The Rhetoric of the Rearguard? Sincerity in Innovative American Poetics

Abstract

How did the criterion of poetic sincerity transform, in the space of a half-century, from a fundamental tenet of radical modernism to an incarnation of lyrical and expressive orthodoxy? Why have efforts to reintegrate sincerity into experimental poetics and literary traditions—such as the problematic New Sincerity of the 1990s—met with limited success? Continuing a reflection begun in my study Rhétorique de la sincérité, I suggest that this disconnect between innovative American poetics and the criterion of sincerity may be traced back to the fundamentally wrongheaded association between sincerity and expression. Reintegrating sincerity into innovative contemporary verse seems possible not by creating a new form of “sincere” expression, but by distancing sincerity from the notion of expressivity altogether.

Keywords

• contemporary poetry
• expression
• identity
• Language Poetry
• lyricism
• modernism