Best American Poetry Blog

What makes an American “classic”?’ [by Caterina Domeneghini and Claire Barnes]

Walt Whitman
A special issue of NEW AMERICAN STUDIES JOURNAL (© Göttingen University Press) devoted to a forum on the subject of "classics" and American literature includes
 
 
'What makes an American “classic“?' by Caterina Domeneghini and Claire Barnes, co-editors of the issue. <<< Abstract:  American “classics,” and “classic” definitions of America and its people, are often tied to an apparently inescapable, ineffable sense of greatness. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN has resurfaced as the mantra of 2025, with the newly elected President’s promise to restore a broken nation, elevating it above time, and in defiance of his own criminal record, even above the law. The slogan echoes some of the tones, if not the politics, of the preface of Leaves of Grass (1855), when Walt Whitman wrote, “The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem…>>>
 
Wallace Stevens<<< There is opportunity here, we feel, to approach the “classics” (with a large or a small “c”) with curiosity, with critique, and without a necessary impetus to valorize tellings of them which have been shaped by institutional pressures along the way. Can we acknowledge the influence of a piece of work without pushing it into the categorization of objective timelessness? Can we explore its impact using a more nuanced set of critical tools? Can we make the American Classic—and the conception of America itself—strange again? >>>
 
 
Constanze Güthenke‘s essay ponders “what makes an American classicist?” by looking back to the nineteenth century and how the profession of classical scholarship developed in North American institutions. She considers the external influences apparent on the self-conscious self-fashioning of the discipline from the legacy of German Philhellenism to post-Civil War narratives of progress and decline. Constanze Güthenke is Professor of Greek Literature at the University of Oxford. 
 
Emily-Dickinson-Portrait 2Caterina Domeneghini, cp-editor of the issue, discusses the impact of today’s publishing culture with Edwin Frank, founder and editorial director of the New York Review of Books Classics. Frank comments on the rationale behind the series, the possibility of offering classic texts without canonizing, and attitudes to translation in America. Born in Boulder, Colorado, Edwin Frank is the founder and editorial director of NYRB Classics. He studied at Harvard College and Columbia University before venturing into publishing.Click here. for the interview.
 
Constance Everett-Pite, a doctoral candidate in Classics at the University of Oxford, then invites us to consider how the categories of “American” and “classic” are explored in the work of Amy Clampitt (1948-1994), setting the scene before interviewing poet and writer Willard Spiegelman about his 2023 book, Amy Clampitt: A Biography. As we read in the conversation, Clampitt poses “an important political/ecological question with heightened relevance in our current century: What is the meaning of ‘indigenous’? Who and what belongs where? Willard Spiegelman is the Hughes Professor of English, Emeritus, at Southern Methodist University in Dallas Texas, and the longtime former editor-in-chief of the Southwest Review. 
 
Our Poetry section comprises three poems by poet and critic David Lehman, founder and series editor of The Best American Poetry. “Frost at Midnight,” “Negative Capability,” and “Bloomsday” all differently address canonical literary figures, with Lehman’s trademark playfulness.