Lyric Eye: The Poetics of Twentieth-Century Surveillance

Abstract

Hinchliffe reviews Lyric Eye: The Poetics of Twentieth-Century Surveillance by Tyne Daile Sumner.

Review of Sumner, Tyne Daile. 2021. Lyric Eye: The Poetics of Twentieth-Century Surveillance. New York: Routledge. 187 pp. £34.99. Paperback. ISBN: 9781032052083.

In recent years, scholarship on literature has begun to emerge in the field of surveillance studies. Tyne Daile Sumner's Lyric Eye: The Poetics of Twentieth Century Surveillance (2022), which critically analyses the relationship between poetry and surveillance in detail for the first time, is an important intervention in this field. Sumner provides a comprehensive overview of literary theory on the lyric as well as a description of the history of American surveillance, noting the connections between the development of lyric poetry and the development of surveillance in the US during the twentieth century.

Whilst Sumner suggests that all poetry can be read through the lens of surveillance to some extent because it is "inextricably bound up with concepts of seeing, hearing, listening and, as this book makes clear for the first time, surveillance" (1), they argue that the lyric is particularly relevant to surveillance studies. This is, in part, because lyric poetry is written in the first person and often reveals personal information, meaning that it is often studied autobiographically. Furthermore, the lyric is generally understood as a "private utterance made public" and it "creates the effect of having being intruded upon" (17). Sumner goes on to explore how the lyric form is further complicated by confessional poets, like Sylvia Plath, who "deliberately inserted biographical material into the poem in order to blur boundaries between fiction and truth" (20). Interestingly, Keegan Cook Finberg (2021) recently published an article on surveillance in twenty-first century American lyric poetry. Considering the fact that the scholarship on poetry and surveillance is only just emerging, it is worth noting that both of these publications focus on the American lyric. This adds further weight to the idea that the American lyric and the lyric more generally are important to the field of surveillance studies.

Throughout Lyric Eye, Sumner convincingly argues that the poems they have selected need to be read in light of their context. Sumner focuses on the period between the early 1920s and mid-1960s because they state that American poetry and the political events during this time "were together responsible for the creation of a new understanding of the notion of privacy in America" (3). The poetry produced during the Harlem Renaissance, Modernism, and post-World War II are given particular attention. A plethora of poets are discussed, including Sylvia Plath, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and William Carlos Williams. Many of these poets were "investigated, followed and harassed by the FBI" (5). Sumner hypothesises that there are three main reasons why the FBI was interested in investigating these poets: (1) much of this poetry is politically subversive, (2) the political motives of these poets were concerning to the government, and (3) the poems were read and analysed in a way that interrogated their wider commentary on society. Moreover, Sumner suggests that the poets' experiences of being surveilled directly influenced their creative writing. Therefore, whilst these poems could be compared to lyric poems published during the same period beyond the US or compared to American lyric poetry from different periods, the historical, contextual approach that Sumner has taken produces specific, valuable insights that will be useful for surveillance scholars studying this period.

The structure of Lyric Eye is logical and well considered, with framing chapters on theory and context preceding the literary analysis. I found the chapters on the poets who lived in the US and the American poets who went abroad to escape the surveillance state to be the most compelling. Sumner's close readings of these poems make clear the paranoia and claustrophobia expressed. The conclusion on poetry and dataveillance and the links Sumner makes to the twenty-first century and contemporary surveillance practices are slightly jarring, however, because the majority of the text focuses on poetry, surveillance, and politics in the US up to 1970. A synthesis of the monograph that tied everything together and stated where this research could develop further would have been more appropriate. Having said this, the conclusion provided interesting ideas regarding contemporary poetry and dataveillance, which would have worked better as a separate article or chapter.

Lyric Eye is a key text for literature researchers specialising in twentieth-century poetry, for American studies researchers, and for surveillance studies researchers. Throughout, it is written in a clear, accessible way, allowing students and researchers from different disciplines to follow and understand the connections being made. In their ground-breaking research, Sumner provides a template for future surveillance poetry scholars to emulate and a basis on which to build.

Sidebar

Hinchliffe, Jade. 2022. Review of Sumner's Lyric Eye: The Poetics of Twentieth-Century Surveillance. Surveillance & Society 20(2): 205-206. https://ois.librarv.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-societv/index | ISSN: 1477-7487 © The author(s), 20221 Licensed to the Surveillance Studies Network under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives license

References

References

Finberg, Keegan Cook. 2021. American Lyric, American Surveillance, and Claudia Rankin's Citizen. Contemporary Women's Writing 15 (3): 1-19.