Rivers, Roads and Conveyor Belts: The making of America(n poetry)

This paper describes the chronotope of modular time-space in the infrastructure of early twentiethcentury New York and in literary and cinematic depictions of the city. It argues that most international modernist lyric poetry placed its speakers outside of the flow of time in space. Critics view modular time-space as particularly antithetical to personal identity. But the African American Langston Hughes and the feminist immigrant Mina Loy situated their poems within the flow of time in space, and used modular time-space to demonstrate racism and sexism in American society, arguing for the inclusion of women and African Americans in social discourse.