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(The following books are referred to in the essay below:
The Best American Poetry 1996
ed. by Adrienne Rich
Scribner 1996
The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997
ed. by Harold Bloom
Scribner 1998
Twenty Questions
J. D. McClatchy
Columbia University Press 1998
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Mark Van Doren
Literary Guild 1927
The Name and Nature of Poetry
A. E. Housman
Macmillan 1933
A Publisher's Confession, New Edition
Walter H. Page
Heinemann 1924)
Let Harold Bloom and Adrienne Rich engage in all the fisticuffs they like
concerning what is, and is not, memorable in contemporary American verse
because, if one steps back from the fracas even an inch or two, one
realizes that neither seems to have a clue. Bloom has been brilliant as
a critic and assessor of the past, and Rich has been, in the past, a fine
poet. But which of these qualifications has prepared them to deal with
the arid place in which American verse now finds itself?
 A much clearer perception , which takes into account the long
range, is apparently at J. D. McClatchy's disposal, at least from time to
time. In his essay "Twenty Questions" (first published in Princeton
University Library Chronicle
and now collected in Twenty Questions),
McClatchy notes that, while Hiawatha hit the bestseller charts in 1855,
Leaves of Grass was hardly noticed. Dickinson's poems remained
unpublished until after her death (a full 35% of them not appearing until
1945). Thus neither of the two monumental American poets of the 19th
century was even in the running for any contemporaneous critic who might
have wished to create an "American canon" around the time of the Civil
War. A more significant point for anyone who wishes to take any kind of
valid look at the current "scene" is McClatchy's implication that current
critics (a group which includes the poets themselves) seem unable to
notice how much alike so many of our poets sound. He provides, as an
analogy, the 1843 anthology Poets of Connecticut. The 44 poets, he
tells us, "all sound the same" to our ears, while to the readers of 1843
there would have been obvious tonal differences. In the same way, "W.S.
Merwin's oracular whispers and John Ashbery's rambling discourse and
James Merrill's fizzy formal cocktails" will, to readers of the future,
simply sound so much "flatter" than the poetry of the 18th century. And
yet, in other essays in this new collection, McClatchy praises, sometimes
very highly indeed, a number of the poets whose voices will some day be
heard as only a part of "the tidal flow of the demotic into verse."
McClatchy is not, I think, a praiser of all things "poetic," as so many
of our poets are (he dishes, for example, Maya Angelou's inaugural poem
of 1993), but neither is he always able to escape the limitations of too
close a focus on things near at hand.
For comparison--and the comparison is more apt for Bloom than
McClatchy--I would like to point you toward Edwin Arlington Robinson, a
booklet by Mark Van Doren. Because the text places such a heavy emphasis
on 1927's Tristram, I presume that Van Doren's study was commissioned
by the Literary Guild to accompany its edition of that book. (Check any
large urban library or well-stocked used bookstore for either title.) I
have not read Van Doren's complete text because it becomes so tiresome
after a while, but I have read enough to get the gist of his argument.
Indeed, reduced to its kernelest of kernels, the gist is contained in the
book's first six words: "The best of living American poets."
Now no one alive today would grant Robinson that title as of
1927. But before I go into a more pointed critique of Van Doren's
position, a few of you might need to know that Mark Van Doren was himself
an American poet--not a "mere" critic or academic--and might have been
presumed, therefore, to have had a better grasp on the poetry of his
time. He was an esteemed teacher and published quite a number of
collections in his life, though today he is as forgotten as John Hall
Wheelock or William Vaughn Moody. (In fact, his only "recent" claim to
fame would be as a character in Robert Redford's film Quiz Show-- the
game show "cheater" was Van Doren's son.)
In order to gauge the scale of Van Doren's misunderstanding of
the poetry of his time, we must ask ourselves, "Whom else might he have
chosen as America's best?" Perhaps first to come to mind are a couple of
"youngsters" whom Van Doren probably would not have even considered--Ezra
Pound and T. S. Eliot. By 1927, Pound had completed all of his
"early"work and gathered it into Personae, a book which includes the
incredible "classical" beauties of Homage to Sextus Propertius, the
"modernism" of Hugh Selwyn Mauberly, the faux-antique "Ballad of the
Goodly Fere," and the quasi-translations of Cathay. Quite enough work,
at a high enough standard, to make him--in my judgment--not just the best
living American poet in 1927, but also almost certainly the most
significant American poet of the 20th century. Maybe you disagree.
Then turn to Eliot who, by 1927, had published everything of
stature he would ever publish, except for Ash-Wednesday and Four
Quartets
, the latter of which contains far more "prose" than "poetry,"
line breaks notwithstanding. At this point, in 1998, I will argue that
Van Doren was correct to exclude Eliot from consideration, though
probably for all the wrong reasons.
But let us set these two great "modernists" aside, and remind
ourselves as well that Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams were
scarcely known in 1927. Are there not other more "traditional" poets Van
Doren might have considered?
Certainly. Though nothing he subsequently published would ever
equal his "masterpiece" of 1916, Edgar Lee Masters was still a
significant presence in the '20's, and Spoon River Anthology remains
one of the very few books of American poetry which people recognize by
title and which is still in print as an individual volume. Carl Sandburg
was a national figure, and Edna St. Vincent Millay was--at 35--already a
Pulitzer Prize winner. But, most surprising, Van Doren's pronouncement
sacrifices Robert Frost to Robinson. Even today, when Frost is much less
beloved and venerated than 70 years ago--and perhaps appreciated more
accurately--this relatively low position for him is startling. Is Frost
not both more popular and subtler than Robinson, both more polished and
more colloquial? "Certainly!" virtually everyone of us would say. And
yet, as if to give more substance to Van Doren's claim, the Pulitzer
committees clearly esteemed Robinson as highly as Frost during this
"golden" age of American verse.
That Van Doren, a man who should have been able to know
better, could be so short-sighted ought, I suppose, to make us feel better
about the critical shortcomings of our own times. Another little book,
however, published only 6 years after Van Doren's, comes as an abrupt
reminder that it is possible to read poetry with both an aesthetic sense
and an intellectual rigor. I am speaking now of A. E. Housman's The
Name and Nature of Poetry
. Housman, to be sure, needs no introduction
to any literate audience, though his output was much smaller than Van
Doren's, and he has been dead longer--by mentioning which I mean to
suggest that we have had more time to forget him. We have not. And to
be completely fair to Van Doren (and Bloom and McClatchy and Rich), I
should point out that Housman makes no reference to contemporary poetry
in his essay and thus is not trying to second-guess "posterity". But he
doesn't need to, because--if we apply his critical standards to the
poetry around us (or that around him in 1933)--we can do that for
ourselves. What Housman makes obvious in the text of this lecture is
that he, perhaps unlike Van Doren and company, knows not only how to
recognize what poetry is, but also what it is not. Even so, he is
disparaging of his own "gifts" as a critic, warning his hearers from the
outset--
Whether the faculty of literary criticism is the best gift that
Heaven has in its treasuries I cannot say; but Heaven seems to
think so, for assuredly it is the gift most charily bestowed.
One of his first points (new formalists, beware!) is that there
is "a conception of poetry which is not fulfilled by pure language and
liquid versification. . . ." As Housman's poetry is in fact one of the
few notable bodies of work of the past century to meet those
qualifications, we should certainly pay attention when he tells us not to
be deceived by those crafts. Poetry, he says, "involves the presence in
(language and versification) of something which moves and touches in a
special and recognisable way." Note that he is not surrendering formal
aspects, but insisting rather that formal aspects are not enough--they
must convey something which "moves and touches" us. What Housman is
putting forth then is a balance--or, more accurately, the presence of two
distinct aspects (or types?) of writing, both of which must be present
for "poetry" to exist. As regards the poetry of the 18th century, which
McClatchy praises as so much more versatile than our own, Housman states
emphatically that, as delightful a literature as it is, most of it is not
"poetry" at all. It is instead wit--"as defined by Johnson, 'a
combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in
things apparently unlike'." Furthermore Housman says that the 18th
century poets were engrossed in simile and metaphor, which they did not
use "to be helpful, to make their sense clearer or their conceptions more
vivid. . . . Their object was to startle by novelty and amuse by
ingenuity a public whose one wish was to be so startled and amused." We
may replace simile and metaphor with psychological trauma and
confessional brazenness
, and we will have the object of too much
American poetry of the past 40 years. And the pleasure to be had from
any of this is "not a poetic pleasure", nor is the product inducing this
pleasure "poetry," at least not in most cases.
On the other hand, Housman admits that "(t)he literature of the
eighteenth century. . . is an admirable and most enjoyable thing." But
"excellent literature which is also poetry is not therefore excellent
poetry. . . . Eighteenth-century poetry is in fact a name for two
different things, which ought to be kept distinct." Here Housman
provides us with what might be our most essential "clue" for handling
contemporary American verse and trying to see through the hoopla and
folderol to what is really and authentically "poetry." Much, we might
say, of our own verse at this time is not really verse or poetry at
all--it is a kind of epigrammatic prose, designed for ease of reading
(McClatchy's "tidal flow of the demotic") and providing validation of
both the poet's and the reader's "everyday" experiences. In the name of
"depth", it presents us with a psychologically "freighted" occurrence,
the meaning of which is condensed into a concluding sentence or phrase no
more poetic (and not much more intelligent or pithier) than a bumper
sticker.
The poets who have grown tired of these relentless vignettes have
too often replaced emotional, Oprah-style earnestness with 1) a renewed
attention to the natural world (scientific travel writing masquerading as
poetry), or 2) intellectually demanding imagery and content (the essay
masquerading as poetry), or 3) entirely disjointed phrases, clauses, and
images (non-sense masquerading as poetry). All of these "styles" of
poetry have disciples, fans and defenders, but the partisans are missing
the point: they are like the "Wordsworthians" which Housman (by way of
Matthew Arnold) cites-- "They were most attracted by what may be called
(Wordsworth's) philosophy" and thus "were apt to praise their poet for
the wrong things." On the other hand they were not appreciably attuned
to "that thrilling utterance which pierces the heart and brings tears to
the eyes of thousands who care nothing for his opinions and beliefs. . .
."
Exactly.
"Poetry is not the thing said but a way of saying it." How
foolish that any of us, at any time, should need to reiterate that most
basic principal. And yet how much of the critical space given to
contemporary poetry is devoted precisely to "the thing said" rather than
to the saying?
The jacket of Housman's lecture advertises the Macmillan poetry
list for the fall of 1933, not one of which, to my knowledge, is in print
today, unless it be John A. Lomax's Ballads and Folk Songs of America,
which is not technically a poetry collection anyway. Of the remaining 7
titles, the contents of only one (Sara Teasdale's Strange Victory) are
easily available (in her Collected Poems.) Five of the other six
volumes are by poets no one reads anymore, the most "famous" of which are
John Masefield and Robert P. Tristram Coffin. The remaining title (and
the one leading the list) is yet another of E. A. Robinson's book-length
poems, Talifer, even more forgotten today than Tristram.
If Housman's essay suggests ways by which critics can indeed
pierce through the babble and flurry of the contemporary world to get to
what is essential in the literature being written right now, the
examples of the other authors I have cited (as well as the bald face of
history) sadly suggest otherwise. Walter H. Page, an important American
editor at the turn of the last century, should perhaps have the last
word. In his collection of essays entitled A Publisher's Confession,
published first in 1905, he writes, "The great difficulty is to recognize
literature when it first comes in at the door, for one quality of
literature is that it is not likely even to know itself. The one thing
that is certain is that the critical crew and the academic faculty are
sure not to recognize it at first sight."
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