On Abstract Expressionist Features In Barbara Guest’s Poetry

Barbara Guest (1920-2006), being one of the foundational members of the first generation New York School of Poetry, is identified in the critical literature as "the woman in one of American poetry’s initiatory moments of post-Modernism". However, her poetry, characterized by its elaborate syntax, imagistic fragments and experimental poetic forms, tends to challenge the intelligence of her readers and resist traditional literary criticism. Compared with the other four poets of the New York School-Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery and James Schuyler, Guest has not won her fair share of attention and fame, and remained the "odd woman out" in the critical appraisals of the group.The New York City, where Guest was living at that time, was the center of a flourishing art movement of American painting called "Abstract Expressionism". Emerging in the early 1940’s, the Abstract Expressionists aimed to create new visual representations of emotions and states of mind through channeling their inner impulses directly onto the canvas. Thus, their paintings became a vital graph of the artists’ own expressionism, a passionate interrogation of self. The creation concepts and aesthetic views of Abstract Expressionist painters also had a huge impact on artists of other forms of arts, poetry in particular. This is even truer for Guest who was a close friend and frequent collaborator with those painters. Therefore, drawing from the three key concepts of the Abstract Expressionist painting, namely "action", "all-over" and "inner landscape", this thesis sets out to analyze Guest’s poems during the 1960’s and 1970’s in the light of Abstract Expressionism, attempting to demonstrate how the poet has incorporated the painters techniques and aesthetics into the making of her own poetry. More importantly, the thesis intends to provide readers with a deeper understanding of the Guest’s creation process and aesthetic views through the combination of poetry and painting, which allows them to better appreciate the unique appeal of Guest’s poetry.The thesis begins with an introduction of Abstract Expressionist painting and brings forward the three key notions of Abstract Expressionism-"action", "all-over" and "inner landscape", which are discussed and examined respectively. Then, it introduces the New York School of Poetry and Barbara Guest, pointing out the close connection between the world of the poet and the world of painters. Additionally, a literature review on Guest’s poetry and thesis arrangement are also illustrated in this part.Chapter One sets out from the notion of "action" displayed in the Abstract Expressionism and analyzes how Guest embodies the concept in her poems through such techniques as "recording actions" and "living in the moment". By writing down her daily activities and capturing moments as they happen, Barbara Guest employs the medium of poetry as an arena in which to act, and provides the readers with a sense of immediacy as well as intimacy. Thus, the subject matter of poetry is no longer a collection of solid, static objects, but the life that is lived in the scene.Chapter Two draws on the features of all-over composition and "no focus point" in the Abstract Expressionist paintings, and attempts to interpret how Guest has applied such techniques as jagged lines, fragmented syntax, and shifting persona, to reproduce this visual effect in her poetry. Similar to Abstract Expressionist paintings, the focus of her poems is not concentrated on a single point. Rather, it is all over. While reading Guest’s works, the readers may subconsciously participate in the rewriting process of the poems, developing their own unique understanding and insights of her poetry.Chapter Three dwells on the methods Guest employs to present her "inner landscape" which is a combination of the external world with the poet’s inner feelings. She makes use of juxtaposition for tension, palpability for sensation, and inscaping for subject matter that relates the imaginative self to the external world. As a result, her poetry, sometimes, needs to be read like certain Abstract Expressionist paintings, which are designed to create emotional impact and induce contemplation. By merging her inner impulses with the surrounding world she perceives, Guest manages to develop, like the painters, an original expressive form that reveals something of her own state of mind and emotions common to all human beings.After applying the three notions of Abstract Expressionist painting to Guest’s works during 1960’s and 1970’s, the thesis reaches the conclusion that immersed in the booming era of Abstract Expressionism, Guest, as she once said, "was immensely influenced... by painters with whom I circulated". By incorporating the notions and techniques she has learned from the Abstract Expressionist painters into her work, Guest steps outside what is commonly known as classical poetry and marches into an uncharted but less inhibited territory.