Unpublishing as Form: Hart Crane, Jack Spicer, and the Thresholds of Periodical Publication

Abstract

Rejections are a given in any poet’s career. This essay considers how rejections and the idea of the unpublished fragment might shape poetic form, how practical decisions might turn into aesthetic ones. Both Hart Crane and Jack Spicer had careers among magazines, the experiments of their writing entwined with ephemeral publishing cultures and communities. This essay explores how, through their own distinct experiments with splintered forms of the long poem, magazine rejections also created opportunities in Crane’s and Spicer’s poetry. Both poets turned practical processes into aesthetic experiments, exploring the states between writing, submission, publication, and acceptance or rejection.Yet practical decisions can turn into aesthetic ones. Indeed, the playful tension between practicality and aesthetics sits at the heart of poetic form. Crane and Spicer both incorporated rejections—unpublished poems or poems waiting on publication through various submissions—into the form of their work.