Pastoral, Pragmatism, and Twentieth-Century American Poetry argues that pastoral has remained a significant mode in modern American poetry, often as a means of talking about who the ideal self or poet should be and how the poet fits into the larger national community. Influenced by the work of William James and John Dewey, Ann Mikkelsen deftly argues that the "pragmatic pastoral" mode depicts a transitory, evolving, experimental state of being rather than a static, ironic, or nostalgic worldview. By re-evaluating relationships between the poet and the people, the poem and life experience,...

In the first expansive study of American pastoral since Leo Marx's The Machine in the Garden , Mikkelsen reinvigorates discussion of this literary mode as a form of cultural commentary whose subjects extend beyond the simple or rustic life to encompass the major social, economic, and political transformations of the past century.