Robert
Stark
Visiting
Assistant Professor
I am
interested in poetry, more or less regardless of who writes it,
where, or when; however, I have spend most time with the twentieth
century poets—W.B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and W.H. Auden.
As a student of poetry I have tried to discover what makes
it distinct from other communicative arts, and I have sought to
answer these questions in formal terms and by examining the relationship
between language and knowledge.
My dissertation,
Ezra Pound: A Jargoner's Apprenticeship , argues that
Pound learns to write poetry more or less as if it were a foreign
tongue, with a unique lexicon, grammar, and even morphology.
As a result, it may be best appreciated as a form of jargon
in the manifold sense of an erudite and hermetic code (the
modern meaning of the term), and as musical speech which approximates
birdsong (the original meaning of the term). I am presently
exploring ways of applying this insight to other twentieth-century
literature and to so-called "minority," or "post-colonial" literatures,
and I remain especially interested in the modernist roots of these
contemporary styles and aesthetics.
I have
published on Yeats's symbolism, especially his bird-symbolism
(Yeats-Eliot Review) and two essays of mine, on Pound's
juvenilia (Paideuma), and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's
blank verse (Victorian Transformations), will appear
in the coming months. I am also a practicing—and occasionally
a publishing—poet.
Teaching Fields
-
English and American
Poetry
Poetics
Transatlantic Modernism
Dialect Poetry
Literary Barbarians, and Marginalians
Office
Location & Contact
Office
Hours
-
SPRING 2008
- TUTH 3:00-5:00
Teaching
Schedule
- SPRING 2008
- 023/1004 MW 2:25-3:40
- 023/1003 TUTH 9:35-10:50
- 177/1001 MW 1:00-2:15
Research Interests
Selected Publications
Honors/Awards
