Haniel Long’s Pittsburgh Memoranda : Documentary Form and 1930s Political Poetry

Abstract

Recent studies of 1930s political poetry understandably tend to look at the period through a Marxist lens, but as a result they neglect Haniel Long’s innovative documentary poem Pittsburgh Memoranda (1935). This essay seeks to recover Long—who was not a Marxist, though certainly a political radical—in order to arrive at a more complete picture of both the documentary genre and the cultural work of the times, complementing and complicating the existing scholarship. It argues for the importance of Long’s idiosyncratic political and aesthetic stances and puts him in conversation with contemporary Marxist poets and critics, utilizing Edwin Rolfe and Stanley Burnshaw as examples. Further, it positions Long’s work as a forerunner to and possibly an influence on Muriel Rukeyser’s “The Book of the Dead” (1938). Thus, this essay restores Long to the discussion about the political poetry of the Thirties generally and the documentary political poem more specifically.

Humanistic Knowledge-Making and the Rhetoric of Literary Criticism: Special Topoi Meet Rhetorical Action

“…Complexity also played a role in Begnal (2015). It was not a centerpiece of Begnal's motive claim, though it definitely participated in expressing that claim, as Begnal's use of the word in this passage from his introductory section makes clear: as .…”

“…In Begnal (2015), one article in my sample, the introductory section, in which the writer staked out explicit claims about his action/motive, ran for almost three pages. The final paragraph provided the most overt self-referential claims about the rhetorical action being attempted and the motives driving the article; it included the following passage.…”

“…This was a claim to what I called a knowledge-building action/motive. Such claims are exemplified by those expressed by Begnal (2015), who aimed to compliment and occasionally complicate the scholarly record by restoring poet Haniel Long to the canon, or by Battles (2015), who wanted to extend collective recognition of the ubiquity of the three-part motif-drinking, sleep, danger-across Old English poetry. Even Werner (2015), whose project explicitly declined to catalogue Stanwood's notebooks in routine scholarly ways (p. 1269) and instead invited its readers to join Werner in "follow[ing]" Stanwood outside (p. 1270), claimed an effort at conveying findings and enriching communal knowledge.…”

“…Between them, the special topoi could not fully account for the rhetorical action/motives of the majority of these articles: a claim to knowledge-building was a noticeably distinct element in the language of these claims. Begnal (2015) offers an example that illustrates the distinct presence of a knowledge-building claim, even at its most subtle: Begnal’s interest in correcting critical neglect of poet Haniel Long (mistaken critic) and hence enriching the canon (paradigm) all but encapsulated the entire claim to rhetorical action/motive in the article. Besides the topoi as discursive presences, there was, precisely, a claim to deliberate, motivated, rhetorical action: action directed at existing scholarship.…”