Guys Like Us: Citing Masculinity in Cold War Poetics

by Michael Davidson

Guys Like Us considers how writers of the 1950s and '60s struggled to craft literature that countered the politics of consensus and anticommunist hysteria in America, and how notions of masculinity figured in their effort. Michael Davidson examines a wide range of postwar literature, from the fiction of Jack Kerouac to the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks, Frank O'Hara, Elizabeth Bishop, and Sylvia Plath. He also explores the connection between masculinity and sexuality in films such as Chinatown and The Lady from Shanghai, as well as television shows, plays, and magazines from the period. What results is a virtuoso work that looks at American poetic and artistic innovation through the revealing lenses of gender and history.

281 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 2003

About the author

Born in Oakland, California on December 18, 1944, Michael Davidson attended San Francisco State University and continued his graduate degrees at The State University of New York at Buffalo. He is currently Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla.

In addition to being a widely published poet and poetry editor (he is represented in the 2004 edition of Best American Poetry by a poem entitled "Bad Modernism"), Davidson is known for insightful literary criticism, his work in disability studies, and for the meticulous editing of the monumental George Oppen, New Collected Poems.

Reviews

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book validates my feelings on gender politics and poetry. Davidson's argument is relevant and beautifully constructed. I love love love this book, especially how he uses movies and posters to parallel common notions of gender during the Cold War and how these ideologies are transferred to now.