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Coda

The Poet as Consumer

from Part II - Ethnographic Modernity and Its Discontents

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 September 2023

Justin Parks
Affiliation:
University of Tromso
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Summary

The book’s coda addresses an economic and cultural shift in national focus from production toward consumption that took place in response to the theory that the Depression was a “crisis of underconsumption.” According to this logic, capitalism could best be salvaged by stimulating consumer buying power, and thus by bolstering demand for the emerging commodities associated with what Rita Barnard has called the “culture of abundance.” This book thus concludes by proposing that a Depression-era gravitational shift from a producerist model associated with Fordist industrialism toward the mass consumption that would define the postwar period was paralleled by a displacement of the notion of the writer (or poet) as a producer toward one of the writer (or poet) as consumer. This poetics of mass consumerism can be seen in its offing in the Depression-era work of George Oppen and Mina Loy, but it reaches its fullest expression in the postwar poetry of John Ashbery, as well as the work of more recent poets such as Robert Fitterman and Juliana Spahr.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Coda
  • Justin Parks, University of Tromso
  • Book: Poetry and the Limits of Modernity in Depression America
  • Online publication: 21 September 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009347808.010
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  • Coda
  • Justin Parks, University of Tromso
  • Book: Poetry and the Limits of Modernity in Depression America
  • Online publication: 21 September 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009347808.010
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Coda
  • Justin Parks, University of Tromso
  • Book: Poetry and the Limits of Modernity in Depression America
  • Online publication: 21 September 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009347808.010
Available formats
×