Sleeping together: Antiquarianism, anti-naturalism and Kate Colby’s narco-poetics

Authors

  • João Paulo Guimarães

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.35360/njes.433

Keywords:

American poetry, realism, antiquarianism, natural history, wilderness, frontier, organicism, open form, decadence, fatalism, sleep, Charles Olson, language poetry

Abstract

In Beauport, American poet Kate Colby poses the question of whether the fictions that orient our daily lives are necessarily less real, natural and true than the more visceral, complex and historically subtle world supposedly revealed by experimental poetry. Colby provocatively revisits and re-evaluates the spheres of bourgeois domesticity, tourism and memorabilia, often dismissed in vanguardist circles for suggesting inauthenticity, ignorance and conservatism. Bric-à-brac’s death-like stasis soothes her sense of impotence and brings her closer to the sleep-walking commonfolk she classes herself with. Colby taps into the democratic potential of these objects whose stagnant beauty problematizes progressivist notions of recuperative and regenerative politics.

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Published

2018-07-01

How to Cite

Guimarães, J. P. (2018). Sleeping together: Antiquarianism, anti-naturalism and Kate Colby’s narco-poetics. Nordic Journal of English Studies, 17(2), 29–49. https://doi.org/10.35360/njes.433

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