The Modern Portrait Poem: From Dante Gabriel Rossetti to Ezra Pound

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments The poets discussed in the following pages drew from and collaborated with each other to an extent that belies traditional ideas of originality. On a more modest scale, the same is true of this book, built from the contributions of other scholars, shaped by the suggestions and ideas of my teachers, colleagues, and students, and most of all founded on the loving support of my husband, Matthew McGrath, and my sons Thomas and Charles. Without their sacrifices, encouragement, and belief that I would finish, I never could have done so. I dedicate this book to them. I would like to thank my colleagues at the University of Missouri, especially Timothy Materer, for his encyclopedic knowledge of modern poetry and patient reading of the whole manuscript. In many late night sessions , Alexandra Socarides and Anne Myers also beat and coaxed shapeless writing into argument, vagueness into clarity (but any vagueness that remains is mine). I am grateful to the University of Missouri Research Board, Research Council, and the Center for Arts and Humanities for research leave and funding support. Conversations with members of my 2006 portraiture seminar shaped my initial perceptions of the genre and have fruitfully continued over the years; Peter Monacell and Stefanie Wortman edited and commented on portions of the manuscript; and the students in my 2011 genre seminar helped me work out some final knots as I was finishing. Special gratitude is due to Jahan Ramazani, who selected my article “Parrot’s Eye: A Portrait by Manet and Two by T. S. Eliot” for the Kappel Prize at Twentieth-Century Literature in 2006, a vote of confidence that inspired the writing of this book. Thanks also to the journal for permission to reprint portions of that article here. Christopher Ricks, Eliot scholar extraordinaire, contributed essential guidance and leavening to viii Acknowledgments my project. Members of the T. S. Eliot Society also made this book possible by their generous reception of my papers, perceptive comments and corrections, and enthusiasm for the poetry of St. Louis’s native son. I would especially like to thank Anthony Cuda, David Chinitz, Michael Coyle, Benjamin Lockerd, Cyrena Pondrom, and Melanie and Tony Fathman . Although this book is not based on my dissertation, I have continued to draw on what I learned from my advisors, Allen Grossman and Walter Benn Michaels. My friends Dan Gil and Faye Halpern also helpfully commented on early versions of chapters in this book. Advice from anonymous referees on grant proposals and on my manuscript at the University of Virginia Press helped organize the book and make it more readable. Thanks also to editors Cathie Brettschneider, Ellen Satrom, and Mark Mones for their expert guidance. Finally, I wish to thank family members and friends who assisted in countless ways with the work of caring for my children during six years of research and writing, especially their three grandparents, Barbara Dickey and Fran and Gary McGrath, and my friend Rebecca Senzer, who helped out in New Haven so that I could look at manuscripts. I remember with gratitude Thomas Dickey and Franklin Allen, whose kindness continues to sustain life and work. Thanks to the librarians at the Yale Beinecke Rare Book Library for access to the manuscripts of “To La Mère Inconnue” and “Moeurs Contemporaines .” Unpublished material by Ezra Pound: Copyright © 2012 by Mary de Rachewiltz and the Estate of Omar S. Pound. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. Thanks also to the owners of Charles Demuth’s A Prince of Court Painters for permission to reproduce this painting, and to the Wyndham Lewis Memorial Trust for permission to reproduce The Dancers. The Modern Portrait Poem ...