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I don’t know her. What book should I buy? Amazon has a Selected . . .
The selected from Sheep Meadow should be plenty. Also consider picking up a Stefan Wolpe recording while you’re at it.
Done.
The Sheep Meadow Selected is very good, although someone should really do a new version gathering some of the poems from her later books, as well as unpublished work. The long sequence of elegies for Stefan Wolpe (her husband) — What are Winds & What are Waters — is also well worth a look.
I’d have guessed John “Wheels” Wheelwright.
Yes, Don, Wheelwright is someone else who’s “spectacularly ignored,” to quote a phrase from an email I just sent to Jordan Davis. Did you know he was a Trotskyist and a founding member of the Socialist Workers Party? We used to carry some of his stuff in the the SWP bookstore, in Milwaukee, back in the 70s. My oldest son’s name is Brooks, Wheelwright’s middle name.
What a great post. Thanks, Kent!
Not only that, but Wheels’s father designed the Longfellow Bridge in Boston, a masterwork which survives to this day.
By the way, does anyone know anything on the critical literature for her?
Creeley has something, and Levertov. There’s a PDF at Wikipedia by a Hispanic critic…
NPF, where are you?? Woman and Poet book, I say.
Regarding Wheelwright, he would speak and read at big working-class rallies, back in the thirties. Apparently he was quite popular. He’d get up on stage with James P. Cannon and other anti-Stalinists and go at it. And in a huge fur coat!
Wheelwright was also (unlike Lowell) a Boston Brahmin!! Am I in trouble for mentioning Lowell, though?
I’ll say it for him: Bill Knott.
*
I didn’t know that about Brooks’s name. That’s totally great.
Wheelwright’s in Ashbery’s Other Traditions, so there’s that, and both Wheelwright and Morley are in print, as far as I know. David Schubert’s in OT too, though his QRL number is a rare item.
Not to be a pill, but is anyone spectacularly ignored or bizarrely forgotten if we read them? I ask because I’ve heard more than one poet express irritation at being referred to as one of our most neglected poets.
Ok, Jordan, in that case I nominate Jacob Glatstein.
I was gonna say Wheelwright, but everyone beat me to it. Maybe that means that Wheelwright is not the most spectacularly ignored poet at all.
Permit me to return this to Morley.
What if I said, without drawing equals signs, that she fully deserves to be considered in the company of Niedecker, and that she’s every bit as big a poet, for example, as Rakosi (the prosody of some of her work is close to his late form, in fact)?
A substantial essay in American Literature, by Brian Conniff (1993), discusses the ways Morley has been erased from studies of the “Black Mountain” poets. She was there from ‘52 to ‘56, the key years of the Olson/Creeley nexus. You can find this essay at the bottom of Morley’s Wikipedia page. Things haven’t changed at all since he wrote the essay.
As well, there is a gorgeous tribute Creeley wrote for her, in 1998, the year of her death. Also at Wiki page. I can’t tell if it was composed before or after she died. It’s written in direct address. It’s enough to make you cry. In fact, Creeley says he is crying as he writes it.
Finding the names of birds here,
of flowers, important, I say I must
know them, name them,
to be able
to call upon where their magic
resides for me: in naming them
myself–to lay hold upon whatever
quivers inside the bird-calls,
the dripping
of tail of wing–
to know it
inside my hand where power
of that sort lives
& in my fingers
wakes and becomes
an act of
language.
–Hilda Morley
Oh shit, the tabs didn’t hold. There are indented lines at key junctures.
Well, the passage is in Conniff’s essay.
A lively way to talk about typing, I guess? I’m not sure I see the excitement.
Glatshteyn, the Yiddish poet?
I’m a fan of Mani Leib Brahinsky, my son’s great-great uncle on his mother’s mother’s side and the subject of a recent article by Jacqueline Osherow, which I’d link to, except Nextbook seems to have gone under. I think John Hollander translated a few of his poems.
> his poems
Unc. ref.! I mean Mani Leib’s poems.
Well, I don’t think it’s quite about “typing.” (The structure went missing because my typing didn’t transfer, though.) Nor is it about “exciting” anyone, necessarily, at least not in the way a Bruce Andrews poem aims to excite, or a Nada Gordon one, for example. All fine and good, that, of course.
Here’s what Conniff says about it:
“No matter how ‘gentle’ the voice of these poems might sometimes sound, Morley realizes that any use of language is a struggle for power on the most primal level, a struggle traced in her poems by a ‘projective’ line that fractures and decenters: [...] This centrifugal use of the line brings epistemology to the level of sensation. She is so intent upon discovering the common world, an ‘active’ reality much like the one Olson came to understand by studying Whitehead, that the knowledge she achieves is always at once tenuous and physical: “to lay hold upon whatever / quivers inside the bird-calls, … to know it / inside my hand where power / of that sort lives.”
I realize that sounds somewhat old-fashioned in these climes… And here’s how Creeley’s tribute to her opens. It’s even *more* old-fashioned sounding, I suppose:
“Whatever poetry is or will ever be, these miraculous traceries of mind and heart bring you here in such vivid clarity–as though the door suddenly opened and there were a bright flash of sun and the lingering odor of fresh rain and dampened earth. One thinks of all the rules there have been, of the characteristic male proscriptions one had thought to learn and attend, as if the art of saying things, a “how to dance sitting down,” were only some lesson to be mastered. You must well remember the days of the “poeme bien fait” when we marched off to that drear school of previous habits, hoping that something we found might fit although it didn’t. I wonder at the way you taught yourself then to move with such lightness and particularity, touching each term and thing, each feeling, always making them actual — like Denise saying (quoting Jung), “Everything that acts is actual.” You made remarkable sense of it [...] In Black Mountain all those years ago, then New York, now Long Island. I always thought you very patient with the male machismo of the college, which gave such small room if any to a poet as yourself. Were we threatened? Quite probably — as we tramped about with our big ideas.”
Nobody yet, surprisingly, has mentioned Coleburn Tompkins. WWII veteran (67th Airborne), lived in the far reaches of Weehawken, with his aunt (Mildred). Wrote poems on key tags (defunct type of cardboard, with metal rings, upon which keys were hung & labelled) - necessarily quite brief. He called them “Sylls” (early, pre-war versions were “Sylvan Syllables”) .
The collected key tags are currently housed between the roof beams (warm & dry, or so they say) of the deliquescent “Poe House” (soi-disant) National Monument, up on a dusty thruway in the Bronx, near Fordham.
Here’s an example :
SYLL 237 : MARBLE QUERY
You edged
your way
north toward
Ponte Vecchio
like the black
border around
a funeral
note (helmet
askew). Where
to?
On the night of my death
fires will lace
the shoreline
of some unknown beach—
and children
in loose
half-length
blue gowns
will sing my dirge
as unknown vagrants
place my body
on a raft
covered with lilies
and seaweed—
and after they have
fastened down my body
with rope
they (the vagrants)
and the children
will set
the raft
adrift
–Frank Samperi
Mani Leib, yessir. And, indeed, Hollander translated some of his poems. Well, I’ll be. A modernist American-Yiddish poetry revival could be on the way if we poke at it a little!
Yes, Samperi!
How do you make those tabs stick in the comment box?
What would a shadow anthology look like, then?
Morley 20pp
Samperi 12pp
Oppenheimer 6pp
Rakosi 14pp
Glatshteyn 10pp
Mani Leib 10pp
Conkling 8pp
Crapsey 9pp
Wheelwright 30pp
Schubert 42pp
Jonas 24pp
The Spectra Hoax 6pp
Borregard 4pp
Torregian 12pp
Lamantia 64pp
Smith 8pp
dot dot dot
Too bad this is a blog not a wiki - I’d read this anthology, online even. Hmm.
& don’t forget Tomkins -
497 pp.
How do you make those tabs stick in the comment box?
& nbsp ; (nonbreaking space) is your friend. (Delete the spaces after 7 and before ;, obviously.)
7? I meant &, obviously. Sheesh.
Also: I too would read that anthology.
Other candidates:
Melvin Tolson
Trumbull Stickney (yeah, Harold Bloom, I know)
Josephine Jacobsen
Jean Garrigue
Lola Ridge
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
Don Marquis
Samuel Hoffenstein (famous for “The Notebook of a Schnook”)
Oh, geez, and my old mentor George Starbuck!
Hey Bobby, you can make the wiki happen, right? Kent can be the editor wizard. Course, then someone will get sued . . .
Samuel Greenberg
Edwin Honig
Give me a few minutes, I’m working on it…
Good choices, Henry - I almost said Greenberg, too, and of course Honig. Maybe also Wilfred Townley Scott?
Okay, let’s see if we can do this. If you’re not a DE author, head over to the right side of the page and click the “Register” link. Once you get registered, go here and look for the link that says “Edit this page.” Let’s keep that page as a table of contents, a list of poets you want to see in the anthology. I’ll have to come back and create new pages for each of the poets, which I won’t be able to do for a couple of hours at least, and maybe not till tonight, so you can while away the interim collecting poems and links. Once I add those new pages (you’ll be able to tell because they’ll be links) you’ll be able to edit them as well.
And there is an interesting thing here: that under a post proposing the reconsideration of a forgotten, significant woman poet *all* the comments are by men. The second comment, in fact, spoke of her somewhat slightingly in “relation” to Stefan Wolpe, which is precisely the long fate she’s experienced, whenever her name is casually mentioned in “Black Mountain” studies.
I’m wondering, somewhat self-consciously now, if it was “wrong” for a man to have made the proposal. And if so, what this means in terms of how such proposals “mean,” or how/by whom they should be made? And what this has to do with the thick questions of politics and axiology within the field…
Well. Interesting.
Whoops, that link should work now.
I added the late Janet Sullivan to the list. Probably few have heard tell of her. Passed away this summer, far into her 80s. Good poet, editor & fiction writer, former co-editor with me of Nedge. Her last project, I think, was a mystery book for young readers, about Venice.
I was raking leaves over the weekend, when my neighbor & fellow Honig afficionado & editor, the wild Susan Brown, came over & recited, there on the sidewalk, a work of Janet’s she had just unearthed. A beautiful love poem/elegy for her husband.
You’re probably correct to perceive sexism in these responses, Kent.
Jean Garrigue! I suppose she’s neglected. Her selected is out of print.
Walter Arensberg?
Well, we’re going to need May Swenson, too. There’s no collected (yet?), and the vast variety of her work is hard to fathom without a lot of out-of-print book buying.
>You’re probably correct to perceive sexism in these responses, Kent.
Well, I could have made the same comment, as easily as you did.
> as easily
It needed to be said. You said it.
*
Another way to do this: comb through the historical index. I’d forgotten slippery Richard Aldington, for example.
Kent, regarding your earlier query about critical work on Morley, Ironwood 20 has appreciations by: Hayden Carruth, Josephine Jacobsen, Caroline Kizer, Stanley Kunitz, Denise Levertov & Ralph J. Mills Jr. — the last of these, someone else who I’d say is unjustly neglected — as well as a small selection of work by Morley. It’s relatively hard to come by, I think, as the same issue also features a mini-anthology of Language Writing, edited by Ron S.
Incidentally, the Creeley piece you quoted from was originally the preface to her last collection, The Turning.
Oh, I ought to have said that you can read Morley and a bio here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=4838
Stop me before I add Bodenheim and Kreymborg.
Sam, thanks for that info. I haven’t seen that Ironwood. And it’s an odd little twist there’s a mini-Language anthology in the same issue. We’ve all heard the Langpos speak plenty about poets of the Olson nexus, but I’ve never heard any of them mention Morley. Have you? One assumes they know of her, since they had a special section in the journal, alongside hers.
Actually, I just realized that she’s in the Hoover Norton, so that for the record, too.
Haven’t seen the last collection, either. I’m curious: I believe that last book appeared shortly after her death, in 1998. Do you happen to know if Creeley composed the intro following her death? He mentions crying as he is writing it, so I am assuming that’s the case– though he addresses her directly in it, so there’s a bit of strangeness to it.
I suspect Creeley’s preface was written before her death, as the author bio on the book itself suggests she was still alive (even though, as you say, I think it actually appeared posthumously).
It’s quite a big book (193 pages), although it does reprint some poems from earlier collections (including the Tangram pamphlet, Between the Rocks, and parts of A Blessing Outside of Us).
P.S. Just noticed this post on the Poetics List, which quotes from an email by Creeley to Charles Bernstein:
Just yesterday we heard that Hilda Morley had died Sunday night in London — expected … but hard none the less. We would have delightful long telephone conversations — and I have known her
since Black Mountain days. She has a substantial selection of her poems coming out just now with Moyer Bell, The Turning, for which I did a brief but heartfelt preface.
I can’t think of any unjustly forgotten poets because there are none—
every name mentioned in the comments above is justly forgotten—
attempts to resurrect poets unread in their lifetimes are futile, no matter how much money university presses waste in the effort, or how many pages the Norton adds onto each edition—
and no matter how many of us delude ourselves it’s possible—
our selfish reasons for perpetuating this myth are obvious—
the only poets posthumously recoverable are those whose work wasn’t available before their death (Dickinson, Rimbaud)—
I like balloons, too, but their fate is fixed—
…
> I can’t think
Davis’s Law.
>I can’t think of any unjustly forgotten poets because there are none—
Well, so much for the Metaphysicals, I guess, and all that meant…
Wait, are you the same Bill Knott who Jordan says above is forgotten? I guess I thought you were. (For the record, I wanted to take exception with Jordan’s nomination there, since I hardly think you–or the poet who goes by your name–is off the map.)
I also like balloons, but I’m not sure about their fate.
Along with Glatshtein and Mani-Leib, don’t forget Moyshe-Leyb Halpern.
you can point to the recent Norton Mod/Postmod to refute my contention that obscure poets aren’t recoverable,
and yes, there are some additions to that canonical anthol
which might qualify—
but while the Norton may be infinitely expandable (especially when it’s tranferred into a web-based entity),
semesters and student brains aren’t—
and when the next batch of po-profs careerwardly restore the reps of other po-oblivo’s,
and this latter slate of rescuees has to be wedged-in to the mix,
what then? Just as James Stephens and others were excised to provide room for Mina Loy et al in the current edition of the Mod/Postmod,
won’t some (and eventually most) of the recent insertees have to be similarly sacrificed?
In the long run, as each new edition is forced to add other polished up and regilded relics,
all or nearly all of your dug-up oldies will be axed and will fade once again to forgotten.
….
MH, Jordan was joking. You need to check out Bill’s home page.
Whoops, I can’t find Bill’s blog. Did you take yr blog down again, Bill?
Anyway, please don’t tell Bill he’s not neglected. It’s important to him.
a couple “forgotten” poems by Edwin Honig…
THE SILENCE
I listened
and waited a long time
for what was to be said
and nothing spoke
but a silence so deep
it could be speech
or a primed hesitance
of speech to say
what’s true
for ear or mind
as yet unborn
to take it in
so that the longer
and deeper
it grew
the more
the unbroken silence
felt full
*
LAST POEM
He wrote poems.
They had a private sound.
A few were long
and ran aground.
Some were short -
too bitter
or too sweet.
The rest were wild,
the worst, discreet.
Jesus, I thought I was well read. I haven’t heard of some of these folks. I guess that’s the point. Honig, though, I’ve read some of his translations.
How about Frank Stanford? I know Don likes him. And Janet Frame has a terrific selected from Bloodaxe, but does anyone ever talk about her poetry?
I’m feeling the same way, and glad for it.
Stanford’s great, as is Forrest Gander’s novel about him.
Oh! J. V. Cunningham!
Yeah, co-sign that one, too.
I’ve mentioned Janet Frame many times elsewhere, e.g.,:
http://donshare.blogspot.com/2008/08/slow-poetry.html
http://donshare.blogspot.com/2008/08/promptings-and-juxtaposition.html
http://donshare.blogspot.com/2009/05/janet-is-on-planet.html
http://donshare.blogspot.com/2009/08/phantom-billstickers.html
And yes! Cunningham & Stanford, though the latter has been faithfully kept on the radar for years, most recently even getting his own conference; see also:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/article.html?id=181083
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=98306
Wasn’t Frame the subject of a Jane Campion biopic? Not that that means a whit for anyone knowing anything about her poems.
Agreed that Stanford is somewhat on radar. Is Ceravolo? I’m always pleased and surprised whenever anyone mentions him — and people do keep mentioning him.
All right, this thread is going to send me scouring used book sites no matter what I do, so I might as well ask folks for recommendations. If everyone would be kind enough to look over the list & suggest the two or three books I just have to have if I am to possess anything approaching a complete acquaintance with 20th century poetry in English (the “U.S.” part got left behind awhile back, I think), I’d be very grateful. I have books by Wheelwright & Cunningham & Frame, plus the Schubert poems in Other Traditions, but that’s it.
I remember seeing a Sun & Moon Rakosi in the nineties. Is he really worth checking out? Jordan, I assume you’ll recommend Ceravolo? Which book(s)?
Oh, & which Stanford book is the one? The Moon Is a Battlefield? You? Need more than one? I’ve only read his stuff in various places online.
No: add the book recs to the anthology!
Yeah, that makes sense. Just put The Green Lake Is Awake in my Amazon cart, so help me fill it up!
MR (and Jordan): I see I’m behind again. So Bill would like to be a neglected relic or not? I at least was instructed to read him as a young man. I quite liked a lot of it, actually.
(Or maybe Bill can answer my questions, if he’s still around. It’s rude to talk about someone who’s in the room.)
Also, as I second MR’s wish for more biblio help, I suggest we add a separate section to the wiki: select biblio. Can you do that Bobby? With the guiding principle that each poet gets no more than two, and preferably only one, best book. (Obviously, selected and collected editions are good.) Maybe this will prevent us from getting sued, since people (at least us) may buy books.
Here you go, MH: http://knottprosepo.blogspot.com/
“the Metaphysicals”—
?—
I thought this was about 20th Century poets . . .
(whoops: I meant the two-volume Norton Modern/Contemporary, in my note above—sorry)
> The Green Lake Is Awake in my Amazon cart
Or take 25% off ordering it directly from Coffee House.
What, this thread wasn’t infomercially enough for you to begin with?
Here’s my list
Abraham Lincoln Gillespie, his collected has long been out of print.
Bern Porter, godfather of found poetry, publisher, performance artist, curmudgeon
Franklin Rosemont, long time cultureworker & American surrealist
& I see Hannah W has made the cut, good on that
David Daniels, extraordinary concrete poet
>I remember seeing a Sun & Moon Rakosi in the nineties. Is he really worth checking out?
Michael, oh yes. See the big Man and Poet book of essays from NPF, too, edited by Michael Heller.
Since I’ve already posted an entry here at DE from my I Once Met, here’s the one for Rakosi. A bit silly, but what the heck:
I once met Carl Rakosi. This was in 1992, at Orono, after I’d presented a paper about Louis Zukofsky’s 80 Flowers. I’d just published an essay on Rakosi in a fat book about him, from the National Poetry Foundation, wherein I contrasted his prosody with that of Wallace Stevens, a topic that on the surface of it, seems admittedly a bit ridiculous. I’d had a few drinks at the cash bar right before and was feeling fine, quite confident, at ease in my skin. Young man, I just loved your talk, said Rakosi, already then 90 years old, I believe. Good job. And I know Louis would have been totally delighted… I smiled. Well, thank you, Mr. Rakosi, I said, That certainly means a lot to me. And I thought it showed promise, too, said Charles Bernstein, out of nowhere, somewhat assertively extending his hand to me. I’m sure this is a great moment for you, to meet Carl Rakosi, isn’t it? I reached out, squeezed Bernstein’s hand, looked him in the eyes, and said, Yes, it certainly is, Charles. And one day, when you look back on things, you’ll realize that this was an actually great moment for you, too. I laughed, casually, and Rakosi squinted his twinkling eyes and laughed merrily, as well. And Armand Schwerner laughed, and Michael Heller laughed, and Keith Tuma did, too. And so did Marjorie Perloff, though I noticed she caught herself and stopped. Bernstein looked at Bob Perelman, who’d been on my panel, and then at Barrett Watten, who had asked me a long question involving Schoenberg, dodecaphony, and Russian Formalism, and then at, I think, Bruce Andrews, and said seargeant-like, OK, let’s go to lunch. And so they did, very unsmiling, out the door, the four in a kind of platoon line. And Carl Rakosi grabbed my ear and tugged at it, still giggling, like a grandfather lovingly teasing a suddenly found bastard son, one with a small attitude problem, but showing some promise, nevertheless.
In my honest opinion, Bern Porter should be at the very top of the list.
I knew someone would object to my shopping at Amazon. And I love infomercials!
I should start a thread about justly forgotten poets. When I was in college, taking my first workshops, I was made to read Paul Zweig, Norman Dubie, & John Logan.
But Don, the list is alphabetical.
Michael, just here to help. (And to try and get CHP as much bang for unit cost as possible.) Good thread idea, btw, except for whole alienating strangers part. I know I know, love and war, etc.
Smacks forehead. Of course, alphabetical, sure. He’d still be near the top, anyway.
Re Tim Dlugos:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=111256
Re Edwin Honig, who’s not in, but this is for Henry:
http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:1509516
http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:1509467
Thanks, Don! Edwin is still among the living, so he won’t be leaven for this lump.
Kent, thanks for this post. The comments here have gone in hundred directions before my sandwich was finished, so, comically off-beat: I too ring the bell for Hilda Morley. Though Justice (”unjustly…forgotten”) is a term I wouldn’t apply to any dispensation of literary celebration, her perceptiveness and insistence on the equation between seeing and listening, for her ferocity in this in the *Cloudless at First collection’s 200+ pages, is incredibly useful in an age of inattention.
And Jordan, perhaps you’d know - has anything been written on Ceravolo other than Schjeldahl’s piece in Parnassus (early Eighties, I think).
Indeed, let us not forget Donald Justice!
I’m kidding.
I kind of like Donald Justice, though it wouldn’t be stepping on my toes to make fun of his apparent thesis that the less that happens in a poem the better.
Well, he’d know (would have known).
Joel, I don’t believe I was aware of Schjeldahl’s piece! so I may not be your best bibliographical assistant. Ceravolo’s widow maintains an author site; better sources than I for information about his work would be Joel Lewis and David Shapiro.
It occurs to me they might be excellent people to consult for the Corral, btw.
Jordan, I like Justice too. I identify with nothing happening. Justice for Justice!
His prose book, “Oblivion : on writers & writing” would fit right into the corral.
Wood’s Lot, a widely read blog, has linked to this post and discussion, with offering of a poem by Morley. The great Language Hat blog has, too!
instead of using your formidable intellects to help solve the real problems facing USAPO—
the loss and diminishment of its audience readership being one of the worst—
you waste your time /efforts on this absurd myth!
the ship is sinking, and you’re hauling aboard corpses from old shipwrecks—
….
and that you’ve so quickly moved to quibbling squabbling over this name and that name
is no surprise
Bill’s right, of course.
Unless, of course, this diversionary heritage move can somehow attract the attention of downhearted poetry readers long enough for us to give them the real rallying cry currently being drafted at an undisclosed location to the southwest of Chicago…
As I’ve said elsewhere, I don’t really care about the loss of poetry’s audience (which has always already been lamented—sad decline from what mythical golden age!), so I’m happy to quibble squabble.
The New Old School?
Meet the new school, same as the old school!
I’ve lost some intellect over the years, so it’s not as formidable as it used to be, but… when in living memory was there an increasing aud. for po., anyway?
Personal anecdote: Donkey’s ears ago, I attended an Allen Ginsberg reading in my hometown that drew an impressive, oh, 100 folks; that same year in the same town, I saw the Rolling Stones - maybe 50K in that crowd? Guess which act put on a better show. But I digress. What’s so bad about cavorting with the corposes on the ghost ship, mouthing along with the Ancient Mariner, Bill?
I’ll try one more time, with Morley as my question:
HOW is she forgotten? forgotten by WHOM?
The Sheep Meadow Selected was published, yes? What more do you want? What else is there?
Really, what more is possible, given the ever more burgeoning roster of USAPO?
Presumably it’s her non-presence in anthologies you’re lamenting? and the lack of attention by notable critics like Perloff and Vendler and Mlinko et al?
But if the anthols put her in, which poet do they take out to make room for her?
When I assigned the two-volume Norton Mod/Con, my students complained not only about its extortionist price, but also about the size of the damn thing, and resented my requiring them to lug both heavy vols to every class—
(and of course after two weeks use, the spines were cracking and pages were falling out)—
What name does she replace? Out Kizer and in Morley? — Out [insert name here] and in Morley—
As for the critical neglect, aren’t some of youse by all accounts actually first-rate critics yourself?
so why don’t you put those f-r talents on the line—
you could easily persuade po-profs across the land to add Morley to their xerox handouts or their Required Books lists—(but, again: which poet do they remove to make room for her? —the students can’t read, nor afford to buy, anymore)—
?
….
Bill Knott wrote:
>instead of using your formidable intellects to help solve the real problems facing USAPO—
the loss and diminishment of its audience readership being one of the worst—
you waste your time /efforts on this absurd myth!
the ship is sinking, and you’re hauling aboard corpses from old shipwrecks—
Bill,
Most of us here like your work, and most of us know you’re a cantankerous fellow who likes to wag his finger in Poetrydilly Square, but the above really makes you sound positively wacky.
“Corpses from old shipwrecks”? Let me give you two examples of poets who were rescued from near oblivion not too long back and are now loved by significant numbers of readers: Carl Rakosi and Lorine Niedecker.
To take the latter case, we are talking about someone who’s become something of a State of Wisconsin treasure, with documentaries of her life recently aired on Wisconsin PBS televison, radio broadcasts devoted to her work, and numerous press articles recounting her “shipwrecked” life (her island home was frequently underwater, in fact). Her original house is now a State Landmark, and the public library of her hometown has a beautiful permanent exhibit dedicated to her. You go to Fort Atkinson, and people at the taverns are damn proud of Lorine Niedecker.
You bemoan the lack of readership for poetry. But in the case of Niedecker we have a poet who is now read and known by large numbers, poets and non-poets alike, and who might not have ever heard of her (even in Fort Atkinson!) if it hadn’t been for a devoted few who championed her work, back when the fashion was to dismiss her (this was the attitude not all that long ago!) as a “minor female poet” from a little po-dunk mid-west river town.
What on earth do you find objectionable about efforts to call more attention to unfairly disregarded poets? Are you really sure that Mary Oliver and Billy Collins, upon whom you lavish such slavish praise, are the best we got? Because they are “bestsellers”? If you’re right, then woe be poetry. Most of us think you’re a pretty good poet, Bill, though we promise to respect forever your anxious wish to be considered minor. But that’s neither here nor there. You can still perfectly well get off your self-pitying soapbox for a spell, hop into your handmade poetic canoe, and start paddling about the island shoals and look around. There are shipmates of yours still out there, old sailor.
Rakosi—didn’t he win the Pulitzer prize?
As for Niedecker, hooey. It’s the myth they’re buying; the poetry is ancillary.
…
>Rakosi—didn’t he win the Pulitzer prize?
no, Bill, he didn’t.
and please respond to my questions—
ad hominem characterizations of me are irrelevant—
I’ve tried to comment on the subject at hand, I haven’t made personal observations directed at/to or about any of you or your position in the poetry world, so please don’t do it to me—
Rakosi—pulitzer— sorry … I got him confused with Oppen…
but my question remains: when you add Rakosi Niedecker Morley Eigner et al to the canon (i.e. the Norton),
who gets subtracted?
does enlarging the canon enlarge the audience, do you think?
,,,,
Yes, of course, Bill, you are never ad hominem.
I think my comment was good-humored and polite enough, at least in comparison to a barrage you recently made at Harriet about, well, me. No? Nor did I say anything in my comment that is not a matter or record. Do you mean the “ad hominem” suggestion that your self-pitying Poet-persona is a myth-constructing device? This is pretty much considered a fact by numerous of us, sort of along the lines that Mt. Katahdin is a fact. Eliot Weinberger, I recall, had recently made some incisive comments here in that regard. Such matters and behaviors are entirely sociological in nature, poignant but real aspects/symptoms of the field’s operations. We all have our quirky behaviors. What in my comment, exactly, did you find *inaccurate*?
Unfortunately, there is nothing *serious* in your remarks to really respond to. I suppose that was partly my point, even as I responded to them…
Sorry for the misunderstanding!
But Niedecker is not Eigner et al. Some poets deserve to be recovered because they were great—to be old-fashioned about it—& they enlarge our sense of the art & its possibilities.
Niedecker, like Spicer, is a case in point. I wouldn’t, myself, put Eigner or Morley on that list, but clearly others feel differently.
There is also a case to be made (Cary Nelson has made it) for remembering as capaciously as possible the poets who contributed to their time’s sense of the art even when it now seems clear that their work doesn’t meet operative aesthetic criteria. That is a sociological question, but I don’t see why the sociology of literary history shouldn’t be a consideration. We wouldn’t remember Thomas Yalden or William Shenstone at all if it weren’t for Johnson, & we certainly don’t want to read them for the usual reasons we turn to poetry, but knowing of their careers helps to fill in our knowledge of their period & the work of their contemporaries. Greatness is just one criterion. This isn’t the point of this thread, but I’m sure everyone feels it applies to at least one of the figures someone else has suggested for inclusion.
I don’t understand the question about who gets subtracted. Is there some magic number of poets allowed in, like a club at capacity?
Finally, Bill, why not contribute yr own candidates for The Lumpy Corral? It’s fun! No one is getting nixed from the Norton here, or included in it. It is called The Lumpy Corral! It can only be a good thing.
>I don’t understand the question about who gets subtracted. Is there some magic number of poets allowed in, like a club at capacity?
A good comment by Robbins, there.
But on the above concern expressed by Bill, that going back and advocating for the work of a few poets means that others might be subtracted… This is what I meant when I said his remarks really can’t be taken seriously. On the most obvious level, well, subtractions and deletions are actually what canons are all about. But even so, there’s not just one canon, defined by one anthology. At least not anymore. Doing some work of justice to a few neglected poets doesn’t necessarily mean that Mary Oliver’s going to suffer eternal oblivion in 2012. Bill loves zero-sum games, but this isn’t one of them.
>On the most obvious level, well, subtractions and deletions are actually what canons are all about.
subtractions and *additions* is what I meant.
“I don’t understand the question about who gets subtracted. Is there some magic number of poets allowed in, like a club at capacity?”
In answer to that question, MR, I would say Yes: in practical terms, in the academy and in bookbuyers’ budgets, yes, there is a magic number—isn’t there?— the students in those poetry classes can only be assigned to read a certain amount of pages; the poetry public (especially now with the economy) can only afford so many volumes per year . . .
On the one hand we have a shrinking audience for poetry, and on the other we create ever-increasing lists of must-read poets: do those (leaden) numbers calculate?
Niedecker, I don’t like her poems but so what, if she finds a niche in the canon I won’t object, the point I’ve been trying to make throughout this thread, is that you can’t have more poets unless you also have more readers who will buy more books by poets—
…
also in response to your subtraction question:
James Stephens got subtracted from the
Norton Modern so Niedecker could be added—
older poets get excised from anthologies all the time to make room for newer names,
several poems from the first edition of the Norton ModPo weren’t in the second, and some from the second were missing from the third, and so on . . .
happens all the time in anthols—
I was in the 7th edition of the Poulin/Waters Contemporary American Poetry, but I ain’t in the 8th—
…
Well, OK, sure, but that ain’t what’s going on here. We’re just thinking about poets we think have been undeservedly neglected. And I don’t even own a copy of any of the Norton anthologies besides the main poetry one, which I had to use in a class once, so I’m not sure they constitute some arbiter of taste. Also, there are libraries & the internet, Bill, where all sorts of poets can remain in circulation for free & without having to nudge other out. You can now happily download the entirety of “A” from any number of sites & staple it together & have a reading copy. That’s how I scored Rodefer’s Four Lectures. I have copies of a bunch of yr books from Lulu, so I know you know this. (Speaking of which, while I’ve got you on the horn, you wouldn’t have a copy of The Quicken Tree you’d send me wouldja?)
okay my “remarks can’t be taken seriously,”
fine,
so ignore them—
stop responding to my posts. please
“Also, there are libraries & the internet, Bill, where all sorts of poets can remain in circulation for free & without having to nudge other out.”
You mean higher-ed libraries, MR, to which not all of us have access—the public library I visit doesn’t have the budget to buy much poetry, and I’m retired living on Social Security, so I can’t afford to buy much either—
but the Net, yes, I agree with you there, its potential to expand the poetry-reading audience is a sign of hope for the future—
but most readers learn to appreciate poetry in school, which is why I reference the Norton Mod/Con: isn’t it THE anthol used in most college/university poetry classes? (My students as I noted above had struggles with it, and its superfluity swamped my lessonplans)—
….
MR,
please send your postal address via my facebook (link at my blog)
and i’ll mail that book, or a facsimile of it—
Thanks, Bill. And re the Norton Mod/Con, I’ve never seen it used in a class, & I’ve been at & around the U of Chicago for several years.
>As for Niedecker, hooey. It’s the myth they’re buying; the poetry is ancil lary.
Wow. That’s very dim.
Yeah, I should think a reading of New Goose would cure one of that view, but whatever.
>the point I’ve been trying to make throughout this thread, is that you can’t have more poets unless you also have more readers who will buy more books by poets—
Hey, sorry Bill, I still might respond to your confused zero-sum arguments, even if you don’t want me to.
Another example of your illogic above: for new, canon-troubling poets can create new audiences, don’t you know. This should be obvious enough. Forget Niedecker, a modest recent example. What was that group of young poets called back in the fifties? Oh, the Beats… How many millions of new readers of poetry, from Muncie to Jakarta, did they end up creating over the decades do you figure? Maybe you “don’t like” them, but truth is, there are probably more readers of John Crowe Ransom and Mary Oliver, even, because of them. When you think about it…
In any case, why are you so fixated on *anthologies*?
(By the way, in case people don’t know, Bill is not only an interesting poet, he’s also a fabulous painter. I own four of his works, alongside a bunch of his handmade books. So I’m a fan, just to be clear, even if I don’t feel his critical faculties quite match his imaginative achievements.)
Kent, you make sense, but I do have some reservations about the whole scheme, “unjustly neglected & forgotten”. It puts the onus on that imponderable entity, “the reader”, “the public” (unless you are some new kind of robotic super-pollster). It labels poets with a pathetic tattoo.
Maybe the corral should be turned around a few degrees. Put the onus squarely on its producers, to define exactly what’s in the blender. & make it POSITIVE.
“These are some 20th-cent. poets we personally enjoy & admire, whom you may not come upon so readily.” Wild game. Rare butterfly species. Incunabulae.
& actually this could be PROMOTED as the NORMATIVE approach to philology. Butterfly-hunting. Bill, I think you give too much credit to market forces & statistics. Readership is a quality, not a quantity. There’s an inherent hide & seek dimension to literature, & poetry especially. The word is profoundly LASTING. It outlasts oblivion & neglect.
“none more lasting than the regal word” - Akhmatova
“I have built a monument not made with hands” - Pushkin
“while in black ink my love may still shine bright”
- Bob Shakespeare
Poetry-reading as butterfly-hunting (or mushrooming, maybe). The kernel of the revolution in poetry-reception USA. Down with systems, influence, name-dropping, blurbism, academia, “prestige”, clans, gangs & pecking orders! Get yourself a fine-meshed net, & go out in the woods!
>Readership is a quality, not a quantity.
Yes, Henry, which is why things keep changing. One might say the two “things” above are the dialectical gizmos that keep the ball rolling.
You know I’ve said for a long time that your future recognition will come first in England. That you are a British poet at bottom is confirmed even by your punctuation: commas and periods outside quotation marks!
As for me, I went all the way to RUSSIA (intellectually, that is) - utterly alone!, with no money!, & no Russian-language skills! - in order to do this. I found a lot of both mushrooms & butterflies.
Commas belong outside quotation marks if you’re quoting nomenclature rather than registering speech or dialogue. I believe that’s common procedure on both sides of the pond.
Thanks, Kent, but I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy. My grandmother was in the DAR. We had Sunday dinners (back in the 50s) sitting under a large sepia print of George Washington & Lafayette. Feel free to buy hoards of my books & ship them over to those Brits if you think otherwise, though.
p.s. that grandmother, Florence Ainsworth, was born on the 4th of July, 1900.
OK enough about me.
Henry! That’s not common practice on this side of the pond—commas go inside “inverted commas,” unless another punctuation mark ends the phrase within them. “Against Me!”, the neo-punk band, is pretty great.
hmmm… have to check a style manual on that. Maybe you’re right, Michael. We’ll see. I used to be a proofreader for Berg Publications, but that was many a year ago.
Yes, Henry, MR is right. But again, in England you are correct. So “keep on keeping on”[.]
I’m trying to remember– what did Auden do? Did he change his punctuation habits?
I am currently earning my living (such as it is) as a copyeditor, and I can attest that Michael is correct: commas and periods go inside quote marks in the U.S. regardless of whether dialogue is involved.
Yes, apparently you guys are right. But I spoke with such authority, to Kent, in comment above, that this will probably revolutionize American usage, along with butterfly-hunting. I could be wrong, I guess.
This just in from the former PLOTUS; discuss:
Q: There seems to be an idea that even if poetry itself is alive and well, contemporary poetry is relegated to near obscurity, and that argument draws its weight simply from a visit to the local Barnes and Noble, where the poetry section is miniscule and more or less entirely composed of dead writers. How would you respond to this idea, and what can contemporary poets do to enhance the status of America’s still-living poets?
A: The dead writers are great. They have passed the test of time. They represent centuries to choose from, not a few decades like us living writers. So it makes sense that the more excellent the shelves, the more books by dead writers on them. Viva the dead! Let the living “enhance their status” by trying to write well.
http://southeastreview.org/2009/11/robert-pinsky.html
>Let the living “enhance their status” by trying to write well.
Or by having a semi-regular gig on the Lehrer Report.
I agree with ex-PLOTUS. Philology is butterfly-hunting for live, rare species, in the remote, austere, forlorn, haunted, sublime, moss-grown, decayed & abandoned cemetery (of poetry shelves).
Well, there’s status and there’s status!
Kent, I’d forgotten that Morley poem up at wood s lot — I can see I need to go back and reread her stat.
Nominations for Morley poems for the lumpy corral? Are they all at the level of “The Ship Moves On”?
Hoping to get to the NYPL before Thanksgiving to read what little Arensberg they have.
Here’s the list Dale, Hoa, and I had put together, back in 1999. The focus was on neglected poets from the 60s. Roberto Tejada was going to join us as co-editor of the book, but the project was dropped shortly after he came on. It was very much in progress– can’t remember exactly why it was abandoned. Probably the intimidating work of gathering and permissions it would have entailed. I see in the files that Talisman was very keen on doing the book. Glaring is the gender and ethnic imbalance. Well, for what it’s worth, with all its awkwardnesses:
Rochelle Owens
Diane Di Prima
Howard McCord
Tom Meyer
Helen Adam
Carl Thayler
Joanne Kyger
Steven Jonas
Jonathan Williams
Ken Irby
Ronald Johnson
Hilda Morley
Ted Enslin
Jack Clarke
Keith Wilson
Nathaniel Tarn
James Broughton
Kenward Elmslie
Paul Blackburn
Tony Towle
Joel Oppenheimer
Brenda Frazer
Toby Olson
Michael Bond
David Meltzer
Max Crosley
Ebbe Borregaard
Gordon Baldwin
John Doss
Keithe Lampe
Bill Brown
John Thorpe
Lawrence Kearney
Ed Sanders
Lewis MacAdams
Duncan McNaughton
John Temple
Joe Dunn
Hanford Woods
Aram Saroyan
Dick Gallup
Frank Lima
Lew Welch
Philip Lamantia
Garrit Lansing
Edward Field
And I see we even have a few of the names misspelled…
focus was on 60s and 70s, that is.
Kent - amazing. Thank you (and Dale and Hoa, obvs). A few names there I’d never seen and have not enough clues to disambiguate… Keit Wilson, Michael Bond…
So here’s who fits the criteria and have not yet been added to the toc: Helen Adam, Carl Thayler, John Clarke, Ted Enslin, James Broughton, Gordon Baldwin, Lew Welch.
I would argue that with all the Flood reprints, Ronald Johnson is no longer in need of the Corral. Paul Blackburn is a tough call — more minimized than neglected, maybe?
I was under the impression these poets were still alive but can’t find any confirmation online: Gerrit Lansing, Max Crosley, John Doss, John Thorpe, Joe Dunn.
Names not listed here belong to people I’m pretty confident still breathe. Correct me please.
Need to find my Rodefer/Friedlander little golden book of minor NY school poets.
Adams is nicely in print with the terrific Helen Adams Reader - no longer neglected, happily. Blackburn’s collected remains in print, but he does seem little-read now, unfortunately.
I have been thinking about this anyway lately, as I’m teaching a course on The New American Poetry 1945-1960 at U of C in spring. Looking thru Don Allen’s anthology today, I thought what I always think: how could anyone, at any time, think about half of these poets were worth the paper they’re printed on? Bresmer, Doyle, Duerden, Borregaard: Shenstones all. And Helen Adams’s poem would make a fine addition to any retirement community newsletter. I hope the rest of her Reader builds a better case.
Today I was browsing O’Gara & Wilson’s poetry section & found used copies of books by Morley, Samperi, & others in the Corral. Reader, I left them there.
This has me wondering just how sure any of us can be of our literary judgments at any given time (not my most original insight, I realize, but it’s an easier one to observe regarding others’ judgments than to keep in mind regarding one’s own). Bresmer now seems obviously a poetaster, but did he seem so at the time? The odds are, I guess, all of our works might well appear Bresmeresque to compilers of some future Corral.
Adding injury to insult, I referred throughout that comment to “Bresmer.” His name is Bremser.
A lot of these cats are just aping Ginsberg, & getting everything except the true mercury tone of poetry.
Tomorrow’s cloud babies will be similarly enthrushed to Ashbery.
O’Gara and Wilson is a den of thieves.
Yes, & I don’t often give them my money. Can’t remember the last time I actually bought something there—you have to really need the book to justify rewarding that guy’s pricing habits. A year ago I was in there & the girl working the register told me the owner was urging them all to vote for McCain.
See, that’s what I’ve been saying about the single author collection for the last five years — mainly a book is enough rope. But there have to be individual poems that hold up, I have to believe, for most of these writers.
It is, after all, a lumpy corral.
The Morley poem on wood s lot, for example, is not bat ad all.
Harold Dull, James Alexander, Gail Dusenbery, Robert Parker, George Sterling, Ina Coolbrith, Josephine Miles
So is the following true or false:
The poetry of the past that appeals
most will on the whole be that which most nearly corresponds in its range and method to that of the present?
(as neglectorino Nicholas Moore has said)
I just got back from visiting my son Brooks in Chicago. We went to the Art Institute to see the James Castle exhibit. Every living poet needs to see this. I’ve never been so stunned and moved by any art in my life, I believe. I still don’t have the words… He was born profoundly deaf, “painted” mostly with soot mixed with water or spit to achieve his charcoal effect, created many assemblages, which are done with paper, cardboard and string, did much with book-art construction, lots of that miniature in scale, lots of it “lettristic” and “concrete” in nature– his yearning, one gets the sense, to connect to the mysterious sound world he never knew. It’s all really quite astonishing and magnificent, the scale of the ambition and effort hard to fathom. He was only “discovered” in the 70s. I am sure he will come to be regarded as one of the very greatest artists of America. We spent two hours there and stumbled, overwhelmed, up to the neo-avant-garde section, which all seemed (except for maybe Smithson and Serra) perfectly antiseptic after that. Though the Dada/Surrealist/Cornell/assemblage section next to it is a wonderful collection.
I’d hoped to get my copy of the Hoover Norton from Brooks to check the Morley selection in there, but he’d lent it to someone who never gave it back. Anyone have that handy to see what’s in there from her? Jordan?
OK, go Packers.
Here’s a tribute page for Keith Wilson, with a few of his poems.
http://whitepantiesanddeadfriends.blogspot.com/2009/02/keith-wilson-1927-2009.html
Hre’s a post by Curtis Faville which could be relevant to the work of the Corral.
http://compassrosebooks.blogspot.com/2009/10/controversy-of-poets-deep-divide-in.html
That’s a good question, Don, of course. I was going to say “except when something from the past is so strange the present doesn’t know how to handle it,” though then one could also say that the “estrangement effect” is always the call of the “new.” A sort of duh moment.
But… This is OK, no? The recovered that shocks us with its relevance is a bit like the future returning to the present out of the past…
The liner notes to Turn Back the Years: The Essential Hank Williams Collection, written by one Colin Escott, begin unpromisingly, “What becomes a legend most?” & go on to cite the quatrain beginning “Smart lad to slip betimes away” from “To an Athlete Dying Young.” Escott calls this “the only work for which [Housman] is remembered.” This is stupid stuff! But this game is apparently not played only by poets.
151 comments on this thread and every one of them by a man.
The Lumpy Cowboy Corral?
I wanna hear from some of the Iowa kids. I know you’re reading, Iowa kids!
You mean the *male* Iowa kids…
What happened to Ron’s comment?
Oh, it’s up there. For some reason I only now received email notice of it. Weird.
Spam filter.
I don’t know, isn’t Spam Filter still in print? I liked his collaboration with Demise Levertov.
Harold Dull, yes!
He has a wild website these days:
http://www.waba.edu/
What’s WABA, you ask? Here’s his explanation:
“WATSU® is the first form of Aquatic Bodywork. Harold Dull began developing it in 1980 floating his Zen Shiatsu students in warm water applying its stretches and moves. In the years since, with the help of countless others in classes, clinics and spas around the world, Watsu has evolved into what many consider the most profound development in bodywork in our time. While other modalities are based on touch, the holding that working in water necessitates, brings both the giver and the receiver to new levels of connection and trust. This, combined with the therapeutic benefits of warm water and the greater freedom of movement it encourages, creates a modality that can effect every level of our being. These effects that begin with your first class will continue down whatever Watsu path you follow, whether one of sharing with family and freinds, or a professional path, or one in which you explore with others the creative engagement of our life force in Watsu Free Flow. In 1980 Harold also began developing Tantsu to bring Watsu’s nurturing whole body holding and stretching back onto land. It too has evolved into a modality with a creative potential that can be shared with anybody.”
Anyway, you can read his poems on an apparently related site; the link is:
http://www.watsu.com/harold.html
Hoover has 4 pages of Morley: “The Lizard,” “Curve of the Water,” “Made Out of Links,” “For Elaine de Kooning,” and “Parents.”
An important addition to list, please, totally spaced her out:
Besmilr Brigham, an Outsider poet if there ever was one (though she had contacts with well-known writers who admired her work, including Creeley, Duncan, and Thomas Merton). C.D. Wright has an essay on her in Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil, reprinted from her gorgeous Lost Roads photo/text project (with photographer Deborah Luster) of Arkansas artists and writers. Lost Roads Press also published a collection of Brigham’s work a few years back, Run through Rock. She lived the last decades of her life in a shack in the Ozarks, largely forgotten. We were talking above a bit of Keith Wilson, who needs to be added to the list yet: he was her son-in-law, in fact.
As a impoverished student myself, let me just add:
There are big buildings full of books called “libraries” where anyone with the desire can read a vast array of poets for free. Just last week I got a bunch of Forrest Gander books out after reading Kent’s recommendation of them elsewhere. The canon can never be too big.
Kent: I picked this thread up late, but thanks for bringing up Hilda Morley. I found her work only a year ago, and was startled by it — I’ve since bought every second-hand copy of her work I can trace. She strikes me as a good candidate for a Collected somewhere, and it would be an ideal PhD job for someone. Given how long it took for Muriel Rukeyser to get a decent Collected, I don’t hold out much hope.
And the Besmilr Brigham volume from Lost Roads is just wonderful. If there were more to be had, I’d certainly buy copies.
‘Love is not for chicken shits…’
- Frank Stanford
Libraries? What a concept!
Tony, great to have you here.
Now: Why not Shearsman for a big Morley? A new Selected, say– she published a number of collections after the first Selected.
On Brigham, I heard a rumor the Poetry Foundation might be doing an essay on her. I hope so. Check out C.D. Wright’s essay on her in Cooling Time. If Niedecker’s against-the-odds career is inspiring, Brigham’s is absolutely stupefying.
And Cy, glad something I said led you to Gander!
Did anybody mention George Economou or Henry Rago?
I always mention Henry Rago, and in fact… the 2010 Chicago Poetry Symposium will feature a panel on him with Al Filreis, among others.
And by coinkydink, I just read the latest installment of George E.’s translations of Cavafy, which got swept aside by the to-do over Daniel Mendelsohn’s….
Economou is alive, and got a full page review in the TLS earlier this year for a very Kent Johnson-like project from Shearsman.
Don’t know Rago’s pomes! Ever more yaks to shave…
Speaking of H.R. -
http://www.henryrago.com/
A free download of the “The Golden Anniversary Issue” of Poetry magazine, with a lovely introduction by editor Rago, and a beautiful example of his poetry, is available here:
http://www.archive.org/details/alfalfagrasshop00duffgoog
It’s a wonderful collection, which U of Chicago reprinted as a book, and can be found in dead-tree version, for sale, here:
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?isbn=0226703088
And Rago’s book “A Sky of Late Summer” is beautiful:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B0006DB3PC/ref=tmm_hrd_used_olp_0/183-0922139-4549127?ie=UTF8&condition=used
This is a test of space indents — re: a much earlier post. But it might not work. It’s damn hard to format “projective” style verse for the web.
Anyway, found this thread looking to see if anyone was doing work on Hilda Morley. She’s been one of my favs for years. I’ve only found one substantial academic essay about her. I have 3 of her books now and want to see if I can get a Morley project started.
Among “neglectarinos” (sp?) that haven’t been mentioned are a small handful of LA poets (who, by definition, are neglected if you ask them), such as:
Nora May French
Robert Crosson
John Thomas
Henri Coulette
Bob Flanagan
These are the dead ones. You can find more of what I’ve been trying to do with LA Poetry at my blog:
http://www.arras.net/fscIII/?cat=13
Lots of PDFs to download.
I’ve recently gotten into the poetry of Norman Dubie, very much alive, but who is a genuinely strange writer. He has an epic-length science fiction available in toto on the web (too lazy to hunt for it now).
Among neglected (or under-appreciated) 19th century writers (is this getting too crazy) are:
Frederick Godard Tuckerman (new big edition did come out recently)
Madison Cawein
Christopher Pearce Cranch
George Vashon
Trumbull Stickney (didn’t Talisman do an edition or was that Stuart Merill?) — I know he’s been mentioned. His friend George Cabot Lodge is interesting at moments — T.S. Eliot clearly read him.
And many others that Hollander collected in his big anthologies. But these are the ones to me that seem quite substantial (though Vashon only seems to have published one very long poem–one of the only, I think, by a black American writer writing of revolution in the Caribbean).
I like a lot of names on the list in this thread! I went through them and cut-and-pasted them. (Jordan, much as I love that Modernist stuff, as you know, I can’t get behind Arlington… )
I really like what I’ve seen of Jean Garrigue — I’m surprised that she’s never been reprinted.
I like mIEKAL’s list a lot — just finished the Porter biography.
If we are including visual poets, we can look at Sister Corita Kent (some of her work is pretty dull, but some is quite strange and fabulous).
If we extend it to strange visual theater stuff, there is also Guy de Cointet, who I also write about on my blog.
Hi Brian. If we’re choosing favorite early modernists, Robinson is pretty far down my list, but still debatably (like Henley) an early modernist. (No Eagles jokes, please!)
You write about Dubie at all? I haven’t been able to figure him out.
If you want to way back, there’s a great poet named Royall Tyler that no one reads.
There’s also a great poem by Robert Bolling that is like an Ubu-esque take on Chaucer — lots of farting and pimples and things.
Edwin Arlington Robinson seems to have been erased by many people history as a Modernist, though he’s still read as a realist.
Here are some of the weird ones I assigned in my American Poetry to 1900 class:
Phoebe Cary
Charles Godfrey Leland
Ambrose Bierce
Washington Allston
Joseph Breitnall
George Henry Boker
Thomas Holley Chivers
Sarah Helen Whitman
Chivers is pretty hilariously bad at moments, but I actually like those moments better than when he is dull.
He certainly looked really cool:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Holley_Chivers
But now we are far afield…
So basically, to indent, you use (ampersand, en, bee, ess, pee, semi-colon — if it doesn’t show up here). That equals one space; five make roughly a tab.
I, too, think of Stickney as neglected, yet there are about a half-dozen reprints of Stickney available at Amazon and elsewhere (inluding an edition edited by Lodge), and all of his poems can easily be found on the Internet. He’s in a great many anthologies, and Harold Bloom has unflaggingly sung his praises for years.
Ben Mazer’s ed. of Tuckerman is just out from Harvard, but I find T. tough going; your mileage may vary. He’s also in lots of anthologies, and is more unread than neglected.