Justin Quinn and American Errancy

Justin Quinn's American Errancy begins with some of the same building blocks used in Rob Wilson's book (e.g. the sublime and American imperialism), but for Quinn these coalesce around the notion of errancy or antinomianism. He examines how the work of various poets relates to the direction of American social and political history. So, for example, T. S. Eliot is seen as an expatriate who escapes American waywardness by attempting to reclaim orthodoxy in English culture and religion; A. R. Ammons naturalizes ideology and isolates American life as universal; and Jorie Graham details the small, personal acts of life in order to investigate the lost promise of America.