Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T07:35:02.650Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Code of Silence: Laura (Riding) Jackson and the Refusal to Speak

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Peter S. Temes
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

By renouncing poetry in 1942, Laura (Riding) Jackson won a kind of authority over her critics and interpreters. Though silence as a poet was a high price to pay, (Riding) Jackson managed to insulate her poetry from critical representation by denying her assent to every interpreter's necessary assumption that her poems succeed at meaning something. Her renunciation mirrors the motion toward silence that animates a number of her poems, notably “Memories of Mortalities” and “Lucrece and Nara.” These poems, like (Riding) Jackson herself, use a final state of silence to insist on the authority of a woman's speaking voice, despite the critical appetites of others.

Type
Special Topic: Literature and Censorship
Information
PMLA , Volume 109 , Issue 1: Special Topic Literature and Censorship , January 1994 , pp. 87 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Adams, Barbara “Laura Riding's Poems: A Double Ripeness.” Modern Poetry Studies 11 (1982): 183–18.Google Scholar
Axelrod, Steven Gould Robert Lowell: Life and Art. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1978. Fugitive Dec. 1924.Google Scholar
Graves, Robert “Flawed Science, Damaged Lives: An Interview with Robert Graves.” Impact of Science on Society 20 (1969): 319–31. Rpt. in Kersnowski 81–91.Google Scholar
Kersnowski, Frank, ed Conversations with Robert Graves. Jackson: U of Mississippi P, 1989.Google Scholar
Masopust, Michael A “Laura Riding's Quarrel with Poetry.” South Central Review 2.1 (1985): 42–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(Riding) Jackson, Laura “Engaging in the Impossible.” Sulfur 10 (1984): 4–35.Google Scholar
(Riding) Jackson, Laura The Poems of Laura Riding: A New Edition of the 1938 Collection. New York: Persea, 1980.Google Scholar
(Riding) Jackson, Laura “What, If Not a Poem, Poems?” Denver Quarterly 9.2 (1974): 1–13.Google Scholar
Rosenthal, M. L “Laura Riding's Poetry: A Nice Problem.” Southern Review 21 (1985): 89–95.Google Scholar
Smith, Sidonie A Poetics of Women's Autobiography. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Symons, Julian “An Evening in Maida Vale.” London Magazine Jan. 1964: 34–41. Rpt. in Kersnowski 10–18.Google Scholar
Wexler, Joyce Piell Laura Riding's Pursuit of Truth. Athens: Ohio UP, 1979.Google Scholar
Yeager, Patricia “Towards a Female Sublime.” Gender and Theory. Ed. Kaufman, Linda. London: Blackwell, 1989. 191–212.Google Scholar
Yeats, W. B “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen.” The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. New York: Macmillan, 1944. 239–23.Google Scholar
Young, William, and Kaiser, David E. Postmortem: New Evidence in the Case of Sacco and Vanzetti. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1985.Google Scholar
Zukofsky, Louis “Preface—1927.” Exile 4 (1928): 78–80.Google Scholar