The Left Needs Rhythm

Abstract

This chapter considers the role of the archive in left literary studies through a recovery of Jewish-American communist poet Martha Millet. Specifically, it uses Millet’s work to trace a history and theory of poetic rhythm that rethinks the relationship between modernist poetic forms and left politics. The chapter’s first section uses Millet’s involvement with the children’s magazine The New Pioneer to unpack the historical relationship between traditional forms and political community formation. The generic histories enacted by communist children’s poems provide a foundation for considering how rhythm was evoked in Popular Front and antifascist poetic discourses. The second section argues that during the Popular Front diverse traditional genres were collapsed into an ideal rhythmic poem, where rhythm described both form and function. The third section focuses on Millet’s contributions to Seven Poets in Search of an Answer (1944) to demonstrate how rhythm was redefined in antifascist discourses. Throughout, the chapter suggests how Millet’s poetry might be read in relation to poets such as Carl Sandburg, Lorine Niedecker, and Kenneth Fearing. A coda returns to Millet’s Cold War criticism in order to ask what is at stake in her critical erasure and her critical recovery.