Abstract
This paper proposes a redefinition of regional poetry, moving beyond the conventional understanding of it as a geographically bound literary production that focuses on local landscapes and cultures. I argue that regional poetry can also be defined by social bonds, friendships, and networks of camaraderie among authors, which shape a shared sense of belonging and collective identity. Focusing on the San Francisco Bay Area poetic community led by George Sterling between 1890 and 1910, I examine texts circulated privately or published in peripheral venues such as local newspapers rather than prestigious national magazines. These circulation practices allowed the community to establish its own norms of literary value, creating poetic works that functioned as gifts, commemorations, and communal artifacts with meaning embedded in the social life of the group itself, rather than validated by mainstream literary institutions as nationally reputed poetic works. Drawing on a historical-poetic theoretical and methodological framework, I move beyond close reading to historical reading, emphasizing how a poem’s circulation, format, and audience contribute to its role as a social and cultural object. Through this lens, the lyrical production of Sterling, Nora May French, and Herman Scheffauer emerges as a corpus that illustrates alternative forms of belonging and the ways literary communities can be sustained outside conventional structures of canonization. In that sense, this study suggests new directions for literary humanities, redefining late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American regional poetry beyond tangible geographic limits and highlighting the social relationships that foster collective literary identity.
Presenters
Ariadna García CarreñoPostdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer, Department of Philology (English), Universidad de Almería, Almería, Spain
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Literary Communities, Regional Poetry, Historical Poetics
