[New-Poetry] The score card

[Anny Ballardini]

Saturday, August 26, 2006
Poetry is a theater
of forms. 
posted by Tom Beckett at 12:04 PM 0 comments   


  From: Halvard Johnson 

  Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 4:41 PM



  Times change, and I think the age in which we allowed
  publishers and anthologists (the Louis Untermeyers and
  Oscar Williams, and, yes, Donald Adamses of the world)
  to define the canon, or even the sub-canons, for us is over. 
  Just as the LP brought folks like Mahler and Vivaldi to 
  the ears of many, the internet has opened us (our poetical 
  world) up to many poetries that were previously 
  "unheard of." 


  No need to choose between Ashbery and Frost anymore,
  nor confine oneself to Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. No
  one (certainly not me) expects the "best" American poetry
  to be in (or only in) David Lehman's series or in Poetry 
  (Chicago).


  Hal




  "Way down the deserted street, I thought I saw
    a bus which, with luck, might get me out of
    this sentence . . ."
                               --Rosmarie Waldrop


  Halvard Johnson
  ================
  halvard at gmail.com
  halvard at earthlink.net
  http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard
  http://entropyandme.blogspot.com 
  http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com
  http://www.hamiltonstone.org 


  On Aug 26, 2006, at 11:17 PM, David Graham wrote:


    Definitional squabbles about major/minor do make me itchy, but I'm not averse to hearing which poets people most admire, and why.  In fact I find such discussions often very intriguing.  


    If you look at American poets born, say, in the 1920s, I think that just historically it becomes increasingly hard to find anything remotely like a consensus on who the big names are.  And with such poets being in their 80s now, you'd think that time would have sorted things out a bit.  Apparently not, to judge from the anthologies and critical journals, not to mention the spread of opinion on this list.  


    It was once possible to speak of The Ages of Eliot, Auden, and Lowell.  And few would deny the prominence of Frost and Stevens in their generation.  Equally few today would argue for Cummings as major, which is one thing that's so charming about Bob Grumman's lonely quest.  


    But, moving to younger figures, can we even agree on a fairly long short list among American poets born in the 1920s?  Carruth?  Creeley?  Bly?  Hugo?  Spicer?  Justice?  Wilbur?  Blackburn?  Nemerov?  Hecht?  Dickey?  Eigner?  Kizer?  Levertov (honorary American)?  Stern?  Dorn?  Snodgrass?  Ammons? Ginsberg?  O'Hara?  Ashbery?  Merrill?  Merwin?  Kinnell?  Rich?  Sexton?  Levine?  James Wright?  Dugan?  Kumin?  Koch? Hall?


    Most poets on that list have their passionate advocates, while being dismissed by others with shrugs or worse. When one moves into poets born in the 1930s and 1940s, of course, all hell breaks loose:  more and more balkanization.  


    I think we may well have moved, in the late twentieth century and beyond, into a period which future generations will consider rich in fine minor poets but lacking any commanding figures.  But of course, no one knows.  It's a crapshoot.  The major/minor yardstick has always been a variable foot.  Who knows?--maybe my ghost will be flabbergasted to learn, on my visits to earth, that I did in fact live in the Age of Ashbery.   Lord help us.   


    Personally, I'd be surprised though gratified if it turned out that future generations considered Robert Hayden major.  But in any event I'll be long dead before that verdict is in.  


    For whatever it's worth, my own ever-changing list of poets who've meant the most to me would include, from the above list, Hugo, Levertov, Levine, Wright, Bly, Justice, and O'Hara.  Maybe Hugo above all, because such an early and deep influence on me. 


    Lots of others older and younger, too, naturally.  (Langston Hughes, Ignatow, Rexroth, Kunitz, Roethke, Bishop, Brooks, William Matthews, Hass, Simic, Edson, Rogers...)  


    And enough time has passed so that my personal preferences sometimes are distinguishable from historical judgements. In some ways William Stafford (b. 1914) has been as important to me as anyone--but I kind of doubt that his reputation will last; I imagine that Lowell (b. 1917) will continue overshadowing him in death as he did in life.  I couldn't argue very convincingly for Stafford's importance on anyone beyond me and other like-minded ones (you know, the ones who snort when someone like Spicer is put forth as major).  


    And that's just looking at 20th Century Americans.  If I were asked about Anglophone poets, I'd have to add Heaney, Walcott, Larkin, and others to my lists.  Your list would be quite different, would it not?


    ==========================================
    David Graham
    grahamd at ripon.edu
    Home Page:
    http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
    Poetry Library:
    http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
    ==========================================

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