The Inherited Self: Autobiography and History in American Avant-Garde Poetry

If a poet assumes that the self is a product of history, then the historical poem becomes, in effect, a new form of autobiography. This shifts the emphasis of autobiography from a self that precedes or anchors history to a self that 'comes out' of history. My dissertation is about how this view of an 'inherited self' reinvents autobiography and thereby provides an entirely new way to read the historical epics of Ezra Pound and Charles Olson and the historical lyrics of Susan Howe. I begin with an ars poetica of the inherited self in the work of Henry Adams, whose turn from autobiography to history sets a pattern that is more or less followed by the later poets. I look next at the seeds of Howe's investigation of inheritance in her early poetry and art criticism from the 1970s. In another chapter I suggest that the documentary forms associated with historical poetry should be read as documenting inheritance rather than documenting history as such. Because the document provides a window onto each poet's inheritance, the documentary form is essential for the autobiography of an inherited self. In the final chapter I examine the tendency of each poet to assume or 'take on' historical figures as precursors of the present — as for example certain archetypal figures for Olson and Emily Dickinson for Howe. I conclude by briefly suggesting how a reinvention of autobiography can be seen in the work of recent avantgarde poets who assume the self is constituted not so much by history as by language or culture.