Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-rvbq7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-09T22:23:33.394Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - The mid-Atlantic imagination: Mina Loy, Ruth Fainlight, Anne Stevenson, Anne Rouse and Eva Salzman

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2011

Jane Dowson
Affiliation:
De Montfort University, Leicester
Get access

Summary

Maybe one of the hallmarks in my work is a mid-Atlantic suspension. Or Nowheresville.

This chapter aims to give a place to poets who can qualify as both American and British but often get claimed by one side of the divide or fall in between. These poets include British-born Mina Loy (1882–1966) and American-born Ruth Fainlight (1931–), Anne Stevenson (1933–), Anne Rouse (1954–) and Eva Salzman (1961–). Collectively, their publications span nearly the entire century: Loy’s output covers the early twentieth century (although she produced work right up until the 1960s); Fainlight and Stevenson – Plath’s contemporaries – are post-war poets still publishing today; Rouse and Salzman are late twentieth-century poets whose careers began in the last decade with the arrival of Salzman’s The English Earthquake in 1992 and Rouse’s Sunset Grill a year later. The need to define these poets as a national product often leads to the stamping out of their cultural duality. Loy is mostly regarded as American, despite her orthodox upbringing in Victorian England. Stevenson and Fainlight are usually perceived as British, even though they spent their formative years in America. Rouse and Salzman, having both established themselves in Britain for many years, are only ever seen as American. A term that fully captures their affiliation with two cultures is needed. Despite ‘Anglo- American’ literally meaning a British-born American, it comes closest to reflecting their sense of ‘bothness’.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

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 Dropbox.

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.

Available formats
×