Overview

It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there,” as the poet William Carlos Williams memorably declared. In Omnicompetent Modernists: Poetry, Politics, and the Public Sphere, Matthew Hofer examines, through a multilayered literary critique of interwar modernist poetry, what it might mean to get the news, and more, from a poet. Using pragmatist ideas about the public sphere as a tool, Hofer reveals how Langston Hughes, Ezra Pound, and Mina Loy sought to use literature to both express and enable thought. In Hughes, Pound, and Loy, Hofer attends to poets whose work vigorously imagined possible new relationships between language, thinking, and public society. Each poet had different goals and used different methods, but all found both inspiration and encouragement in popular political theory. Hughes advocated for a more just vision of color and class in the United States. Pound sought to condemn those whom he associated with public harm, linguistically, socially, economically, and politically. Loy championed the “psycho-democratic” representation of women, in both public and private life. Although Hughes, Pound, and Loy are rarely considered together, what unites these three writers is how each reconceived the public realm, and revolutionized aesthetic form to articulate those visions. Hofer combines sharp intellectual historiography with rigorous literary criticism and the result is a study that reinvigorates both the poems and poets under consideration and speaks to the immense power of language in manipulating public opinion—with pertinent implications for the politics of the present.

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“Omnicompetent Modernists makes a powerful and nuanced argument about the importance of John Dewey and Walter Lippmann to understanding the political poetry of Mina Loy, Ezra Pound, and Langston Hughes. The book will become a touchstone for debates about modernism and the role of poetry in the public sphere.”— Joshua Kotin, author of Utopias of One “Drawing on new archival research, Matthew Hofer leverages Dewey’s insights into aesthetics and society for a series of highly original, incisive close analyses of formal strategies chosen by three modernist poets determined to give their poems political impact. This is a valuable work of literary history with direct relevance to our own cultural moment.”— Peter Middleton, author of Expanding Authorship: Transformation in American Poetry since 1950 “Omnicompetent Modernists seeks to change how we speak about the relationship between poetry and poetics. Hofer’s choice to consider Langston Hughes, Mina Loy, and Ezra Pound in the light of Dewey’s democratic philosophy is an inspired one. An argument that encompasses such disparate poetry has the prospect of saying a lot—this book delivers.”— Stephen Fredman, author of American Poetry as Transactional Art

Omnicompetent Modernists makes a powerful and nuanced argument about the importance of John Dewey and Walter Lippmann to understanding the political poetry of Mina Loy, Ezra Pound, and Langston Hughes. The book will become a touchstone for debates about modernism and the role of poetry in the public sphere. - Joshua Kotin, author of Utopias of One Drawing on new archival research, Matthew Hofer leverages Dewey's insights into aesthetics and society for a series of highly original, incisive close analyses of formal strategies chosen by three modernist poets determined to give their poems political impact. This is a valuable work of literary history with direct relevance to our own cultural moment. - Peter Middleton, author of Expanding Authorship: Transformation in American Poetry since 1950 Omnicompetent Modernists seeks to change how we speak about the relationship between poetry and poetics. Hofer's choice to consider Langston Hughes, Mina Loy, and Ezra Pound in the light of Dewey's democratic philosophy is an inspired one. An argument that encompasses such disparate poetry has the prospect of saying a lot-this book delivers. - Stephen Fredman, author of American Poetry as Transactional Art

Author Information

Matthew Hofer is professor of English at the University of New Mexico and edits the series Recencies: Research and Recovery in Twentieth-Century American Poetics. He is coeditor of many volumes, including expanded facsimile editions of LEGEND and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E as well as The Language Letters: Selected 1970s Correspondence of Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, and Ron Silliman.

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