The Europe Trope: Constructions of Europe in American Poetry
How have American poets portrayed Europe in poetry from different times, especially from the 1900s, when travel became a staple in the lives and works of many poets?
With the recent debates as to the stakes, shape and concerns of Europe, a term whose meaning has always been contested, it is high time to consider the cultural responses to and uses of Europe as a figure of thought, geographical space, and intellectual platform.
My research focuses on textual renditions of Europe and how the encounter with Europe is described and transformed into art. The study investigates how Europe, its topography, places and monuments are constructed in American poetry by focusing on specific, recurring approaches in the portrayal of Europe as poetic material. These include references to cartography and mapping; a preoccupation with place and the importance of the body, not least eyesight, for the experience and creation of place; uncertainty about the role of the poet when it comes to navigating between the poles of tourist and poet, especially in relation to the oscillation between eyesight, sight and vision; historicity and nostalgia as a prerequisite for Europe; counterhegemonic questionings of America as a copy to Europe’s status as predecessor, particularly through place-name doubles and the exploration of relational geographies; and the reconfiguration of the Euro-American relationship in light of globalization and new literary terms such as unoriginality.
With the recent debates as to the stakes, shape and concerns of Europe, a term whose meaning has always been contested, it is high time to consider the cultural responses to and uses of Europe as a figure of thought, geographical space, and intellectual platform.
My research focuses on textual renditions of Europe and how the encounter with Europe is described and transformed into art. The study investigates how Europe, its topography, places and monuments are constructed in American poetry by focusing on specific, recurring approaches in the portrayal of Europe as poetic material. These include references to cartography and mapping; a preoccupation with place and the importance of the body, not least eyesight, for the experience and creation of place; uncertainty about the role of the poet when it comes to navigating between the poles of tourist and poet, especially in relation to the oscillation between eyesight, sight and vision; historicity and nostalgia as a prerequisite for Europe; counterhegemonic questionings of America as a copy to Europe’s status as predecessor, particularly through place-name doubles and the exploration of relational geographies; and the reconfiguration of the Euro-American relationship in light of globalization and new literary terms such as unoriginality.
Final report
The aim of the one-year sabbatical was to complete a book manuscript in the postdoctoral project “The Europe Trope," which investigates American poets' writing about Europe, and which I had been working on for periods of time through archival work and periods of stipend-funded research time. The year-long sabbatical in 2022 gave me the opportunity to complete the manuscript with the necessary focus.
During my research year, I first completed two sample chapters for a book proposal, in order to send it in for review with a publisher. While waiting for the peer review, I continued work with the other chapters. Upon securing a book contract, a new phase of the work began, with clearance review and editorial work. In 2025, the result of this work will be published as Constructions of Europe in Modern American Poetry, with Edinburgh University Press.
During the year, at the invitation of Professor Ulla Haselstein, I spent two research periods of one month and one week respectively at Freie Universität Berlin and the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies to do research in their Kennedy Library, which houses one of the best research libraries in Europe for American literature and which also has a sizable poetry collection.
The time in the research library was invaluable, and I made rapid progress on my manuscript during this period. The book deals with around twenty American poets and concerns their travels to Europe, primarily how these are portrayed in poems. It is an enormous material that I have researched in order to find relevant poems and sequences that pertain to these travels. The lion’s share of this material had been collected before the start of the sabbatical, through research trips with stipend funding, but I was here able to complete this collection with necessary additions. Ready access to so much secondary research and material about these poets was also a major benefit of the library work. The second, shorter research trip was designed to constitute an extra opportunity to check sources or double check things, later during the research year. This was fortuitous, as there was by then a need to consult material again, and different materials than last time.
What the project has resulted in aside from publications
Work on the project has given me many opportunities to network through personal contacts with leading researchers, at the Kennedy Institute as well as at a conference, but also in conjunction with my reaching out to scholars who I have consulted about the process of completing a book or to ask specific questions about one of the many poets in my project. This has occurred continuously and been a part of the process of finding out all information about rights for poetry quotations, which can be quite complicated when working on US authors. As a researcher, I needed to get in touch with all relevant publishers and Estates and I therefore also needed to get hold of contact information. In this extensive and time-consuming work, which also delayed the manuscript completion and is the reason for the extension of the project time, I have contacted people I did not know before for specific questions. This is the kind of work that one does not learn until one performs it, and these contacts have been very valuable. The project has also resulted in good communication and relations between me as a researcher and some of the book publishers who publish the work of the poets in my book, and between me and some of the Estates, which has been very rewarding and beneficial for future research projects. In some cases, they have asked for a copy of the book once it is published, which I think is very nice. Moving forward to writing a second book after this one, I feel extremely well prepared, with deep knowledge about pitfalls and difficulties, but also about possibilities and the best way forward in each stage of the process.
Conclusions:
The most important conclusions of the project are the following:
• American poets’ travels to Europe have been of central importance for the development of American poetry
This is an underestimated aspect of modern poetry history. While the importance of such travel for the Modernist generation has received scholarly attention and is quite established, my research shows that such travel continues to be of importance to the postwar generation of poets, albeit in a slightly different sense. The reason why these trips have a central role has to do with another finding:
• American postwar poets’ travels to Europe constitute an important part of handling Modernist precursors.
Postwar poets are aware of coming after the great Modernist generation that was seen as so innovative. My research shows how travels in Europe become a way in which many of these poets position themselves or otherwise deal with the legacy of Modernism – and not just European Modernism, but also American Modernism, which so often ‘took place’ in Europe.
• Facing a Europe always already seen and known invites questions of aesthetics and representation.
How do you write a poem about a famous European monument that everyone knows the look of, without resorting to cliché? How do you represent what has already been so often represented? How do you view yourself as a poet in a place in which so many poets have been before you? A site of intense creativity and newness à la Modernism, like Paris, is also, simultaneously, characterized by nostalgia and the cliché. This provides poets with a unique opportunity to think about their own poetics and aesthetics.
Another finding that goes beyond the American perspective of my study is the following:
• There is a conflict between the tourist and the poet that emerges in letters as well as essays and poems.
The traveling poet becomes a tourist, a role which like that of the poet is related to seeing and perception, but which unlike that of the poet is often seen as unserious or shallow. This leads to a tangible anxiety that we can see in some poems, essays and letters, where poets show a self-awareness regarding the oscillation between these poles, and roles.
New Research Questions
An important question that this work points to, but which could not be fully explored within the project, is how contemporary poets with new, partly different interests relate to a rapidly changing Europe. I present hypotheses that would need to be studied more closely with a greater number of examples in order to be confirmed.
Work on this project has also led me to new topics, since I was here considering poets who taught in, among other places, Europe. This led me to a research question that I am moving forward with in a new research project: the relationship between poetry and higher education. Here, like in my study of poets in Europe, place is important, but rather than European tourist destinations, I here move my gaze to teaching settings such as small colleges and large state universities where poets have been engaged in teaching in primarily an American history of higher education.
Dissemination of results and collaboration
During the course of the project, I presented my research in different settings. Early on, I presented my work at an open higher seminar at the research environment Language and Culture at Linköping University. The talk ”Glancing Backwards and Looking Ahead: Toward a Poetics of Looking” treated the second chapter of the book, which I was then completing.
During the longer stay at FU Berlin, I presented my research in the weekly seminar series Perspectives on American Literature and Culture within the Culture/Literature Research Colloquium, to an audience of literary scholars and Americanists. The presentation, ”Europe as Pastness in Postwar American Poetry,” focused on the third chapter of the book, which I was then completing. It was followed by a Q & A where I received valuable feedback and ideas for this chapter that then later also became important for the concluding chapter. Due to illness, some seminar activities were canceled during my stay, so I am extra grateful that this seminar could take place.
I presented a paper about one of the poets in the study at the largest conference in my field, the Modern Language Association Convention. This presentation allowed me to interact with specialists and resulted in the initiation of new collaborations, with an invitation to present at a conference and to contribute to a book on another poet. At the conference, I also had the opportunity to meet the publisher and discuss the book project, which was extremely valuable.
When the book is published, I plan to present my research further in different contexts.
During my research year, I first completed two sample chapters for a book proposal, in order to send it in for review with a publisher. While waiting for the peer review, I continued work with the other chapters. Upon securing a book contract, a new phase of the work began, with clearance review and editorial work. In 2025, the result of this work will be published as Constructions of Europe in Modern American Poetry, with Edinburgh University Press.
During the year, at the invitation of Professor Ulla Haselstein, I spent two research periods of one month and one week respectively at Freie Universität Berlin and the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies to do research in their Kennedy Library, which houses one of the best research libraries in Europe for American literature and which also has a sizable poetry collection.
The time in the research library was invaluable, and I made rapid progress on my manuscript during this period. The book deals with around twenty American poets and concerns their travels to Europe, primarily how these are portrayed in poems. It is an enormous material that I have researched in order to find relevant poems and sequences that pertain to these travels. The lion’s share of this material had been collected before the start of the sabbatical, through research trips with stipend funding, but I was here able to complete this collection with necessary additions. Ready access to so much secondary research and material about these poets was also a major benefit of the library work. The second, shorter research trip was designed to constitute an extra opportunity to check sources or double check things, later during the research year. This was fortuitous, as there was by then a need to consult material again, and different materials than last time.
What the project has resulted in aside from publications
Work on the project has given me many opportunities to network through personal contacts with leading researchers, at the Kennedy Institute as well as at a conference, but also in conjunction with my reaching out to scholars who I have consulted about the process of completing a book or to ask specific questions about one of the many poets in my project. This has occurred continuously and been a part of the process of finding out all information about rights for poetry quotations, which can be quite complicated when working on US authors. As a researcher, I needed to get in touch with all relevant publishers and Estates and I therefore also needed to get hold of contact information. In this extensive and time-consuming work, which also delayed the manuscript completion and is the reason for the extension of the project time, I have contacted people I did not know before for specific questions. This is the kind of work that one does not learn until one performs it, and these contacts have been very valuable. The project has also resulted in good communication and relations between me as a researcher and some of the book publishers who publish the work of the poets in my book, and between me and some of the Estates, which has been very rewarding and beneficial for future research projects. In some cases, they have asked for a copy of the book once it is published, which I think is very nice. Moving forward to writing a second book after this one, I feel extremely well prepared, with deep knowledge about pitfalls and difficulties, but also about possibilities and the best way forward in each stage of the process.
Conclusions:
The most important conclusions of the project are the following:
• American poets’ travels to Europe have been of central importance for the development of American poetry
This is an underestimated aspect of modern poetry history. While the importance of such travel for the Modernist generation has received scholarly attention and is quite established, my research shows that such travel continues to be of importance to the postwar generation of poets, albeit in a slightly different sense. The reason why these trips have a central role has to do with another finding:
• American postwar poets’ travels to Europe constitute an important part of handling Modernist precursors.
Postwar poets are aware of coming after the great Modernist generation that was seen as so innovative. My research shows how travels in Europe become a way in which many of these poets position themselves or otherwise deal with the legacy of Modernism – and not just European Modernism, but also American Modernism, which so often ‘took place’ in Europe.
• Facing a Europe always already seen and known invites questions of aesthetics and representation.
How do you write a poem about a famous European monument that everyone knows the look of, without resorting to cliché? How do you represent what has already been so often represented? How do you view yourself as a poet in a place in which so many poets have been before you? A site of intense creativity and newness à la Modernism, like Paris, is also, simultaneously, characterized by nostalgia and the cliché. This provides poets with a unique opportunity to think about their own poetics and aesthetics.
Another finding that goes beyond the American perspective of my study is the following:
• There is a conflict between the tourist and the poet that emerges in letters as well as essays and poems.
The traveling poet becomes a tourist, a role which like that of the poet is related to seeing and perception, but which unlike that of the poet is often seen as unserious or shallow. This leads to a tangible anxiety that we can see in some poems, essays and letters, where poets show a self-awareness regarding the oscillation between these poles, and roles.
New Research Questions
An important question that this work points to, but which could not be fully explored within the project, is how contemporary poets with new, partly different interests relate to a rapidly changing Europe. I present hypotheses that would need to be studied more closely with a greater number of examples in order to be confirmed.
Work on this project has also led me to new topics, since I was here considering poets who taught in, among other places, Europe. This led me to a research question that I am moving forward with in a new research project: the relationship between poetry and higher education. Here, like in my study of poets in Europe, place is important, but rather than European tourist destinations, I here move my gaze to teaching settings such as small colleges and large state universities where poets have been engaged in teaching in primarily an American history of higher education.
Dissemination of results and collaboration
During the course of the project, I presented my research in different settings. Early on, I presented my work at an open higher seminar at the research environment Language and Culture at Linköping University. The talk ”Glancing Backwards and Looking Ahead: Toward a Poetics of Looking” treated the second chapter of the book, which I was then completing.
During the longer stay at FU Berlin, I presented my research in the weekly seminar series Perspectives on American Literature and Culture within the Culture/Literature Research Colloquium, to an audience of literary scholars and Americanists. The presentation, ”Europe as Pastness in Postwar American Poetry,” focused on the third chapter of the book, which I was then completing. It was followed by a Q & A where I received valuable feedback and ideas for this chapter that then later also became important for the concluding chapter. Due to illness, some seminar activities were canceled during my stay, so I am extra grateful that this seminar could take place.
I presented a paper about one of the poets in the study at the largest conference in my field, the Modern Language Association Convention. This presentation allowed me to interact with specialists and resulted in the initiation of new collaborations, with an invitation to present at a conference and to contribute to a book on another poet. At the conference, I also had the opportunity to meet the publisher and discuss the book project, which was extremely valuable.
When the book is published, I plan to present my research further in different contexts.