The story is less interested in linear plot than in the texture of Jenks' consciousness: how a man in extremis makes meaning from the fragments of a life.
excellent! I actually find that your discussion of the story is so engrossing that the photos of Bennett are distracting. Consider taking them out after the initial bio to let us focus on the story. If you want visual interest, consider inserting a relevant and mood-setting quotation from the story, set off as a floating block.
period spent in jail.
not clear who spent time; consider changing to: and his time in jail
is equally as worthy of scholarly study.
why?
This dual experience of belonging and exile paired with creative flourishing and personal precarity
Might be clearer to say "dual experience of belonging and creative flourishing, combined with exile and personal precarity, threads itself..."
a years-long
Should be year-long
is play.
This is also an SWC note.
male-dominated economy.
If we are going to keep initials by each note, this one should end with (SWC), since it's an argument I make in my chapter on the plays, here: https://mina-loy.com/chapters/courting-an-audience/6-the-sacred-prostitute/
a “parasitic orientation towards dillitante [sic] tea-tables.”
Loy wrote this in a letter to Mabel Dodge Luhan, which is digitized here:
Mina Loy, Letters to Mabel Dodge Luhan. Mabel Dodge Luhan Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/10000282
The quotation can be found on image 16.
She also refers to a dedication: "To Those Who Are No Better Off —"
Citation for these letters:
Mina Loy. Letters to Carl Van Vechten. Carl Van Vechten Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/2043789
The first quotation can be found on image 40; the second on image 36.
The Sacred Prostitute
Here again, i don't have time to proof the play itself, but I suggest proofreading it against the version reprinted in Sara Crangle's Stories and Essays of Mina Loy, which is the authoritative edition of the play.
She mentions it again in a 1919 letter, expressing her hopes that it will be produced, “I think it would do well for the Bandbox Theatre.
These letters can be found in the Beinecke digital collection, so consider adding a link and citation:
Mina Loy. Letters to Carl Van Vechten. Carl Van Vechten Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/2043789
The first quotation comes from images 104-105; the second quotation comes from image 44 in this digital exhibit.
We could also refer readers to my chapter on the plays, which I included in a previous note: https://mina-loy.com/chapters/courting-an-audience/
Or to the specific section on The Pamperers: https://mina-loy.com/chapters/courting-an-audience/7-the-pamperers/
this play
I would suggest putting The Sacred Prostitute before The Pamperers to publish them in chronological order. Also you might add to this paragraph the sentence:
Although the play was never produced in Loy's lifetime, it was published in The Dial* in July 1920 (vol. 69, no. 1, pp. 65-78).
sts Loy composed this play prior to writing The Pamperers.
For this reason, I think it's better to print The Sacred Prostitute before The Pamperers in this collection.
mistress, & the mother”
Add period at the end of this sentence. Also please cite my chapter Suzanne W. Churchill. "Courting an Audience: Loy's Plays," Mina Loy: Navigating the Avant-Garde, edited by Churchill, Linda A. Kinnahan, and Susan Rosenbaum, University of Georgia, 2020. https://mina-loy.com/chapters/courting-an-audience/. Accessed 4 June 2024.
Alternatively, you can link to the chapter section on The Sacred Prostitute, which is where this info comes from: https://mina-loy.com/chapters/courting-an-audience/6-the-sacred-prostitute/
A citation for the Feminist Manifesto is:
Loy, Mina. "Feminist Manifesto." The Lost Lunar Baedeker: Poems of Mina Loy, edited by Roger Conover. New York, Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1996, p. 154.
Interesting Woolfian echo (probably unrelated, though) (LS)
I might cut this note, since it's not clear what Woolf is echoed and isn't a definitive echo anywya.
In Search of Lost Time
italicize book titles.
TAG ENDS OF OVERHEARD CONVERSATIONS
I don't have time to proof this entire play, but hopefully someone else already has or will do so? I've been comparing it to the Dial publication, but probably better to look at Sara Crangle's edited version, reprinted in the Essays and Stories of Mina Loy. This is also the authoritative addition of Sacred Prostitute.
Porcelain breath-Sevres Bow-Gilded crimson-Curved Flutings-Brocade- Tailored muscles- Whipped Cream-Blue spirals-Salved lips-Salon-Debussy- Azaleas-Ancestors-Armorial complacencies -Ooze
This appears more like a poem. There aren't line breaks in the same place in the Dial publication. Also, replace hyphens with full m-dashes with a space before and after each one.
Invisible Obvious Picked People Houseless Loony
In the Dial publication, these lines are indented so that the two columns appear on the center of the page (both left aligned).
II. The Pamperers IntroductionThe Pamperers III. The Sacred Prostitute IntroductionThe Sacred Prostitute
Shouldn't The Sacred Prostitute come before The Pamperers to present them in chronological order?
d other found materials.
Citation for Bay-Cheng:
Bay-Cheng, Sarah. “Modernist Poetic Drama: A Critical Introduction,” Poets at Play: An Anthology of Modernist Drama, edited by Barbara Cole. Selinsgrove, PA: Susequehana University Press, 2010.
-
change hyphen to m-dash
. See also
delete and insert "and"
Lacerba
italicize Lacerba. Also consider deleting "I think that" in the next sentence and starting with: "These references are important...."
Mina Loy, Christ on a Clothesline, ca. 1955–59, cut-paper and mixed-media collage, 24 × 41 1/2 × 4 1/2 in. (60.96 × 105.41 × 11.43 cm). Private Collection. Photography by Dana Martin-Strebel. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
Although I love this construction, it's not clear to me why it's here or how it relates to these two plays. It seems to me to represent a very different focus, style, and concern than these early plays. If an image/illustration is desired, maybe include the photo of Loy dressed for the Blind Man's Ball? Or one of her early drawings or paintings?
The curtain does not fall
In the Rogue publication, the final line is followed by a space, then:
February 28, 1915, Firenze.
[4]
move footnote to end of line
—
remove dash, which is not in original Rogue publication.
Loy's manuscript
Perhaps worth linking to the manuscript in the Beinecke's digital collection: https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/2112213
Two Plays are digitized in images 42-47 of this digital exhibit, which can be cited:
Loy, Mina. Poems and Plays. 1914. Carl Van Vechten Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/2112213.
(SWC)
Check with Laura, but I think it's distracting to have our initials after each note. I'd be happy to have them eliminated.
s,
change comma to dash for clarity.
here; here; here; here
Did Laura mean to substitute citations or links here?
etc
add punctuation: planes, etc.,
CREATION”
The word CREATION—" should appear centered on the next line, like a header parallel to DISHARMONY. above.
[3]
The underscores beneath the footnote reference are a bit confusing/distracting because they look like Loy's dashes. Can they be eliminated?
DISHARMONY.
This Header is centered in the Rogue publication
Huge hall— disparate planes, angles— whiteness— central arc-light— blaze Emptiness— But for one man— A dependent has shut the door—
Is there a reason why these first 5 lines are spaced more widely apart? In the original publication in Rogue, the first five lines are actually centered. When the man speaks, the lines shift to left alignment for the rest of the script, but all lines are spaced the same throughout.
s
Remove "s": The title is "Collision"
However,
For clarity, consider adding:
However, the term may also have a sexual valence, since in "Songs to Joannes," a long poetic sequence....
”,
In American publications, comma usually goes inside quotation mark (in British ones, it looks like this).
cinematograph and puppetry.
Would it be possible to add a citation to my chapter on the plays, since this is a key argument I put forth there? The citation would be:
Suzanne W. Churchill. "Courting an Audience: Loy's Plays," Mina Loy: Navigating the Avant-Garde, edited by Churchill, Linda A. Kinnahan, and Susan Rosenbaum, University of Georgia, 2020. https://mina-loy.com/chapters/courting-an-audience/. Accessed 4 June 2024.
IntroductionMina LoyFuturism, Feminism, and the Right to 'Genius'
Seems like these 3 sections could be combined into one Introduction to "Mina Loy: Futurism, Feminism and the Right to 'Genius.'"
The epigraph from the Pamperers could come before the short Introduction to Mina Loy.
The contents of the Futurism, Feminism & etc. page seem more like a title page, so perhaps the info belongs in copyrights?
ed European me
Add "white": historically championed white, European men
ss and
Add comma after access
Interactive Map
Cool idea to have a map, but it doesn't feel very interactive!. The marker name a place, but don't include any pictures. when I click on the linked chapters, it takes me away from the map. What about adding a Knight Lab JS StoryMap and showing where they moved in Ireland and the US?
she
her
known for its rich colonial-era history. It served as a site for the American army’s winter quarters during the Revolutionary War; George Washington’s headquarters are a popular attraction.
how are these details relevant to their story? Were they interested in this history?
Mairead was outside watering her flowers when her neighbor Mrs. Elliot beckoned her from her front door. A sweet, elderly woman, Mrs. Elliot let Mairead’s family use her telephone whenever they needed, as they did not have one of their own. Mrs. Elliot called, “come here, it’s Peter!”
This is vivid storytelling. Strive to make more scenes feel like this, as if we're in the moment.
she
her plan, not she and his plan
U.S. for longer than twelve months, which effectively voided their visas.
above you say they were guaranteed a way back, so this seems contradictory. Did they initially misunderstand the laws or did they change?
“homesick” for America.
what did she miss most?
brother from her spot upstairs to ensure he remained safe.
while on the bus? this is a little confusing!
continued to work as a bartender.
Was this a lucrative enough job for him to be the sole financial provider? Whatever happened to his gambling habit?
. Yet, any potential anxiety was placated by her awareness that she and her family could return to America
But you said she didn't have any anxiety. And why was it so easy to move back and forth? How wealthy were they? their story seems to contradict assumptions about Irish immigrants and poverty, so you might say more about their economic position.
Tallaght is working hard to overcome its heritage as a rundown commuter town.
When is this picture take and when was this written? Did this reputation come after they moved there or before?
heir stories of
can you include some of these stories?
isolated without relatives around.
What about the vibrant, supportive Irish American community you wrote of?
Mairead
she
he American life of which Mairead had dreamed.
What matched her dreams and what exactly were they? I only heard that she dreamed of beaches. Knowing so little of her dreams and of her family life it's hard to understand how they aligned.
ad planned to raise their children, Wendy and Jay,
Wait, when did they have children? What was Mairead's experience of childbirth and infant motherhood like? Did she keep working or stay at home? Seems like an important chapter is missing!
Mairead calls him the “nicest father in the world.”
Given that the father is such a pillar of the family, it seems strange that we didn't hear about him in the courtship/wedding chapter. Would he have had a say about his daughter's suitor? Wouldn't she have been sad to leave him?
To learn one must be humble. But life is the great teacher. –James Joyce, Ulysses Though
Spaces between paragraphs occasionally is inconsistent in these chapters.
IV. Early Life
Why go back to her childhood here? Can you prepare for or build a transition?
They
who is "they" in this sentence?
Mairead’s diving into the American workforce led to some culture shock. “I didn’t even know the money –the dollars– I didn’t know what I was doing.” Once she overcame her initial confusion, Mairead fell in love with her department store job. Having been employed since she was thirteen years old, she relished the sense of purpose and responsibility that comes with working. Mairead continued to work at Steinbach for two years, until she and Peter moved to West Orange, another New Jersey town.
These paragraphs feel very thin. Can you flesh them out with more details?
Indeed,
How are these newspaper clips functioning? Are you expecting your readers will read them? (they're pretty small for my old eyes). Would it help to frame them with a little more context, e.g. when you describe the news paper saying something about the Letters to the Editor and the reflections on St. Patrick's day, maybe even pulling out quotations from the pieces you incorporate?
“Red Bank wasn’t that much different from Ireland because I came from Dublin, the city, you know.”
But Red Bank is a suburb, not a city. I don't understand this remark!
Complete with a grand dining room, a casino, and a ballroom, the British-owned vessel, at its peak popularity in the late 1940s, had been a luxury travel experience sought after by immigrants and tourists.
awkward syntax
spending time
Don't you kind of wonder what they did there?
the window, legs dangling. Mairead and
missing paragraph break?
Also it would be nice down her to have a button link to move to the next chapter, rather than having to scroll back up to the top of the page.
her biggest fear was a goodbye.
Or maybe she couldn't bear to say goodbye because she knew what a risk she was taking, and it was too painful to confront the loss of her mother?
Art Deco-style
What is the significance of this detail?
With time,
Say more?
ikely influenced her reaction to M
Can you ask your grandmother if her mother's choice of marriage over adventure influenced her not to make the same sacrifices? (though in her case, marriage was the ticket to adventure, so she didn't really have to make the same choice. Nevertheless, she may have heard her mother express regret about dreams not pursued, and didn't want to clip her own wings.)
Peter’s Irish passport
Images are too small to see/read
As seen in her determination to reach America
We haven't really seen this yet.
concedes
tense change
grandmother explains
What is she implying? His family was too stingy to supply a full meal? or too generous with tea and cake?
t.” Seizing this opportunity, Mairead was careful not to get her hopes up. She half-e
Feels a bit choppy. Can you provide more details here?
Once settled, Angela had urged Mairead to come join her and mind children, as well.
Can you embellish this with the stories/images/beach scenes Angela described to her, to prepare for the next paragraph?
was exciting, “like going to the moon.”
Yet on the home page, you say it was characteristic of the Irish experience. Seems slightly contradictory that something so commonplace could also be so exotic.
it occurred to me tha
This sentence changes tense: what is the timeframe in this section. When did this realization occur to you and why?
returned to Dublin
returned to Dublin from where? and when? Reorder sentences to iron out confusion.
She responds that she is, punctuating her text with a shamrock emoji.
What about incorporating an image of your text exchange, if you still have it?
, made much more sense
why did it make more sense? How old were you? Can you develop this anecdote to tell us more about you, your relationship to her, and what these linguistic differences meant to you as a child---or mean now?
vocalizing
vocalizing seems like an odd verb, possibly one that requires an object. Maybe say: listen to her tell tales of life in Dublin in her thick Irish accent as she sipped her ever-present cup of Lipton tea. The Lipton detail is interesting--is it important? Does it signal that she's assimilated American culture and brands?
Welcome
This "welcome" seems like something that comes with a WordPress theme, rather than the beginning of a creative nonfiction essay. Can you adapt the affordances of the WP theme to better reflect your genre and appeal to your readers?
On the other hand, the photo of your grandmother as a bride is captivating. Something about her smile with the slight underbit and the way she's tucking her chin suggests a mixture of skepticism, hopefulness, and gumption! Do you want to caption the image with her name and the date of the photo?
illuminate the significant role of American immigration in Irish culture in the mid-twentieth century and the legal and social obstacles that these individuals encountered
I admire the way you are thinking about and articulating your goals, but I wonder if this really is the goal of your project. Are you most interested in the larger landscape, or in capturing something distinctive and dynamic about your grandmother within this context? "Through one courageous immigrant's story" sounds too cliched for your own distinctive voice!
national psyche.”
Are you going to use a footnote plugin or MLA style for citations?
this period
What period are you referring to?
grandmother
My, grandmother, Mairead...
Name her if you name him.
Also, you know what might be fun? Incorporating a short audio of her pronouncing her own name. I realized I don't know how to pronounce it!
surprisingly,
Cut the adverb and let your readers feel the surprise.
“What drove you to leave Ireland and come to America in the first place?” “I got married. I came the day I got married.”
Try using the quotation block to see how it looks.
, Mairead and Peter were soon engaged
The chronology seems a bit wrinkly here. Maybe the engagement ring paragraph could be moved down to here?
et,
unnecessary comma.
am proud to be the first American President to visit Ireland during his term of office, proud to be addressing this distinguished assembly, and proud of the welcome you have given me. My presence and your welcome, however, only symbolize the many and the enduring links which have bound the Irish and the Americans
These call outs are more disruptive here than in your word doc because of the white space that breaks up the narrative. Maybe a plugin or another theme would allow more options for formatting.
immigrants
men, presumably?
As there were no vacancies at Peter’s job in Red Bank
I don't understand this fully. Why did they have to move to sponsor their friends? Why did he have to leave his job to work at the same restaurant as his friend?
d “didn’t want to have children yet.”
Do you have the kind of relationship where you can ask her about birth control? I'm always curious to know what was available to women in various eras. Given her family's history of large families, Irish women didn't seem to have much access to birth control in Ireland!
Two particularly patriotic Steinbach advertisements printed in the Red Bank area newspaper, The Daily Register. The promotions are dated November 3, 1964 and February 19, 1965, respectively.
Can you use the caption feature or a header to distinguish image captions from your narrative?
I begin to chuckle, but she sounds serious.
I wonder if you need to be in the narrative more consistently?
her
the vessel's
when fifteen children grow up packed into a two-bedroom home, tight-knit sibling relationships are perhaps inevitable.
Maybe just say:
K and P were close, having grown up in a family of 15 children packed into a two-bedroom home.
It is very important to me in this project t
Why is it so important? Is reader participation part of your feminist practice or resistance to orientalism, in that you want to practice a desire to learn and understand, rather than an impulse to master and authorize?
mastery
What is "mastery"?
In his book “Material Modernism: The Politics of the Page”,
Excellent opening that gets straight to the point and sets up a clear, helpful summary of Bornstein.
t significantly misrepresents the authorial intent
Can you say more about how it misrepresents the meaning? How does the title change alter the political meaning of the poem? Why is "The White House" so much more pointed and inflammatory than "White Houses"? Similarly, how does the change to the final lines affect the meaning of the poem. After a strong set up for a careful close reading of the two versions of the poem, you seem to stop just when you get to the good stuff! Close read the poems to show how they mean different things!
Here you need a signal phrase such as "According to Henry Louis Gates," to mark the beginning of the borrowed material, with the parenthetical to mark the end of it.
The Liberator was radically political magazine that emerged around 1918. The editor of this magazine was communist sympathizer Max Eastman. Eastmen published various politically charged works in his magazine and included a wealth of information about the socialist movement that was taking place on a global scale.
Where is the citation for this information?
To readers unfamiliar with Atavist, you might provide instructions in the caption telling them to slide the arrow right to left to see full page vs. single sonnet view. Though in this case, i think the slider is unnecessary, since the sonnet is so legible on the full page.
poem
You might note that it's in the form of a Shakespearean sonnet. It seems significant that he would protest within the preeminent literary form of the English language!
Claude McKay
What is the source of this image? Caption is incomplete. Also should you provide a source for the biographical information below?
Where is the citation for this information?
senseless things”
and yet, the tea leaves' prophecy proves accurate.
Her plays did not often find recognition as significant literary contributions in the way that her poetry did because they did not fit the feminine ideals of tradition and purity expected of women poets at the time.
excellent intro so far. Does this idea need a citation?
[1]
I don't think this acknowledgment is necessary. You've cited me plenty! just take it out.
mantle
It's worth re-reading the previous section's discussion of Mantled, because it offers different definitions, so you've got an apparent dissonance between the sections, each written as if it's the only one to discuss the "mantle" trope.
why does “the son” appear so frequently?
excellent argument, but is it worth acknowledging that Johnson herself had only sons--no daughters?
uish,t
missing space
Prejudice is mantle is body
fascinating and problematic equation, because it means that the black body is being rejected as burdensome, in favor of the supposedly more pure spirit. Reminds me of Blake's Little Black Boy, where the innocent speaker internalizes white society's condemnation of the black body.
and follow the linguistic and bibliographic codes into a marginalized and complicated lif
Here you seem to be allowing sound to trump sense. This last phrase sounds dramatic, but doesn't make clear sense. Can we really follow the codes into a marginalized life? Maybe it would be more accurate to say we must read the linguistic codes along with the bibliographic codes in order to understand the complicated identity politics of the poem.
introducing an ambiguity absent in previous versions.
It seems to me that the change in punctuation from period to comma (which is the only difference I detect) changes the antecedent. With the period, "Reft of the fetters modifies" the spirit; with the comma it refers back to "prejudice," which makes more sense. Seems like GDJ is simply correcting a typo!
that
delete "that" for parallel structure
And so
"And so"? Why? I don't understand the logic of your argument. Why, when she says it's "entirely racial" do you insist that it's not?
This is the reading, we propose to crack open, not limiting
unnecessary comma following reading, but even without the comma, I don't understand the logic.
Please also be aware that every instantiation has bibliographic codes--some are just more obvious than others.
This is limiting. Without the bibliographic codes to understand the significance of language like “mantled,” the reader cannot possibly understand the layered significance in this work.
Rephrase for stronger conclusion:
Separated from the bibliographic codes that emphasis race in the Crisis, the poem in the context of the anthology is reduced to a lament about gender.
A reader of The Anthology of Magazine Verse edition of “TO THE MANTLED” would not be wrong to read this poem as a lyric about the oppression of women written by a woman
Watch this tendency to write in negatives statements that would work more concisely in the affirmative, e.g.. Within the context of the Anthology of Magazine Verse, To the Mantled comes across as a lyric by a woman and about the oppression of women.
I'm not sure how Braithwaite encourages this reading, since all the poems in the anthology are treated the same way. I would not attribute such strong intentionality to his placement.
As a final example, the poem “Elevation” in Johnson’s collection speaks of the “highways in the soul […] Far beyond earth-veiled eyes.” The soul’s elevation is like the spirit which “soars aloft” in “TO THE MANTLED.” This continues.
As a final example of what?
And what continues? That final sentence is a puzzler!
On page 5
Really, only student writers use page #s like this. This site is too sophisticated an impressive for such gestures. Put the page #s in parentheses at the end of the sentence and don't use them to pad your prose or substitute for thoughtful transitions!
does not debunk
change to affirmative? supports this analysis?
They
How did the interested reader become "They." Should be "he," "she" or "a reader"
page 398
the biographical section at the end of the book? (page #s aren't really helpful in this context)
t has historically held significance in the phrase, “the mantle and the ring,” referring to a vow of chastity a widow would take upon the death of her husband. Second, during this period, black artists and intellectuals co-opted the term to refer to the racial ‘cloak’ that limits the black body.
VERY IMPORTANT! There seems to be a missing citation here. Please add it ASAP.
Before moving forward
This is a strange transition. Why do we need this information now? Wouldn't it be better at the beginning, when you first mention the term?
not at all limited to a racial or gendered group
According to my scanning of the volumes, the 1917 edition is the first one to include African American writers. Prior to that year, the anthologies were limited to white poets.
the “
confusing punctuation.
Maybe change to:
The Mantled referred to in the title and addressed as "they" in the poem are "colored people."
on the seventeenth page of
rep. Maybe just say which issue.
the reader of the poem have to the text of the poem
a bit mind boggling. Would anything be lost if you trimmed it to: "does the reader have to the text of the poem"?
attend to
make sense of their differences?
Seems like the answer to how to attend to them is quite obvious: pay attention to them!
Johnson published a second version in William Stanley Braithwaite’s An Anthology of Magazine Verse, which claimed to use the The Crisis version
to avoid overuse of claim, rephrase:
Later that year, William Stanley Braithwaite reprinted the Crisis version of the poem in his 1917 Anthology of Magazine Verse.
editoria
editorial interventions
her poems are often conventional
But wait: for a black woman to claim conventional feminine and material feelings and ideals is actually a daring defiance of race conventions (as that earlier awful Williams quotation shows: black women and men were considered outside the categories of "woman" and "man"). To claim gender conventions is to defy race conventions, no?
almost
why "almost" anagogical (a word I had to look up, which could use some clarification, since you don't seem to be talking about spiritual matters).
she
Johnson. [otherwise "she" could refer to Churchill]
The two versions of Johnson’s poems are also linguistically different
I'm wondering if, in this section, you'd be better off just comparing Shall I Say in the Crisis to Prufrock on Poetry. It would be more efficient and prepare for your argument about different modernities, without stealing the thunder of the How to read a Poem section. I think that the important lesson in this section is that Johnson, read out of context, seems simple and conventional, but read in context becomes a more complex figure. In contrast, Eliot is complex on the page, even in his original publication context, which isolated the poem anyway.
horse in a dreamlike state
is the horse in a dreamlike state?
Churchill’s phrase
weird citation.
August 1919 issue of The Crisi
Why not include a facsimile of her poem next to the facsimile of Prufrock?
first stanza
Can we see the poem? It's hard to understand the comparison without being able to read the first stanza.
erratic, illogical and forgetful
This letter is certainly damning, but it doesn't suggest that he thinks she's trite. Maybe requote the passage above and say that while he publicly described her work as "simple and sometimes trite," he was privately more damning, writing in a letter of recommendation: "She is erratic..."
constructing
seeking reinforcement for their own stereotypical portrayals of black men as...
original periodical context?
seems like you've already got a strong answer to this question, so why go backwards? Might be better to say: to appreciate GDJ as a poet, we must read her in the contexts in which she published. In these contexts, what appears conventional proves to be a more complex grappling with intersectional constraints that characterize her experience of modernity.
Poet
eliminate cap on poet
somewhat
not sure you need the "somewhat" qualifier. It is reductive.
Johnson’s Author’s Note. Bronze. 1922.
consider moving up to epigraph position or just after you quote this sentence.
By examining the bibliographic codes of The Crisis, we hope a more thorough reading of Johnson’s work will acknowledge the complexity of her personal and artistic experience, as well as the intersection of identity, oppression, and artistic achievement that black female poets at the turn of the century wrote despite, about, and against.
Beautifully stated! Put a version of this sentence at the end of the Bibliographic codes section, in the place of the claim to access the "true intended meaning."
wrote that
can you provide a bit more context? When did he write this and where? Who was he?
from the fear of their children being lynched to an increased risk of their newborns dying from health complications.
seems like you should reverse the chronology and have newborns first and change second clause to"fear of their children facing discrimination, violence, and even lynching."
to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions
is the boldface in the original? If not, add a parenthetical that says (emphasis added).
often creating a complex convergence of oppression
Again, I think the diagram deserves more than a link--an actual caption acknowledging its author. And while I suggested that you maintain the b & w and bronze aesthetic of the site, I think the color diagram worked better. In black and white, it renders the disable almost invisible.
the study of intersectionality.
I think Giovana deserves at least a caption for this animated spoken word poem, if not explicit introduction and acknowledgment. The citation at the bottom of the page seems like an insufficient acknowledgment.
Possibly also center and even enlarge the video frame to make it parallel to the size and location of the New Yorker comic.
we are more equipped to discover the true intended meaning of her work
ah, the thorny issue of intention. I think this is a red herring. What strikes me as most promising about reading bibliographic codes is not their potential to unearth the true, intended meaning (does the author even know? is that the only valid meaning?), but its potential to bring to light complexity and innovation in her poetry that might be overlooked if the poems were read merely as linguistic objects.
Generally speaking, editorial editions and adaptations of poetry are much more inclined to pander to the ideas and messages that society, the editors, and publishing companies wish to convey—yet what can be said of their meaning to the original author?
I'm not sure you can separate the author's own work from these pressures, but ok...
d fem
missing space
also possibly change "adversarial atmosphere of a black and female poet" to "adversarial conditions faced by black and female poets."
we often forget to acknowledge the historical presence
historical context?
Also, maybe you can restate this so you're not attacking a straw man. I think a stronger transition might be something like: Bornstein's methodology is especially effective for re-reading a poet like Georgia Douglas Johnson. When her poems are isolated and read solely for their linguistic codes, they may seem conventional and even unoriginal. But when read in the context of their bibliographic codes, the poems generate more complex meanings, drawing attention to the intersectional demands of race, class, and gender that she had to negotiate. As an African American female writer...
Irrefutably, anthological presentations of poetry and literature displace them from their historical, political, and spatial contexts—scholars seem to agree on this—despite increasing access and availability
Thanks for introducing me to Dettmar's critique of Bornstein. I like the way the sense of debate enlivens this discussion, though this paragraph seems a bit wordy and repetitive. It might be condensed to say something like: Dettmar criticizes Bornstein for lackin originality and for underestimating the value of well-edited anthologies: [emperor's new clothes quotation]. But if Bornstein's argument isn't original, it has the virtue of compiling a set of theories to produce a practical methodology that helps us read poems and appreciate poems whose complexity does not lie solely in their material contexts. [this kind of statement would lead smoothly to your next section]
Dettmar,
cut the comma
, and should,
cut the commas
in order to place them within a more complex contextual setting
This last phrase dangles. Possibly revise to say: Literature is most fully understood not merely as words on a page, but as a collaboration between those linguistic codes and the bibliographic codes that anchor them in more complex, material, and historical contexts.
(Qtd. In Bornstein 7)
change to (qtd in Bornstein 7)
This begs the question
This "begs the question" is a cliche that is used in ways that don't reflect it's actual meaning. Can you rephrase this sentence without relying on a cliche? I'm not sure why our tendency to focus on linguistic codes leads to the question about self-reflexivity. What do you mean by self-reflexive? I think you may mean autonomous, independent, and self-bounded.
ot stop her from writing
But she did have trouble getting her work published during this time, no?
She showed dedication to her family, especially continuing her son’s education, shedding light on why motherhood was such an emphasized theme throughout her poetry
This sentence lacks a period. Also would make more sense if revised to say: Her dedication to her family, especially to supporting her son's education, sheds light on why motherhood is such a prevalent theme in her poetry.
Qtd. In Shaf
change to (qtd in Shafer 231). i.e. eliminate caps and period after qtd
,
delete this comma
Building off
Propelled by? Energized by? "Building off" gives agency to "her literary career," which is not a sentient agent of action.
standards
high standards?
B
missing period after B.
born
insert: she was born...
more recent scholarship
would be a good idea to cite the scholars, at least in a parenthetical, though you could give them more credit by saying something like: Although scholars such as Gloria Hull and Claudia Tate have attempted to elevate her status and claim her originality...
,
no comma
,;
weird punctuation
and intersectional studies permeate the two,
Is this really the case, or are you the pioneers in bringing the theory to bear on modernist periodical studies? I would take this phrase out and just say: as periodical studies grows and the modernist canon expands,...
Literary Editor
capitalization unnecessary
e”
Missing punctuation and citation.
claim of the early magazine as it competed with more radical publications like Fire!! and Harlem
I still think this sentence is misleading. The early Crisis didn't compete with Fire!! which didn't even appear until after the Crisis had been in print for a decade and a half!!
codes (the organization of the information on the page) makes
see comment below.
Maybe revise to maintain present tense, e.g.:
like when a picture of a child appears...
and suddenly the words no longer speak by themselves.
bibliographic codes...make a multitude [revise for plural verb]
Also I wonder if the codes themselves can make value judgments. Maybe they can imply or can elicit value judgments, but codes aren't sentient beings!
-Archives (Archives and Bibliography).
see above comment
art and politic
see note above on this section (I just figured out how to highlight).
Abstract typos:
When you scroll down to instructions for reading the site, references to ARCHIVES need to be changed to SOURCES.
Not trying to be nit-picky, but the landing pad is where you establish your credibility, so small typos matter!
Great looking website!