Dissertation

Cheaper, Lighter, Faster: Postwar Poetic Media and the Limits of Influence

My dissertation argues that Amiri Baraka, Diane di Prima, and John Giorno were innovative poets, editors, and publishers who broke with established poetic communities to develop their individual voices through groundbreaking media circulation. By rejecting these artistic groups and their implicit social pressures, they regained control of their art – in personal narratives, publication, and distribution. They intentionally selected media that they could use to reject and subvert, what they experienced as, an artificial and exclusive artistic establishment. My project is the first to argue that by employing these media in experimental ways, they honed a poetics that mirrored their lived experience and refused pressures to conform. While facets of their stories have been told before, I argue that it is necessary to return to the conversation since archival evidence reveals a more complicated and nuanced story of these poets’ lives and careers. In these three case studies, I closely examine how the cheap, light, and fast media they employed complicated the use of poetic voice, expanded their audiences, and made poetry available on demand in ways that fundamentally reshaped the second half of twentieth century American poetry.

Forthcoming (Spring 2026)

Essays

2019. “Gotham Book Mart as Publisher.”