| After World War II, New York City became an international cultural capital, and poets and artists flocked to it. In Abstract Concrete, I group three such poets---ones who rarely keep company in literary criticism: Mina Loy, Frank O'Hara, and Bernadette Mayer. I examine their work, and that of the artists who surround them, in order to argue that site and materiality became less important to experimental poetry in the decades following World War II. Such an argument runs against prevailing critical narratives, many of which align these authors with an aesthetics that gives central importance to place and "things.";This dissertation shows that though the city's concrete structures and objects provide the foundation for the poetry of Loy, O'Hara, and Mayer, their verse is ultimately more concerned with the intangible, abstract shadows cast by the concrete. I demonstrate that all three writers ultimately lose faith in the concrete, and that this loss of faith renders the city progressively less important. I read their verse, art, and art writing to reveal its portrayal of New York as a phantasmic place---Loy's is a fantasy; O'Hara's, a ghost of New York past; Mayer's, a site for exploring her own mind. All of their poetic depictions of New York are what we might call "abstract concrete.";My rereading of these poets' response to materiality also provides insight to their consideration of the materiality of language. Such insight provides a valuable foothold in difficult experimental writing. In different ways, these writers make their work so dense that a reader cannot ignore its textuality. Because this approach makes the text difficult to "consume," it reminds us that printed words are much more than material signs. As the city is "abstract concrete," so is the language they use to transcribe it. |
