Cryptic cartography: The poetry of Michael S. Harper and the geo -poetic impulse

Cryptic Cartography: The Poetry of Michael S. Harper and the Geo-poetic Impulse is an interdisciplinary investigation of selected poems by contemporary African American poet Michael S. Harper. This study presents Harper's corpus as a prime example of the theoretical notion which I develop and term "geo-poetics." This theory examines the ways in which the psychic and physical terrain of the United States is constructed and configured through American verse. Focusing upon Harper's sustained consideration for spatial issues, I present his poetry as a detailed literary mapping of American historical and cultural geography.;Considered from this perspective, I regard Harper as a key figure in a longstanding dialogue in American poetics which examines space, place, and memory. I explore connections between Harper's poetry and the verse of several twentieth-century African American poets, including his literary ancestors Sterling A. Brown, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Robert Hayden. My claims for a geo-poetic tradition, including its capacity to revise and expand the definition of who and what is "American," are further developed when I place Harper's poetry in dialogue with selected poems by Walt Whitman, Muriel Rukeyser, and Robert Lowell. I also explore the links between the spatial orientation of Harper's corpus and various non-literary modes of expression, including the visual arts and musical forms such as blues and jazz. Specifically, I examine the interaction between Harper's verse and African American musicians such as John Coltrane, Bessie Smith, and Charlie Parker as well as the aesthetic dialogue that is generated by his encounters with the work of visual artists Romare Bearden and Oliver Jackson.;I employ several works of spatial and cultural theory in order to form the foundation of this dialogue, including historian Pierre Nora's essay, "Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire," sociologist Maurice Halbwachs's theory of collective memory from On Collective Memory and novelist and literary critic Ralph Ellison's essay "Going To the Territory." These three examinations of geography, history, and memory serve as the cornerstones of the theory of geo-poetics; they contextualize my investigation of Harper's poetry and its spatial dimension while initiating a larger discussion of space and place in both African American cultural production and American literature.;Drawing from the body of critical work on Harper's verse by Robert B. Stepto, Melvin Dixon, and Gayl Jones, I investigate the spatial dimensions of his corpus in terms of human geography, African American music, and visual culture as well as various works of American poetry. By focusing on the extra-literary aspects of Harper's poetry, which are often categorized as "elusive," I contextualize this important body of work within the American literary canon. In this way I depict Harper's verse as a body of work that performs multiple functions which include recasting the limits of American identity, reorienting the map of the American cultural and historical landscape as well as establishing and extending a notion of aesthetic kinship between the various poets, genres, and disciplines of American cultural production. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).