This book situates itself within modernist studies, trying one way of relating modernism to modernities. Propelled by the scintillating critical practices from feminist, ethnic, and other materialist critics and poetic communities, my reading of poetry within modernist studies probes works of art by people struggling with formations entitled new – New Woman, New Black, New Jew. Part of the “newness” of modernity lies in its representation of the urgencies and contradictions of these modern subjectivities. By a method I call social philology, I propose a reactivation of close reading to examine in poetry the textual traces and discursive manifestations of a variety of ideological assumptions, subject positions, and social concepts concerning gender, race, and religious culture. It is the purpose of this book to offer reading strategies that can mediate between the historical terrain and the intimate poetic textures of a work.

Certainly the materials and themes of poems involve discursive elements (allusions, diction, tropes) and depict issues traceable to particular social subjects.