald's practice as typical is not wholly convincing (the other scrapbooks examined seem less interesting), but the close readings and historical context are impressive (pp. 19, 73, 79). A second chapter focuses on how early radio shows, such as Ted Malone's Between the Bookends (first aired in 1929), figured as broadcast scrapbooks because featuring poems sent in by listeners, if assembled by the radio hosts. The next chapter examines the history and poetry of Burma-Shave signs, including a convincing argument against a distinction between “billboard discourse” and the “discourse that defers reading” usually associated with avant-garde poetics (p. 126). A fourth chapter assesses the influence of commercial billboard advertising on more canonical poets, especially William Carlos Williams, while a final chapter shows that the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop director Paul Engle did not want the M.F.A. program he shaped to exclude the writing of poetry for mass-market periodicals and Hallmark greeting cards. Chasar offers readings of several of Engle's greeting-card and popular-periodical verses that reveal how skillfully the “discourse of popular poetry” can be used (p. 203). If the close readings of such poems raise the question of whether most ordinary readers would have heard the linguistic gestures Chasar traces—a question he poses but does not address at length—his attention to the different ways various poetic languages make meaning is nonetheless compelling

Aesthetics · Art · Context (archaeology · Framing (construction · Identity (music · Linguistics · Literature · Mainstream · Media studies · Poetry · Political science · Politics · Popular culture · Reading (process · Sociology · American and British Literature Analysis · History · Law · Philosophy · Poetry Analysis and Criticism

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub