Brooks Haxton: Creative Freedom and Expressive Urgency (July 1995)

Brooks Haxton examines Tennessee Williams and Elizabeth Bishop as models of “creative freedom and expressive urgency,” clarifying the profound differences between the expressive and the creative. Haxton shows how in Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire and Bishop’s “Pink Dog” the two impulses create a crucial tension; in each work, Haxton argues, creativity and the imagination become the means through which these writers can transform and survive their early, damaging life experiences.