Posted on Friday, October 5, 2007
Dr. Bethany Hicok, Westminster College associate professor of English, had her essay "Companions in Disguise: The Conjuries of Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore" published in The Wallace Stevens Journal, volume 31 (2).
"Stevens and Moore are two of the great American Modernists of the 20th century," Hicok said. "My essay tracks the way the two poets respond to and echo each other in the poetry of the 1930s. I am looking at how, together, they responded to the political, economic, and social crises of the 1930s and 1940s, which reshaped their own careers and helped redefine the course of American poetry.
"These two poets, I argue, resisted the pressure on artists in America to produce a Marxist-inflected poetry in order to remain relevant as poets. Both Stevens and Moore rejected collectivism in all its forms. They maintained that the uniqueness of the individual should be valued and provided the most humane foundation for a good and ethical society."
Hicok began writing on Moore for her dissertation. In her book, Degrees of Freedom: American Women Poets and the Women's College, 1905-1955-due out from Bucknell University Press in February-Hicok discusses Moore's early poetry and how the progressive educational environment of the women's college of the early part of the century influenced her writing and thinking. She also discusses the work of American poets Elizabeth Bishop and Sylvia Plath.
Hicok, who has been with Westminster since 2001, earned her undergraduate degree from Russell Sage College and master's degrees and Ph.D. from the University of Rochester.
Contact Hicok at (724) 946-6349 or e-mail hicokbf@westminster.edu for additional information.
