Reviews
Employing the geographical theories of Alexander von Humboldt and Ellen Churchill Semple, Walsh analyzes the poetry of four American modernists: Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Gertrude Stein, and H.D. . . . Recommended.
--Choice
A corrective to previous approaches to the geographical dimensions of modernist literature, which have predominantly focused on narrative rather than poetry. . . . Recalibrate(s) our understanding of how the United States as a superpower envisioned the reaches of its cultural hegemony and how, in turn, different subjects were able to imagine alternative routes out of the reaches of its geographic spread. . . . An original and meticulous take on our understanding of the geopolitics of the first half of the twentieth century.
--American Literature
Well-argued and crisply expounded, Walsh's excellent book contributes generously not only to the 'spatial turn' in modernist studies but also to the burgeoning study of American modernism.
--Literary Geographies
Brings to the fore an issue that has received scant attention in environmental and ecological approaches to literature: environmental determinism....Walsh’s excellent study charts out yet another way in which ecological critics might refine and extend their considerations of literature and “the environment.”
--Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment
Provocative.
--Transatlantica
Successfully positions poetic modernism, academic geography, and non-academic geography in a thought provoking and dynamic terrain of debate. The Geopoetics of Modernism exposes a number of fascinating literary geographies found in the works of Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Gertrude Stein, and H.D., and creates convincing links between their poetry and the existing geographic discourses of their times.
--Social and Cultural Geography
Reveals the extraordinary linkage between geography and experimental modernist poetry. Through lucid prose, deft textual analysis and strikingly decisive arguments, Walsh reveals that there is much to be gained by putting these two seemingly disparate but intimately interwoven discourses in dialogue.
--Literature and History