Thomas McGrath and the vocation of the radical poet.
Item
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Title
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Thomas McGrath and the vocation of the radical poet.
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Identifier
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AAI3047209
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identifier
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3047209
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Creator
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Devlin, Eric William.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Mary Ann Caws
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Date
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2002
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, American
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Abstract
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This dissertation presents Thomas McGrath's poetic career as occurring in two stages: first, his poetic and political development, through the writing of five volumes of short but increasingly longer poems, into the poet who, in 1954, will undertake his major work, Letter To An Imaginary Friend ; then his devotion for thirty years to writing Letter, his "pseudo-autobiography," in which, as an individual and as a representative man, he seeks his and the nation's way through the moral wilderness of twentieth-century America.;McGrath's poetry is personal, symbolic, celebrating loved ones for generosity, humor, and sacrifice in their error-ridden lives; and it is public in mourning loved ones destroyed by a capitalist economy that sacrifices the lives of its poor to the property of its rich. McGrath sings adoringly of the land whose beauty and variety have been devastated and homogenized by the same hands that have taken his friends and family.;His primary relationships on the family farm in 1930s North Dakota are the template for his political convictions: "Dakota is everywhere." First Manifesto, published in 1940, displays early signs of what will become his mature voice: rhythmic mastery of the six-beat line; preference for near over exact rhyme, used in unexpected places, and for variations on stanzaic and poetic forms; grim wit, and the connecting of the inner life to the outer world.;The next four volumes bring McGrath's voice to maturation, adding the bold dictional mix of standard vocabulary with arcane terminology and hipster street- and drug-talk; allusion to many fields of knowledge; audacious, wise-cracking irreverence toward the hypocrisy of powerful individuals and institutions; and a historical perspective on the present.;Blacklisted by HUAC, facing the dissolution of his second marriage, McGrath in 1954 begins Letter To An Imaginary Friend. In a cycle of returning between present and past, he tells in Part One of his radicalizing experiences and relationships on the farm. Parts Two through Four present his developing sense of calling as an atheist poet of revolution, first in imagery of epic heroes' journeys through the underworld, then in Roman Catholic language and symbols that equate his work with religious vocation.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
