Monday, April 2, 2012

new blog: The War Poetry of John Allan Wyeth

I teamed up with Dana Gioia about 15 years ago in an effort to haul a deserving American poet of WWI, John Allan Wyeth, out of absolute obscurity, and we have made some progress.  The Univ of South Carolina Press republished his poems in 2008, with an essay by Gioia and annotations by me, and since then the recognition has grown, though at a pace which could be described as glacial.  A few notices and brief essays, a couple of anthology inclusions, and I heard from Gioia a couple of days ago that Paul Mariani will be teaching a course, or part of a course, on Wyeth this fall at Boston College.


Anyway, many of you might you might find JA Wyeth of interest.  He was a virtuoso sonneteer, but also a decided and innovative Modernist in many respects.  (During the time when he was probably composing his sonnet cycle, he was living in Rapallo, Italy close to Ezra Pound, and they were known to be friends, though nothing is known beyond that fact).  A close observer of the soldier's speech and daily life on the Western Front, which he renders with sparkling precision.  Sounds like sheer puffery, I know, but it's true all the same.


I designed & put up a blog about Wyeth last week, and wanted to let everyone know about it.  If any of you ever feel inclined to leave comments about Wyeth's poems, please do so by all means.  We'd like to see some intelligent discussions get started.  And if you know of others with an interest in WWI literature, please let them know about our project.


The "Obscurity" essay is by Gioia, an early introductory piece.  The "Artistry & Authenticity" essay is by me (where I take one of Gioia's key ideas to task). And there are links to everything else every published on Wyeth that we've been able to turn up.  There's not much.


So please have a look sometime when you have a chance.


Thank you,

BJ Omanson




The War Poetry of John Allan Wyeth
  ~~essays, comments, discussion, history
http://johnallanwyeth.blogspot.com/

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "World War One Literature" group.
To post to this group, send email to ww1lit@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to ww1lit+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/ww1lit?hl=en.

0 comments:

Post a Comment