Background
Cushman, Stephen Bigelow was born on December 17, 1956 in Norwalk, Connecticut, United States. Son of Bigelow Paine and Anne Toffey Cushman.
(In his second collection of poems, Stephen Cushman explor...)
In his second collection of poems, Stephen Cushman explores, appraises, and celebrates many different forms of connections-domestic, social historical, and religious. With an easygoing voice, an engaging humor, and a sure understanding of his craft, he addresses subjects from marriage and travel to urbanism and the Civil War, illustrating the rewards of a sensitive regard for the junctions in everyday life and language. Invoking "all the lessons they ever taught me / about ordination in the ordinary," he reflects on members of his family, affirming attachments of marriage and blood. Beyond those immediate ties lie the connections of history-which take him to ancient Egypt, wartime Virginia, and Greece under Nazi occupation-as well as the broader bonds of struggling to love neighbors and strangers: a panhandler on a city street, an inmate in a county jail, a nun at a convent window, a fellow passenger in a subway car. In trying to make and maintain any of these links, Cushman avoids lapses of sentimental piety, admitting instead, in the words of the title poem, "I worship the sacred and savor the profane." Deftly balancing reverence and irreverence, the poems in Cussing Lesson both bless and curse. Whatever mode Cushman chooses and whatever form he employs, connections made by heart and head find their expression in his finely tuned confluence of words.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0807127604/?tag=2022091-20
( In the 1830s Alexis de Tocqueville prophesied that Amer...)
In the 1830s Alexis de Tocqueville prophesied that American writers would slight, even despise, form--that they would favor the sensational over rational order. He suggested that this attitude was linked to a distinct concept of democracy in America. Exposing the inaccuracies of such claims when applied to poetry, Stephen Cushman maintains that American poets tend to overvalue the formal aspects of their art and in turn overestimate the relationship between those formal aspects and various ideas of America. In this book Cushman examines poems and prose statements in which poets as diverse as Emily Dickinson and Ezra Pound describe their own poetic forms, and he investigates links and analogies between poets' notions of form and their notions of "Americanness.". The book begins with a brief discussion of Whitman, who said, "The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem." Cushman takes this to mean that American poetry has succeeded in making fictions about itself which persuade its readers that its uniqueness transcends merely geographical boundaries. He explores the truth of this statement by considering the Americanness of Emily Dickinson, Ezra Pound, Elizabeth Bishop, and A. R. Ammons. He concludes that the uniqueness of American poetry lies not so much in its forms as in its formalism and in the various attitudes that formalism reveals. Originally published in 1993. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691069638/?tag=2022091-20
(William Carlos Williams not only wrote poems that experim...)
William Carlos Williams not only wrote poems that experimented with alternative modes of verse measurement but also attempted to formulate a theory of modern poetic form. This book by Stephen Cushman cogently discusses both Williams's poems and his complex theories about "measure." Williams argued that his verse was organized in units he could time and count, much like music. But in fact, according to Cushman, his free, or nonmetrical, verse relies heavily on visual techniques such as enjambment and the typographic arrangement of lines and stanzas. By close analysis of particular poems, Cushman explores how these techniques figure in Williams's work. "Measure" was not merely a technical term for Williams, however, it eventually became the controlling metaphor behind his aesthetic ideology. In Williams's mind, "measure" became a metaphor for mimesis, Aristotle's concept of poetic imitation; "measure" also had expressive significance, function throughout his poetry as a metaphor for control and order in human thought and behavior; and "measure" finally was the aesthetic metaphor by means of which he defined himself in relation to American poetic tradition. "A first-rate piece of critical writing. It explores and illuminated as area of Williams's work that is crucial to grasp and yet has not thus far been adequately treated. This is one of the most important studies of Williams that I have read over the past decade."--- Louis Martz, Yale University
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300033737/?tag=2022091-20
( On 5 and 6 May 1864, the Union and Confederate armies m...)
On 5 and 6 May 1864, the Union and Confederate armies met near an unfinished railroad in central Virginia, with Lee outmanned and outgunned, hoping to force Grant to fight in the woods. The name of the battle―Wilderness―suggests the horror of combat at close quarters and an inability to see the whole field of engagement, even from a distance. Indeed, the battle is remembered for its brutality and ultimate futility for Lee: even with 26,000 casualties on both sides, the Wilderness only briefly stemmed Grant's advance. Stephen Cushman lives fifty miles south of this battlefield. A poet and professor of American literature, he wrote Bloody Promenade to confront the fractured legacy of a battle that haunts him through its very proximity to his everyday life. Cushman's personal narrative is not another history of the battle. "If this book is a history of anything," he writes, "it's the history of verbal and visual images of a single, particularly awful moment in the American Civil War." Reflecting on that moment can begin in the present, with the latest film or reenactment, but it leads Cushman back to materials from the past. Writing in an informal, first-person style, he traces his own fascination with the conflict to a single book, a pictorial history he read as a boy. His abiding interest and poetic sensibility yield a fresh perspective on the war's continuing grip on Americans―how it pervades our lives through films and songs; novels such as The Red Badge of Courage, The Killer Angels, and Cold Mountain; Whitman's poetry and Winslow Homer's painting; or the pull of the abstract idea of the triumph of freedom. With maps and a brief discussion of the Battle of the Wilderness for those not familiar with the landscape and actors, Bloody Promenade provides a personal tour of one of the most savage engagements of the Civil War, then offers a lively discussion of its aftermath.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/081391874X/?tag=2022091-20
Cushman, Stephen Bigelow was born on December 17, 1956 in Norwalk, Connecticut, United States. Son of Bigelow Paine and Anne Toffey Cushman.
Bachelor, Cornell University, 1978. Master of Arts, Yale University, 1980. Master of Philosophy, Yale University, 1981.
Doctor of Philosophy, Yale University, 1982.
Assistant professor University Virginia, Charlottesville, 1982-1987, associate professor, 1987-1994, professor English, 1994—2001, Robert C. Taylor professor English, since 2001.
( On 5 and 6 May 1864, the Union and Confederate armies m...)
(William Carlos Williams not only wrote poems that experim...)
(In his second collection of poems, Stephen Cushman explor...)
( In the 1830s Alexis de Tocqueville prophesied that Amer...)
(Book by Cushman, Stephen)
Member American Studies Associate, Modern Poetry Associate, Modern Language Association, William Carlos Williams Society, Phi Beta Kappa.
Married Sandra Bain Cushman, June 19, 1982. Children: Samuel Bain, Simon Bain.