Beautiful Enemies Friendship and Postwar American Poetry
Friendship and Postwar American Poetry

Although it has long been commonplace to imagine the archetypal American poet singing a solitary "Song of Myself," much of the most enduring American poetry has actually been preoccupied with the drama of friendship. In this lucid and absorbing study, Andrew Epstein argues that an obsession with both the pleasures and problems of friendship erupts in the "New American Poetry" that emerges after the Second World War. By focusing on some of the most significant postmodernist American poets-the "New York School" poets John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, and their close contemporary Amiri Baraka-Beautiful Enemies reveals a fundamental paradox at the heart of postwar American poetry and culture: the avant-garde's commitment to individualism and nonconformity runs directly counter to its own valorization of community and collaboration. By situating his extensive and revealing readings of these highly influential poets against the backdrop of Cold War cultural politics and within the context of American pragmatist thought, Epstein uncovers the collision between radical self-reliance and the siren call of the interpersonal at the core of postwar American poetry.

Abbreviations. Introduction. 1. Situation the Avant-Garde in Postwar America. Community, Individualism, and Cold War Culture. 2. Emerson, Pragmatism, and the "New American Poetry". 3. "My Force Is in Mobility". Selfhood and Friendship in Frank O'Hara's Poetry. 4. Growing Up with Our Brothers All Around. John Ashbery and the Interpersonal. 5. Amiri Baraka and the Poetics of Turning Away. 6. "Against the Speech of Friends". Baraka's White Friend Blues. 7. "A Rainy Wool Frankie and Johnny". O'Hara, Ashbery, and the Paradoxes of Friendship. Conclusion. Notes. Works Cited. Index.

Andrew Epstein is Associate Professor of English at Florida State University.

Epstein's revision of O'Hara is emblematic of the bracingly corrective and inspiring nature of Beautiful Enemies as a whole . . . [His] attentiveness, along with his assiduous scholarship, yields results that should change the way the works, their creators, and their milieu are viewed.