Crafting Sincerity: How Conflicting Cultural Codes Structure the Writing and Reading of Sincerity in Poetry

How have poets in recent centuries been able to inscribe recognizable and relatively stable sincere voices despite the wearing of poetic language and reader awareness of sincerity’s pitfalls? How are readers able to recognize sincerity at all given the mutability of sincere voices and the unavailability of inner worlds? What do disagreements about the sincerity of texts and authors tell us about competing reader codes, tastes and conceptualizations of sincerity? And how has sincere expression in poetry – Russian and, more broadly, Western – changed and remained constant? What, ultimately, can these observations tell us about the history of the lyric?

In his talk, Stuart Goldberg will present a working definition of the sincere voice in poetry and a semiotic framework striving to elucidate how sincerity is inscribed and read. Then he will discuss the interaction and impact on cultural systems of two competing poles in the understanding of sincerity. Finally, he will turn to two brief case studies, presenting poems by modernist Osip Mandelstam and contemporary poet Boris Ryzhy which gravitate toward the two poles. These readings will illustrate some of the pragmatic framings and poetic devices that have allowed poets to continue to inscribe sincere voices in their poetry despite the linguistic and philosophical barriers arrayed against them.

Refreshements will be provided.