[New-Poetry] Guided tours of the abyss

[David Graham]

Good point, Tad.  Still, I'm not really looking for any guide to the abyss
anymore, if I ever was.  But if I were, I might prefer someone like Robert
Frost, who neither sentimentalizes nor shies away from horrors, and whose
work demonstrates  that tragedy can indeed be found in the backyard.  For
that matter, so does Larkin's.

Plath is a powerful, amazing poet who no longer speaks much to me, I admit,
as I also admit that the failing is no doubt mine.

But Plath's not really a good example of what I was groping to say--someone
more like Kerouac or Bukowski, probably, would be examples of a certain sort
of adolescent fascination with "the abyss" that long ago lost whatever
lustre it might have held for me.

Poor Deborah Garrison is sadly out-gunned in any discussion involving the
likes of Plath, of course--but then, so am I.   And she's quite a few steps
up from Judith Viorst, I would contend.


On 4/3/07 12:19 PM, "TheOldMole" <Opus40-01 at opus40.org> wrote:

> Well, we do look to literature to be our guide to the abyss that we hope
> to only glimpse in our lifetimes, and for that flash of the unknown, I'd
> go to Plath or Thomas sooner than Garrison or Judith Viorst. I wouldn't
> go to Plath for a parenting guide, but I probably wouldn't go to
> Garrison either.
> 
> David Graham wrote:
>> It's easy to romanticize behavior and attitudes in poetry that we
>> would typically shy away from in life, isn't it?  In any case, there's
>> often a difference between what we like on the page and what we like
>> in "reality."  
>> 
>> The challenges of domestic poetry like Garrison's are clear enough, I
>> think.  At some point a poem hewing close to mundane experience risks
>> becoming merely a mundane poem.  That said, I like the effort, and am
>> temperamentally in favor of what Garrison is up to, even if she
>> doesn't always score.  The poetry of extremity (e.g. Dylan Thomas,
>> Sylvia Plath) lost most of its glamor for me long ago.
>> 
>> Philip Larkin is typically sharp on this theme:
>> 
>> 
>>  
>> Poetry of Departures
>>  
>> Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,
>> As epitaph:
>> He chucked up everything
>> And just cleared off,
>> And always the voice will sound
>> Certain you approve
>> This audacious, purifying,
>> Elemental move.
>>  
>> And they are right, I think.
>> We all hate home
>> And having to be there:
>> I detest my room,
>> Its specially-chosen junk,
>> The good books, the good bed,
>> And my life, in perfect order:
>> So to hear it said
>>  
>> He walked out on the whole crowd
>> Leaves me flushed and stirred,
>> Like Then she undid her dress
>> Or Take that you bastard;
>> Surely I can, if he did?
>> And that helps me stay
>> Sober and industrious,
>> But I'd go today,
>>  
>> Yes, swagger the nut-strewn roads,
>> Crouch in the fo'c'sle
>> Stubbly with goodness, if
>> It weren't so artificial,
>> Such a deliberate step backwards
>> To create an object:
>> Books; china; a life
>> Reprehensibly perfect.
>> 
>> --Philip Larkin
>> 


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