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The first Carcanet New York Poets anthology contained an excellent selection of work
by John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Frank O'Hara and James Schuyler. This
follow-up is far more diverse and surprising -- though my surprise is perhaps
a mark of ignorance than the selection. I say this because whilst I would
have expected poems by Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett to be included, I
wouldn't have thought of Clark Coolidge or Barabara Guest as New York poets.
But this is obviously my mistake, for the editors make it clear that all the
poets included, known or unknown to me, are writers 'whose work falls roughly
under the aegis of New York School ideals and practices'. What these
practices or ideals are, however, are never clearly articulated (by the
editors or poets); the editors also disingenuously declare that the anthology
does not 'attempt to represent the range of poets at work in New York in the
period 1950-80'.
So what we have are an intriguing, but not representative, group of poets
whose work emerged from the bustling international city of New York as art
forms flourished and cross-pollinated. Here we have the confessional, a
mundane exploration of the everyday, early experiments in cut-up and collage,
urban lyric, chant, oulipian games, mild surrealism, and the first hesitant
works that might eventually lead to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry.
Whilst in the last few years I've warmed to the intimate and personal diary
poems of Paul Blackburn, along with Ted Berrigan's sonnets and New York
snapshots, I don't really know what to make of much of the work in here. Edwin
Denby doesn't know whether to declaim on the beauties of nature and epiphanic
moments in the city, or actually engage with the modern life of dope, smoke
and the subway. His work seems slight and archaic, rooted in a poetry that
declaims and observes, offering slight comment all the while. Harry Mathews'
work -- mostly written without the oulipian restraints and controls of his
prose -- is slight and unformed, often taking the most squiblike phrase as a
starting point. 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's bay'? -- I mean, come on,
this is student pastiche.
Kenward Elmslie came through theatre and lyric writing to poetry, and his
poems beg to be heard rather than read on the page. They are chants, full of
repetition and pattern, rich in sound and energy, but lacking in subtlety or
longevity. One feels bowled over by them rather than engaged with them.
my nerves my
nerves I'm going mad
my nerves my
nerves I'm going mad
round-the-world
hook-ups
head lit up head
lit up head lit up
the fitting the
poodle
MGM MGM MGM
MGM MGM MGM
MGM MGM MGM
the fitting the
poodle
and so on, goes 'Girl Machine'. Other poems read like Ginsberg with their
long over-run lines and litanies of observation and desire. 'COLLAGE ME! COLLAGE
ME! Turn me into jewels!' he says in 'Bare Bones'; one only wishes for
more jewels among the verbiage.
Best of the bunch are Berrigan himself, with a good selection from 'The
Sonnets' and some later, more freeform work, and Barbara Guest and Clark
Coolidge. I know these author's later work, but here we find early examples
of their work. Guest's roots in lyric and confession are more to the fore
[however exprimental she got her work remains musical], and Coolidge has yet
to develop his hit & run approach to collage and improvisation. Here, his
work more ordinary, still attached to story and linear narrative[s].
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While I was writing this, the news that Guest had died came in.
Interestingly, Ron Silliman writes about Guest as a direct precedent for
Coolidge. Something, again, I wouldn't have thought of. Silliman has also
written about Ted Berrigan's Collected Poems, remarking how good it is to see something done right. I can but
agree: The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan is a sumptuously produced big volume of Berrigan's
work.
It's interesting that the kind of work Berrigan wrote -- personal, often
diarylike, seemingly casual poems -- gains strength from rubbing shoulders
with other poems of the same type. One is drawn into Berrigan's New York,
drawn into his way of thinking, his original approach to language. [I have
the same feeling about Paul Blackburn, especially in response to his journal
poems -- what starts out leaving me outside the author's world actually ends
up inviting me and introducing me to that world.]
'The Sonnets' remains, for me, an original, marvellous set of experimental
poems which subvert both expectations and form, amuse and intrigue. The
collaging, gathering and re-ordering informs individual poems elsewhere
though, so that the whole book accumulates meanings both intertextual and
meta. That is poems inform each other throughout the book, and the work also
reaches out -- sometimes literally as a reource or footnote -- to the
literary world outside. This is a witty, profound and marvellous book.
© Rupert
Loydell 2006
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