POETRY—WINNERS OF THE 1991 POETRY CONTEST

A Poet Looks at Anthropology Bourbon Candy

BRUCE GRINDAL

Department of AnthropologyFlorida State UniversityTallahassee, FL 32306-2023

With one exception over the past five years, I havetaken it upon myself to introduce the winning poemsin the annual competition sponsored by the Societyfor Humanistic Anthropology. In so doing I have en-deavored to demonstrate that the poems were goodanthropology, that they enhanced our understandingof the cultural condition of other people. As human-istic anthropology, such poetry compels us to enterthe subjective reality of that other world as both ob-server and participant, and it does so in a sensuousand evocative manner. Good poetry, anthropologicalor otherwise, achieves a transcendent moment. It al-lows us to cross over the cultural boundaries that sep-arate us—the subject, the poet/anthropologist, andthe reader—and to capture in a universal sense thehold that life has upon us as human beings.

Having said this, can I say that anthropological po-etry is also good poetry, as measured by the standardsof the craft? In order to answer this, I have askedDavid Kirby, McKenzie Professor of English at FloridaState University, not only to help judge the competi-tion this year but also to introduce the prize-winningpoems. I must admit I approached him with somemeasure of anxiety, for I feared the worst: good an-thropology and good poetry don't mix. To my pleas-ant surprise, I discovered, as Kirby has so aptlyphrased it, that bourbon candy can be both goodbourbon and good candy.

David Kirby comes with poet's credentials. Heholds the endowed professorship of poetry at FloridaState University, is author of 14 books including Sav-ing the Young Men of Vienna (University of WisconsinPress, 1987), a recent collection, and Diving for Poems(World Beat Press, 1985), a book on how to write po-etry. Kirby is winner of the 1987 Brittingham Prize inPoetry, and has been awarded numerous grantsthroughout his poetic career. He is also a fine fellowand an engaging writer. Like the poems in this issue,his essay, "Bourbon Candy," is good stimulus forboth the mind and the senses.

DAVID KIRBY

1168 Seminole DriveTallahassee, FL 32301

My Kentucky aunt sends my family a box of bourboncandy every Christmas, and my father always has abig joke at her expense, saying that if the bourbon isany good, it shouldn't be defiled by the chocolate, andif the chocolate is any good, it shouldn't be profanedby the bourbon. I notice he always eats the candy,though. Maybe the bourbon and the chocolate areboth good.

Asked to judge an anthropological poetry contest, Ican't help thinking of my father gazing down at theannual box of holiday candy sent by my Kentuckyaunt. I imagine myself saying, "It's classy poetry, butis the anthropology worth a hoot?" or "The anthro-pology is first-rate, but the poetry part could use a lit-tle more work." Or something to that effect. And thenI actually read the poems and realize quickly that, aslong as the content is predominantly anthropological,such questions don't really matter at all. The point is,is this a good poem or isn't it?

Consider the analogy of nature poetry. One doesn'tquestion how much nature must be in a poem to makea nature poem; a well-turned ode to a dying plant ona big-city window sill could be a fine nature poem if itevokes the absence or death of nature in an especiallypoignant way. And a flat, ill-organized sonnet brim-ming with condors and redwoods would still be alousy nature poem no matter how splendid the floraand fauna therein.

Or say the nature described in a certain poem is to-tally whimsical—alligators sliding across the icy tun-dra, for example, or tigers in Africa instead of India,where they belong. It would still be a nature poem,wouldn't it? The question is, is it a good nature poemor not? An even better example would be a poemabout the time when the cave people and the dino-saurs lived together in a state of mutual tension anddistrust; I'm convinced they did—I've seen them to-gether in the movies—and no Satan-kissing paleon-tologist is going to convince me otherwise.

After all, one of the benefits of living in the era thatfollows that of Freud and Jung is that now the power

144 Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly 16(4)

of myth has all sorts of academic bona fides. Freud,Jung, and their epigones have made it respectable,even necessary, for the rest of us to have intensely im-aginative and pleasurable emotional lives. You canthink an idea,yes, but you can feel an idea as well.That's why collections of essays on creativity have ex-cerpts from Wordsworth but from Einstein as well, be-cause Einstein's Gedanken experiments allowed him tovisualize the physical problems he later worked outmathematically.

Now anthropologists are supposed to think abouthumans and their society, to analyze and classify, butthey can feel them as well. In fact, they probablyought to. And poetry could be a big step in the direc-tion toward that feeling process. Let us therefore fanthe flame of talent in the anthropological poets nowthat we have figured out what it is that they do.

The working judge of an anthropological poetrycontest is faced with questions rather different fromthe ones imagined earlier. The first question such ajudge must ask is simply, "Is this poetry more or lessanthropological?" Assuming the answer is yes, thesecond question is, "Is this more or less anthropolog-ical poetry any damned good?"

In the following cases, reader, the answer to thesecond question is a resounding affirmative. Like myfather anticipating the bourbon candy, I was at firstapprehensive and then overjoyed. And then aston-ished, because, in the process of reading and judgingthese poems, I discovered that there is a single qualitythat virtually all of them have; I started out simplylooking for a few good poems and wound up definingwhat anthropological poetry actually is, at least to myown satisfaction. Hint: It has a lot to do with humility.

But more on that later; for the moment, let's look atsome poetry. John F. Sherry, Jr., has the poet's knackfor compression, for "overdetermining" a poem (touse a Freudian phrase) by loading it with voice, im-age, and sensation, much as one might construct acollage. Here, in "Restoration Triptych," is his ver-sion of two cultures clashing, technocracy meetingtheocracy head-on as local leaders try to drag the me-dieval infrastructure of their church town kicking andscreaming (or at least blinking and flashing) into thecomputer age:

Uncobbling the ancient arteries of their neglected town,A medieval wheel of radiant spokes staved almost to the

hub,Repiping life with fiber optic nerves, with water, gas,

electric,Ancestral city fathers gird the streets and grid the town,Retrofitting custom to convention, hardening targets,

multi-Lingually labelling photo opportunities, returning to the

futureAll the idols and the alleys of the guilds. . . .

Sherry doubles (or is it quadruples?) this medieval/modern city scape by noting that these images "Revisitme as often as I do them." Here, then, is an anthro-pologist thinking and feeling simultaneously.

In "Local Custom [Field Journal/Amsterdam Sta-tion]," Sherry puns ("occidental tourist. . . accidentalterrorist") and alliterates ("raucous randy quest / Forguilder bags and golden arches") and captures a quin-tessential dilemma for any observer, anthropologicalor otherwise, namely, does my description tell the ob-jective truth or is it only my version of what I see?Again, as in "Restoration Triptych," the scene is car-toon-busy and highly charged, and the speaker's at-titude is respectful and reserved as he wonders if eth-nographers can truly record "the truth of this Dutchtreat."

I could see how some by-the-book anthropologistsmight think that the injection of so much emotionaluncertainty into an observation might taint it. On theother hand, Sherry seems to be saying that a little hu-mility is more likely to guarantee the truth than en-danger it.

Another poet, Kent Maynard, has an almost pho-tographic ability to conjure such images as that of thecast-off farm worker

Sitting quietly on the bench withhis half stick and scattered witsbrought by some passerbykind to come, quick to leavefrom the smell of rotten flesh,an open sore like someimmense stinking medallionburned in the pus. . . .

Pretty? Hardly. But right on target, and that meansgood science and good poetry to boot. Besides, utteraccuracy has a beauty of its own; if you've ever lis-tened to a skin cancer specialist go on and on aboutthe gorgeous slides of squamous cells he's just pre-pared, you'll know what I mean.

"Bamenda in Dry Season," another Maynardpoem, ends with African children turning the tableson the researcher, calling " 'White man, / white man,white man; / white man with the long nose.' " Again,there is that quality of humility on the part of the poet/anthropologist, that sense that if you don't take your-self so seriously all the time, you'll probably do a bet-ter job of understanding others.

Martin F. Manalansan does a deliriously wickedhatchet job on professional vanity when he turns thetables on the academic all-stars who spend their liveslooking down on the labor of others; after all,

we dismember texts and pick wordsas our fathers and mothers did whenthey harvested fruits in Bakersfield. . . .

Poetry 1991 145

And the very title of Caroline G. Banks's "Lessons inBipedalism" suggests that the learned observer in thepoem is going to have an uncomfortable (albeit enrich-ing) experience of some kind; Banks's sensitive dis-tinction between walking for mere good health andwalking for survival is, indeed, a telling lesson.

Therefore I, professional poet and amateur anthro-pologist whose contributions to the field consist en-tirely of unpublished observations regarding the be-havior of my fellow human beings in shopping malls,conclude that good anthropological poetry is not onlywell-written and pleasurable to read but also contains

a significant amount of humility. Further, the humil-ity in such poetry is not there for its own sake butserves to further and deepen the empathetic abilitiesof the anthropological poet him- or herself.

This conclusion is based entirely on the examplesthat follow. I wish I had more space in which to intro-duce other examples of anthropological poetry to you,even if I did, though, I doubt that I would alter myhypothesis. Of course, I'm just a poet. I don't have tobe "right" the way anthropologists do. But read on,reader, and see if you don't think that I am.

First Prize Winner

JOHN F. SHERRY, JR.

/. L. Kellogg Graduate School of ManagementNorthwestern UniversityEvanston, IL 60208

Restoration TriptychThe buttress leans against the scaffold, breathless,Flying its last mission unsupported through the ages,And the gargoyles tense above the masons' blades,Their haunches flexed, and undecided still,Pondering the leap of faith requiredTo bridge the centuries or return to earth.The bell tower now is silent save for birdsongAnd for scholding, as the hammers ringIn service of a reconstructed nave.

LJncobbling the ancient arteries of their neglected town,A medieval wheel of radiant spokes staved almost to the hub,Repiping life with fiber optic nerves, with water, gas, electric,Ancestral city fathers gird the streets and grid the town,Retrofitting custom to convention, hardening targets, multi-Lingually labelling photo importunities, returning to the futureAll the idols and the alleys of the guilds. The workers tileAnd spackle, sift and dig and haul and hose,Laboring to enchrism these weird ways with honest sweat.

Images glimpsed through the sooty windows of a speeding train,Or savored on an aimless solitary strollOf embraced places, distant times and strangers,Revisit me as often I do them.I balance lightly on the couch prepared to root and scared to flyAnd lift again that silent spade with once rough hands gone soft,Determined to unearth and to inter a calloused soul,To undermine, to tunnel out, to backfill and to plant.

Too Far Afield

I held a child's voiceAgainst an ocean,

And wondering too lateIf it were mine,

Released it dumbly to aForeign wind.

Alone he was, and not,Yet could not fathom

Such dark distance as mustPass before we meet.