The Poetics of the American Suburbs

by Gill, Jo

• ISBN13: 9781137340221
• ISBN10: 1137340223
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-10-17
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

The Poetics of the American Suburbs is the first book to consider the rich body of poetry that emerged from and helped to shape the post-war American suburbs. Jo Gill discusses the work of forty or more writers—some well-known, such as Anne Sexton and Langston Hughes, others not primarily known through their poetry such as John Updike, and some who were best-sellers in their own time but have since largely been forgotten such as Phyllis McGinley. Combining detailed textual and archival study with insights drawn from other disciplines, the book offers a new perspective on post-war suburbia and on the broader field of twentieth-century American literature.

Author Biography

Jo Gill is Associate Professor and Director of Education in the Department of English at the University of Exeter, UK. She is the author of Anne Sexton's Confessional Poetics, Women's Poetry and The Cambridge Introduction to Sylvia Plath, and the editor or co-editor of several other books. She is Lead Researcher on the Leverhulme-Trust Funded 'Cultures of the Suburbs International Research Network'.

Table of Contents

Introduction
PART I:
1: Constructing the Suburbs
2: Suburban Tastes
PART II
3: The 'Poet Laureate of Suburbia'
4: Suburban Landscapes
5: The Look of the Suburbs
6: On the Margins
Conclusion: The Song of the Suburbs