Writing

Books

The Passions of Modernism (2010)

The Passions of Modernism: Eliot, Yeats, Woolf, and Mann (U. of South Carolina Press)

We have not allowed modernism to get far enough out of control.

Contesting the traditional view of modernism as defined by skepticism and detachment, this book explores how four modernist writers—Eliot, Yeats, Woolf, and Mann—conceptualize passion, how they dramatize its upheavals and illuminations, and how it shapes their ideas about creativity. The book shows that modernism was, from the first, a project aimed at relinquishing the control that its critics mistakenly propose it so ardently desired.

from the book:

“This tension [between action and passion] will not be resolved by recourse to the conventional paradigm wherein passion is simply a momentary departure from action, a temporary aside on the path to self-possession and rational autonomy. The burden of this book will be to follow the ways that modern writers struggle to articulate this tension . . . and to perform it in ways that do justice to the affective extremes to which the mind is given when its self-sovereignty is threatened.”

reviewed by John Morgenstern in The South Carolina Review (2011):

“In providing nuanced contexts for the affective theories and compositional practices of several of the principal architects of literary Modernism, Anthony Cuda chips away at the critical foundation on which much early twentieth-century literature has long been misconstrued. . . .  his work joins with other recent studies on modernist prejudice, desire, and trauma to demand a wholesale renovation of the entire construct of High Modernism.”

 

In Progress

An Eliot Quartet

An Eliot Quartet explores how four major twentieth-century poets—Randall Jarrell, Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney, and Louise Glück—engaged with Eliot’s influence, grasped his work in ways drastically different from scholars, and reshaped how we regard modernism and its possibilities.

 

T. S. Eliot, Belatedly

Eliot harbored a longstanding creative obsession with belatedness. Over the course of his career, he experimented with dramatizing moments when people realize that it is too late; they have passed the point of no return. Belatedness became a way for him to address a spectrum of emotional intensities, an array of aversions and commitments, and a entrenched set of assumptions about people and art. This book tells the story of Eliot’s obsession and how it shaped his life and work.

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Articles, Chapters, etc.

Chapters in Books
  • “Belatedness in The Family Reunion.” Critical Perspectives on T. S. Eliot’s Drama. Forthcoming, Fall 2024. (7,445 words)
  • “The Complete Prose: The Critic’s Workshop.” T. S. Eliot Now. Bloomsbury Academic, 2024. (5,975 words)  
  • “A Precise Way of Thinking and Feeling: Eliot and Verse Drama.” The New Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot. Ed. Jason Harding. Cambridge UP, 2017. 116-130. (6,705 words)
  • “Evenings at the Phoenix Society: Eliot and the Independent London Theatre.” T. S. Eliot and the Other Arts. Ed. Frances Dickey and John Morgenstern. Edinburgh UP, 2016. 202-24. (10,480 words)  
  • “The Waste Land’s Afterlife: The Poem’s Reception in the Twentieth Century and Beyond. The Cambridge Companion to The Waste Land. Ed. Gabrielle McIntire. Cambridge UP, 2015. 194-210. (7,273 words)  
  • “T. S. Eliot.” A Companion to Modernist Poetry. Ed. David Chinitz and Gail McDonald. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014. 450-463. (6,947 words)  
  • “The Poet and the Pressure Chamber: T. S. Eliot’s Life.” A Companion to T. S. Eliot. Ed. David Chinitz. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. 3-14. (6,826 words)
  • “W. B. Yeats and a ‘Certain Mystic of the Middle Ages.’” Julian of Norwich’s Legacy: Medieval Mysticism and Post-Medieval Reception. Ed. Denise Baker and Sarah Salih. NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 49-68. (7,621 words)  
  • “‘Crying in Plato’s Teeth’: W. B. Yeats and Platonic Inspiration.” Platonisms: Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern. Ed. Kevin Corrigan and John D. Turner. NY: Brille, 2007. 205-18. (4,627 words)  
Articles in Academic Journals
  • “Dangerous Moments: Sylvia Plath and T. S. Eliot.” Forthcoming in Twentieth-Century Literature. (12,450 words)  
  • “Emily Hale, and the Several Reunions.” T. S. Eliot Studies Annual 5 (2024): 147-58. (3,847 words)
  • “Back, late, from the Hyacinth Garden” T. S. Eliot Studies Annual 4 (2022): 57-72. (5,495 words)
  • “Unbuttoned & Unimportant: Tidbits from the Archive.” Special Forum: First Readings of the Eliot-Hale Archive. T. S. Eliot Studies Annual 3 (2021):151-53. (1,026 words)
  • “Reinventing Modernism: Randall Jarrell’s Unwritten Essay on T. S. Eliot.” Modern Language Quarterly 82:1 (March 2021): 81-116. (14,325 words)  
  • “What happened to ‘Modern Tendencies’?” T. S. Eliot Studies Annual 2 (2018): 115-121.(1,583 words)  
  • “Prufrock, Belated.” Special Forum: “Prufrock at 100.” T. S. Eliot Studies Annual 1 (2017): 89- 92. (1,340 words)  
  • “W. B. Yeats and the Turbulent Lives of Painted Horses.” Yeats Annual 17 (2007): 37-50. (5,725 words)   
  • “T. S. Eliot’s ‘Forgotten Poet of Lines,’ Nathaniel Wanley.” ANQ 19 (Spring 2006): 52-58. (2,769 words)
  • “Who Stood over Eliot’s Shoulder?” Modern Language Quarterly 66 (Sept. 2005): 329-64. (17,074 words)
  • “The Use of Memory: Seamus Heaney, T. S. Eliot and the Unpublished Epigraph to North.” Journal of Modern Literature 28 (Summer 2005): 152-75. (11,460 words)  
  • “T. S. Eliot’s Etherized Patient.” Twentieth Century Literature 50 (Winter 2004): 394-420. (10,548 words)  
  • “T. S. Eliot’s Quotation from E. B. Browning: ‘Shadows for my company.’” Notes & Queries 51 (2004): 164-65. (862 words)  
Reviews

  • “History, Modernism, & the Ampersand.” Rev. of For the Scribe, David Wojahn. Kenyon Review Online. 2019 (https://kenyonreview.org/reviews/for-the-scribe-by-david-wojahn-738439/)

  • “The Irish Bard” Rev. of Our Secret Discipline: W. B. Yeats and Lyric Form, Helen Vendler. Washington Post Book World, 20 Apr. 2008, 6.

  • “The Slender Mr. Cogito.” Rev. of Collected Poems, 1956-1998, Zbigniew Herbert. The New Criterion (May 2007): 71-73.

  • “The Reemergence of a Modern Master.” Rev. of Collected Poems, 1956-1998, Zbigniew Herbert. Washington Post Book World, 29 Apr. 2007, 7.

  • For the Chautauqua Literary Journal 4 (2007): 160-70.  Rev. of Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee, ed. Ingersoll; Let Me Explain, Gaylord Brewer; Not To: New and Selected Poems, Elaine Terranova.

  • “What Matters Most.” Rev. of Selected Poems, 1931-2005, Czeslaw Milosz. FIELD: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics 76 (Spring 2007): 80-91.

  • “The Beat Goes On.” Rev. of The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg, Bill Morgan. Washington Post Book World, 3 Dec. 2006, 7.

  • “Large, Impersonal, Flour-White Shoes.” Rev. of Edgar Allan Poe and the Juke Box, Elizabeth Bishop. International Poetry Review 32 (Spring 2006): 95-99. 

  • “Notes from Underground.” Rev. of District and Circle, Seamus Heaney. Washington Post Book World, 16 Apr. 2006, 8.

  • “The Haiku Spirit.” Rev. of The Poems of Charles Reznikoff, 1918-1975, ed. Seamus Cooney. The New Criterion 24 (Apr. 2006): 75-78.

  • For the Chautauqua Literary Journal 3 (2006): 147-55. Rev. of Fallen from a Chariot, Kevin Prufer; Chez Nous, Angie Estes; dear good naked morning, Ruth L. Schwartz.

  • “A Garrulous Creature.” Rev. of Selected Letters of Amy Clampitt, ed. Willard Spiegelman. New Criterion 24 (Jan. 2006): 75-76.

  • “What is Unremembered.” Rev. of The Sorrowing House, Genevieve Lehr. CV2 28:3 (Winter 2006): 84-88

  • “The Owl in the Heart.” Rev. of Migrations: New and Selected Poems, W. S. Merwin. FIELD: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics 74 (Spring 2006): 59-67.

  • “Mary Kinzie’s Bogan.” Rev. of A Poet’s Prose: Selected Writings, Louise Bogan, The New Criterion 24 (Nov. 2005): 76-77.

  • “Richard Wilbur’s Uncouth Muse.” Rev. of New and Collected Poems, Richard Wilbur. American Book Review [ABR] (Nov. 2005): 22-23.

  • “Among these Silk Screens.” Rev. of Ariel: The Restored Edition, Sylvia Plath. ABR  26:6 (Sept. 2005): 19; 24.

  • “Angels Marching into Darkness.” Rev. of In the Salt Marsh, Nancy Willard. ABR 26:4 (May 2005): 23.

  • “Sheer Genius.” Rev. of Collected Poems, Philip Larkin. ABR 26 (Jan. 2005): 18.