Conclusion: The Song of the Suburbs

Abstract

Implicit in these suburban elegies—as indeed in many of the other poems discussed in The Poetics of the American Suburbs —is a profound self-reflexivity. Philip Nicholson’s question with which this book opened, “Who sings the songs of suburbia? Where is its poet?” has clearly exercised the poets themselves, many of whom (like Nemerov, like Wilbur, even like McGinley) have assumed the role with some ambivalence and with a degree of self-consciousness about the implications of aligning themselves, and their work, with such a place. Many of the commentators and critics discussed earlier in this book regarded postwar suburbia as a “cultureless” place (Mumford 493) and, implicitly, as an unlikely home for poetry. The taint has persisted long beyond the moment which is the main focus of this study. Writing in 1985, Von Hallberg expresses some surprise at the fact that Robert Pinsky’s An Explanation of America “proceeds from a suburban perspective.” Pinsky, he notes, “constructs a compelling account of his nation with very little reference to the chief metropolis, and without a touch of embarrassment at being suburban” (238–9). He likewise, observes—in apparent awe at her daring—that Mona Van Duyn “makes no secret of being a suburban housewife” (229). Alan Filreis has recently proposed of Anne Sexton’s poem “The Expatriates” that its setting is “merely a literal suburban locale for those trapped in a state-supported rapid retreat from heresy and difference” (“The End” 511).