Beleaguered Poets and Leftist Critics: Stevens, Cummings, Frost, and Williams in the 1930s [Hardcover]

A critical examination of modernist poetry and the demands of leftist literary theory.

Different as they were as poets, Wallace Stevens, E. E. Cummings, Robert Frost, and William Carlos Williams grappled with the highly charged literary politics of the 1930s in comparable ways. As other writers moved sharply to the Left, and as leftist critics promulgated a proletarian aesthetics, these modernist poets keenly felt the pressure of the times and politicized literary scene. All four poets saw their reputations critically challenged in these years and felt compelled to respond to the new politics, literary and national, in distinct ways, ranging from rejection to involvement.

Beleaguered Poets and Leftist Criticsclosely examines the dynamics of these responses: what these four poets wrotein letters, essays, lectures, fiction (for Williams), and most importantly, in their poems; what they believed politically and aesthetically; how critics, particularly leftist critics, reviewed their work; how these poets reacted to that criticism and to the broader milieu of leftism. Each poets response and its subsequent impact on his poetic output is a unique case study of the conflicting demands of art and politics in a time of great social change. 
 

Beleaguered Poets and Leftist Criticsexplores the fraught relationship between modernist poets and the left-wing critics who sought to enlist literature in the service of political ideology. Drawing on incisive literary analysis and historical context, Milton A. Cohen examines how poets navigated accusations of political withdrawal, aesthetic elitism, or ideological betrayal during periods of intense cultural and political pressure. The book reveals how modernist poetry both resisted and reshaped the expectations of Marxist and progressive criticism, offering a nuanced account of arts autonomy, responsibility, and vulnerability in politicized times. Essential reading for lcM