Excuses for Emotion analyzes representations of emotion in recent American poetry on the subject of parents and gay and lesbian icons. Much of this poetry demonstrates affection for and attachment to those figures, but those positive emotions are seldom without complications, whether ambivalence, resentment, doubt, or self-questioning. Moreover, even poems with a primarily negative emotional register tend to have similar complications. The standard explanation for these complications would be that human emotions are indeed complex, and that the engagement with complexity gives poetry its value as a genre. In practice, though, this complication has become less an achievement than a requirement. If it is to be taken seriously from an institutional perspective, contemporary American poetry requires what I call an excuse for emotion, a rhetorical cue that makes emotional “acceptable” by complicating it, calling its authenticity or accuracy into question, or allying it with a political cause taken more seriously than the emotion itself. My major argument is that one should not unquestioningly accept these conventions constraining the emotional content of poetry, which arise from a set of relatively unexamined assumptions about quality and significance, both in the field of literary scholarship and in the community of American poetry. I see this project as related to a recent interest in emotion within literary studies that has been called emotion theory, which considers the ways in which expressions of emotion and emotional norms carry cultural meaning.
Chapter One, “Sympathetic Sons,” looks at the poetry of Allen Ginsberg and Robert Hass. Both poets write about mothers suffering from significant mental illness, which creates distance between them and their sons, even as the sons retain a strong sense of affection for them. Chapter Two, “Incomplete Daughters,” looks at the poetry of Sylvia Plath and Sharon Olds. Both poets write about parents whom the speaker admires and desires affection from but who ultimately deny them that affection, which sends them looking for it elsewhere. Chapter Three, “Displaced Children,” looks at the poetry of Naomi Shihab Nye, Rafael Campo, and Li-Young Lee. They write about parents whose experience as immigrants influences the ways in which their children understand, relate to, and interact with them, with the relationship both complicated and enriched by cultural difference. Chapter Four, “Women of Power,” looks at the poetry of lesbian feminist poets Adrienne Rich, Judy Grahn, and June Jordan. Focusing on building optimism and determination while preventing complacency, they write about women throughout history who have had forms of power, but who also, for various reasons, have experienced failures of that power. Chapter Five, “The Promise of Whitman,” looks at the poetry of gay poets Allen Ginsberg, Richard Howard, Timothy Liu, and Mark Doty. They express attachment to Walt Whitman’s idealistic vision, even as they call it into question, especially insofar as it contrasts with the actual experiences of gay life.