Two weeks ago I wrote a review of another young poet's first trade collection [Minimalism Part VII]. I took that book to task for not aspiring to a high enough model of practice, and suggested that a compromised version of writing, could lead to a compromised, short-circuited fulfillment. The poet contacted me and suggested that I must be "angry" at him or his writing, else how could I not find the worthy aspects of his poetry? The idea that a negative reaction to any poetry, could only be explained by a kind of premonitory disaffection, is probably a natural enough reaction to rejection.
The idea of a standard of value as applied to poetry is one that is always on the table, even when--even though--we may not express that in so many words. People will often say that the only worthwhile pastime is promoting and expressing pleasure at what we like and admire, but if we (or everyone we think belongs to our sphere) spend all our energy praising each others' work, in the end we can't have any standards at all, save for friendship and good cheer. Friendship is a wonderful thing, as are loyalty and admiration, emulation and gratitude. But these qualities, as necessary as they are to a happy existence, can't be the basis for an aesthetics, or a poetics.
It is perfectly possible to be trapped inside a provincial mediocrity, buttressed by the wholesome encouragement of friends and close associates. And this mediocrity may not even be geographical. In the modern age--especially now in the age of the internet--one's circle or coterie of attachments or contacts may be built out of a casual series of electronic communications, which defines a certain attitude or set of shared tendencies. There's a very real desire, sometimes, to believe that acceptance and approbation are a spontaneous phenomenon, that praise is a confirmation of the value and quality of one's enterprise.
Lately, I've noticed a tendency amongst younger writers to think of criticism--all criticism--as an old-fashioned parlor-game, in which outdated or outmoded theories of critical regard are applied, as a kind of throttle to youthful inspiration. Perhaps this has always been the case, but there never was an opportunity for people to respond, so immediately, to negative critical appraisals. Again, the notion that negative reviews could only be the result of some kind of pathological, predatory motivation, designed (fabricated) to inflict undeserved and unwanted pain, is not a new idea, but one which seems more in evidence, with the explosion of literary interactivity on the web.
The notion that any writing--all writing--that one might do, or have published--could be considered a personal, or social, or literary good, despite whatever qualities it might possess, is a ridiculous idea. I noticed the other day that a young poet who happens to have some resources, has only been writing for about 15 years, but has over 30 titles, many self-published. This kind of profligacy does not in itself prove anything, perhaps, except that ambition and energy can generate the illusion of accomplishment.
There is a movement abroad in the land of poetry, a belief that in order to succeed in the nation of Andrew Carnegie and Donald Trump, one must promote one's work, and that of one's friends--that all symptoms of withholding, of subtraction of support and approbation, are dangerous, nefarious threats, which must be resisted, discredited, stamped out.
What I suggested in my review of August 25 2010 was that the young poet in question had chosen a set of literary models which were insufficient to his talent--a tradition of bad imitation of Eastern poetic forms, as well as of the superficial characteristics of certain American writers (William Carlos Williams). Reactions to this assertion suggested that not only was it permissible to engage in third-hand, watered down emulation, it was actually preferable to do this, rather than exhibit any true original talent; indeed, that the evidence of derivation of formal properties, of apprenticeship, was the best possible aspect of this work, because it showed respect, obedience and devotion (all good virtues). Another way of saying this is that William Carlos Williams is a great model, as is Classical Chinese poetry, but Williams or Basho through the eyes of Corman, or Rexroth, may not be an entirely propitious transmission. If Joseph Massey wishes to rise above the level of mere politeness, he should set his sights higher than Cid Corman and Frank Samperi.
All of which leads me, by circuitous animadversion, back to the work of another poet, one long dead, whose promise was cut short at the very beginning of his career. Max Douglas was a poet, born in 1949 (two years after me), who showed great promise. His Collected Poems [published by White Dot Press, Washington, D.C., edited by Christopher Wienert and Andrea Wyatt] which runs to some 150 pages, is precocious, since Max died at 21 of a heroin overdose. What is immediately apparent upon a first reading of this collection is that Douglas had already, by the tender age of 20, absorbed and digested the formal lessons of Black Mountain (Olson, Dorn, Blackburn, Creeley), and was poised to embark on what almost certainly would be impressive and important work.
Spring Again
1
old barns and houses
are falling down
2
sheds lurch filled with limp hay
sour smell of dung
3
sharp smell of burning fields
far off columns of smoke
4
angry dogs defending
country store
This is simple writing, whose skill is accomplished through subtraction and suggestion, not through performance and showing off. Immediate impressions, regionally founded, with clear acknowledgments to forebears.
Second-rate imitations of estimable work is almost always better than first-rate imitations of inferior work (the point I attempted to raise in the work of Massey). You can hear Dorn and Creeley underneath these lines--
School Zone
small girls
jumping rope
air lifting hair
boys skipping
in a long line
at the end
a little blond
in stripes
his arms going
like a brakeman's
I watch
from another world
theirs beginning
where the shadow
of the overpass
quits
and the sun and
screaming takes up
the overpass itself
winding away
on its stilts
trucks sighing
east pigeons
flying under
leaves paper
dust blowing
across the asphalt
on which the last
baseball game
of a few children
is shattered
by the bell
that brings now
older boys
--but there's a maturity, not just of concision of use, but of revelations of life experience, astonishing in one so young. Compassion, self-consciousness ("I watch/from another world"), vivid observation ("the overpass itself/winding away/on its stilts"). The line-breaks and enjambments aren't violent and overdone, but are natural, and flow, connected, in an ordered sequence that is as determinative as the movements of the head or eye.
Song
In October
my soul is dim
as the sky settled
flatly
over the fields
of our fearful isolation.
Twelve bare trees.
At Northville the cemetery
rises
above corn
to the south &
east, to a wind not kindly
by any season
to exposure so severe.
Atchison, her
massive granaries...
O it is a land of plenty It is
a time
of harvest...
And we have attained
that critical Missourian shore/
without welcome, finally.
The single white
elevator of Rushville.
It is a fine rain haltingly falls.
This is an unashamed adaptation of Dorn's "Geography" style, and I wouldn't make any claims for its originality, but I believe in its honesty. Douglas was a Missouri kid, and a budding regionalist (a quality his teacher Dorn would undoubtedly have fostered in him, following from Olson's insistent example). Wienert, in his perceptive Introduction to the poems, refers to Max's "vocal hesitancy...sparing in his measure of the line...this compressive turning and halting syntax...marks discovery in the poem...the minimal phrase which most clearly articulates his poetic eye." Emotion driving formal structure, rather than the amusing coincidence of novelty which so often diverts the untrained mind.
These poems aren't mature, finished efforts which stand alone as things in themselves, but they address concerns which incorporate feeling--a feeling for one's place, in a place, on its terms--and open those feelings out into things, rather than simply describing inert matter and phenomena as diverting, mechanized contraptions.
Northwest Missouri
1.
birds
whipping in
under eaves
perching
to touch their shadows
in the spaces
between boards
the Coca-Cola ad
the entire east face
is peeling badly
dated by its slogan
YOU TRUST ITS QUALITY
the sun, shining between
boards, stripes hay bales
shaded in
The small barn
giving them the appearance
of sleeping tigers
2.
everything
upward from the creek
bed except the yellow
leaves which are falling
down black cattle
Angus on above the other
on the grassy slope
which continues to rise
above them all
on top there is a young tree
dark perpendicular fence
post against a white sky
all this rising so ardently
contested by the horizontals
of the fencing
3.
beside clear running
water dry leaves and
rocks lie down
in the same bed
the tracks of small
animals in the mud
a tree upright still
by virtue of what roots
the bank has not abandoned
leans over the water
which mirrors it
nestling a beer can
in a crotch
of its roots
4.
the moon above
the hills barer
each day
is like a
slice of ham fat
in alfalfa
on the hill
overlooking the valley
a spider
scurries across
my shoe
a patch
of dead grass
is an island
of grasshoppers
I am overtaken
with a sense of
not decline flight
crickets ticking
rime running out
a freight train
rumbling through
the valley
The quality of feeling--the emotion, which Pound always insisted upon as a measure of the fidelity of any poem--runs like a clear stream of intention through the described events. "All this rising so ardently contested" could stand as a definition of the principle--"by virtue of what roots the bank has not abandoned" a delicate turn of phrase clean out of nowhere--"I am overtaken by a sense of...flight...a freight train rumbling through the valley." The arc of the poem's movement from moment to moment, image to image, is deliberate and confident, not accidental, gratuitous or wasted. "Birds...perching...to touch their shadows in the spaces" towards the "flight" at the end.
The sense of loss we feel in the work of one so young, on the threshold of discovery and achievement, is like a stillborn birth. In this instance, it wasn't a lack of conviction, or a passionate intensity that was lacking, just the fickle needle of chance. I commented earlier on the career of my late friend, Patrick Schnoor [I, II, III] whose promise was similarly cut short by a drug problem. Whether Max Douglas realized the jeopardy in which he placed his fate by injecting himself with a heroin overdose, would never be known. Certainly he wasn't suicidal, or there's no evidence of that in the work.
If we could undo the past and open a door into possibility, we would never "know" what mightn't have happened. We can't not know what we think actually did happen. And so the Max Douglases and Patrick Schnoors of the world spin endlessly in a sort of limbo of possibility, half in the world of make-believe, half in the actual world of reality. But they should remind us of the duty we bear as survivors, we carry the burden of their promise as talismans of inspiration into the future.
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