“The War / comes home to us”: the Vietnam War resistance poetry of Muriel Rukeyser and Denise Levertov

This thesis is a comparative study of the Vietnam War resistance poetry of Muriel Rukeyser and Denise Levertov, to shed new light on both poets and explore how civilian women poets addressed the Vietnam War. This thesis draws upon archival material to intervene in the analysis of the poems, and better understand how the poets’ Vietnam War resistance poetries developed. The Introduction defines the concept of “mediated witness”, to consider how women bore poetic witness to war during the Vietnam War era, and delineates the category of “Vietnam War era poetics”. Chapter One expands upon the poets’ approaches to “mediated witness” and war throughout their oeuvres. Addressing each poet in turn, this chapter traces Rukeyser’s developing metonymy of Spain and how this manifests during the Vietnam War era, and Levertov’s approach to witnessing as an ethical imperative. This chapter explores how Rukeyser’s and Levertov’s developing poetic witness of war are inflected by their gendered, historical, and technological contexts, and ultimately how they manifest in their Vietnam War era writing. Chapter Two draws upon archival material relating to Rukeyser’s resistance activity in the early 1970s, to trace Rukeyser’s developing approach to the body in her Vietnam War resistance poetry. This chapter addresses her reading of the Nuremberg Obligation, to inform close reading of several examples of poems written and published during the 1960s and early 1970s. Chapter Three offers a comparative approach to each poets’ deployment of American landscapes in their Vietnam War resistance writing. This chapter focuses on Levertov’s relatively understudied long poem “Staying Alive”, and considers Rukeyser’s approach to urban democracy and New York City. This chapter culminates in an analysis of the poets’ exploration of public spaces as “terrains of resistance”. Chapter Four considers how Rukeyser and Levertov deploy women’s lives in their Vietnam War resistance writing, through a comparative study of two key poems: Rukeyser’s “Käthe Kollwitz” and Levertov’s “Olga Poems”. In doing so, this chapter explores how the poets resist the subjugation of women’s experiences, emphasising their importance within critical resistance. Chapter Five draws upon Levertov’s notes from her visit to North Vietnam in 1972, to explore how her work shifted after she travelled to North Vietnam. This chapter focuses on the impact upon her approach to direct witness, situating this development within her broader poetics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Oxford Brookes University

Author dc:creator

• Gilbert, Sarah

Contributors dc:contributor

• Goody, Alex
• Munro, Niall

Statement dc:rights

• All rights reserved

Language dc:language

en

DOI dc:identifier

https://doi.org/10.24384/21j2-jf34

OAI identifier oai:identifier

tle:d54e1046-cea2-49cc-8eb8-19b848a91667:d6bd9758-527a-46cd-bfe2-c433766e8fca:1