Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at New York University. Ph.D., English, New York University, 2020-21; MPhil, English Studies: Criticism and Culture, Cambridge University, 2012; B.A., Yale University, Literature and Art, 2011
Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry, 2018
Based on the archival evidence of Veronica Forrest-Thomson’s annotations to Sylvia Plath’s 1971 c... more Based on the archival evidence of Veronica Forrest-Thomson’s annotations to Sylvia Plath’s 1971 collection Winter Trees, as well as a 1972 typescript of Forrest-Thomson’s review of Winter Trees, which she never published, this article argues that Forrest-Thomson’s engagement with Plath’s late poetry played a crucial role in the development of her theory of ‘poetic artifice’. Yet I contend that the poems of Winter Trees by no means offer themselves as self-evident exemplars of such a theory, and I explore this disjunction by juxtaposing Forrest-Thomson’s revisionary account of Plath in Poetic Artifice: A Theory of Twentieth-Century Poetry, which posits the poems ‘Daddy’ and ‘Purdah’ as anti-confessional works of art that clearly indicate their own ‘unreality’, against the Winter Trees review, which is more critical of Plath’s ‘compromises’. Because Forrest-Thomson’s aesthetic project is further complicated by her own development as a poet, I also consider a selection of poems published in the 1974 Omens Poetry Pamphlet Cordelia: or ‘A poem should not mean but be’, in order to explore an elided, yet suggestive, relation between feeling and theory in her poetry. Finally, I argue that this relation, which Plath’s ‘Purdah’ would seem to both prefigure and sanction, signals the presence of a reticent ‘linguistic emotionality’ in Forrest-Thomson’s work that not only contests the authority of her male modernist models, but also anticipates contemporary critical discourses in experimental poetry and poetics.
This paper was originally given at the 2019 ACLA Conference on March 9, 2019 at Georgetown Univer... more This paper was originally given at the 2019 ACLA Conference on March 9, 2019 at Georgetown University, as part of the seminar “How are Concepts Made?”
This paper was first presented at the winter symposium “Feminist Philosophy: Rethinking Public Sp... more This paper was first presented at the winter symposium “Feminist Philosophy: Rethinking Public Space,” which took place at Oslo University, March 8-10, 2018.
Presented at “Minimalism: Location, Aspect, Moment” Conference, Oct. 14-15, 2016, University of S... more Presented at “Minimalism: Location, Aspect, Moment” Conference, Oct. 14-15, 2016, University of Southampton / Winchester School of Art.
Prefiguring a shift towards the intimate, recto-verso model of exposition exemplified by Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Paul Thek's 'Technological Reliquary' sculptures materialize a temporally-determined experience of loss and survival that initiates a return to a materially entropic experience of spectacular procession, reasserting the idea of the flesh’s participation in (the) work.
Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry, 2018
Based on the archival evidence of Veronica Forrest-Thomson’s annotations to Sylvia Plath’s 1971 c... more Based on the archival evidence of Veronica Forrest-Thomson’s annotations to Sylvia Plath’s 1971 collection Winter Trees, as well as a 1972 typescript of Forrest-Thomson’s review of Winter Trees, which she never published, this article argues that Forrest-Thomson’s engagement with Plath’s late poetry played a crucial role in the development of her theory of ‘poetic artifice’. Yet I contend that the poems of Winter Trees by no means offer themselves as self-evident exemplars of such a theory, and I explore this disjunction by juxtaposing Forrest-Thomson’s revisionary account of Plath in Poetic Artifice: A Theory of Twentieth-Century Poetry, which posits the poems ‘Daddy’ and ‘Purdah’ as anti-confessional works of art that clearly indicate their own ‘unreality’, against the Winter Trees review, which is more critical of Plath’s ‘compromises’. Because Forrest-Thomson’s aesthetic project is further complicated by her own development as a poet, I also consider a selection of poems published in the 1974 Omens Poetry Pamphlet Cordelia: or ‘A poem should not mean but be’, in order to explore an elided, yet suggestive, relation between feeling and theory in her poetry. Finally, I argue that this relation, which Plath’s ‘Purdah’ would seem to both prefigure and sanction, signals the presence of a reticent ‘linguistic emotionality’ in Forrest-Thomson’s work that not only contests the authority of her male modernist models, but also anticipates contemporary critical discourses in experimental poetry and poetics.
This paper was originally given at the 2019 ACLA Conference on March 9, 2019 at Georgetown Univer... more This paper was originally given at the 2019 ACLA Conference on March 9, 2019 at Georgetown University, as part of the seminar “How are Concepts Made?”
This paper was first presented at the winter symposium “Feminist Philosophy: Rethinking Public Sp... more This paper was first presented at the winter symposium “Feminist Philosophy: Rethinking Public Space,” which took place at Oslo University, March 8-10, 2018.
Presented at “Minimalism: Location, Aspect, Moment” Conference, Oct. 14-15, 2016, University of S... more Presented at “Minimalism: Location, Aspect, Moment” Conference, Oct. 14-15, 2016, University of Southampton / Winchester School of Art.
Prefiguring a shift towards the intimate, recto-verso model of exposition exemplified by Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Paul Thek's 'Technological Reliquary' sculptures materialize a temporally-determined experience of loss and survival that initiates a return to a materially entropic experience of spectacular procession, reasserting the idea of the flesh’s participation in (the) work.
Uploads
Papers by Anna Moser
Conference Presentations by Anna Moser
Prefiguring a shift towards the intimate, recto-verso model of exposition exemplified by Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Paul Thek's 'Technological Reliquary' sculptures materialize a temporally-determined experience of loss and survival that initiates a return to a materially entropic experience of spectacular procession, reasserting the idea of the flesh’s participation in (the) work.
Prefiguring a shift towards the intimate, recto-verso model of exposition exemplified by Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Paul Thek's 'Technological Reliquary' sculptures materialize a temporally-determined experience of loss and survival that initiates a return to a materially entropic experience of spectacular procession, reasserting the idea of the flesh’s participation in (the) work.