John Yau, American Poetry Review

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John Yau's most recent books are In the Realm of Appearances: The Art of Andy Warhol (Ecco Press) and Lowell Connector (Hard Press, withMichael Gizzi and Clark Coolidge). This semester, John Yau is teaching at the University of California, Berkeley.

JOHNYAU:Neither Us Nor Them

BOOKS

John Yau: photo by Peter Muscato.

E liot Weinberger concluded an essay, "Three Notes on Poetry," (Outside Stories, New Directions, 1992) with a utopian vision: "In

poetry, if only for a moment, we are all us, all others-an us of others, andall of us talking." A well-known translator and essayist, EliotWeinberger has assembled an anthology, American Poetry Since 1950:Innovators & Outsiders, (Marsilio Publishers, 1993) which raises anumber of insights, as well as questions, regarding what he envisions asan "us of others, and all of us talking." For while I admire the work ofmany of the thirty-five poets Weinberger has selected for this anthology,I find something deeply disturbing about the logic and didactic reasoning he uses to bring them together in a single volume.

Towards the end of his essay, "American Poetry Since 1950: AVeryBrief History," which comes at the end of his anthology, Weinbergerstates: "Thanks to the Modernist interest in Chinese poetry and theinheritance from Whitman, it [American poetry] has been preoccupiedwith the detailed observation of the world around: an epic of particulars.And thanks to Pound it has believed that everything is suitable for subject matter." As everyone knows, the Modernist interest in Chinesepoetry began with Ezra Pound and his book of translations of T'angpoetry, Cathay (1915). According to T.S. Eliot, it was Pound whoestablished "Chinese poetry for our time."

In addition to his considerable poetic genius, what helped Pound toinvent Chinese poetry for the West was his belief that "all ages are contemporaneous." (Here, it should be pointed out that Weinberger's' 'us ofothers" mirrors Pound's vision of time.) Convinced he could be true tothe voices of T'ang dynasty women and men, Pound transported themand much else into his own work. The result was Cathay, a book of dramatic monologues which became a cornerstone of Modernist poetics.However, nearly eighty years after Cathay was first published, I believeit is time to reexamine both the aesthetic premises and the historicalcircumstances that helped bring it into existence.

Pound's aesthetics are based on the idea that anything and anyone canbe appropriated, and, in this regard, he is very much a man of his times.For at the beginning of the twentieth century, imperialism and colonialism were still going strong. Pound's belief that one can speak in the voiceof the Other seems very much the aesthetic counterpart of colonialism;both can be understood as self-serving, paternalistic enterprises, whichappropriate the raw materials, goods, and culture of the Other forthemselves. Thus, when Pound states that his Cantos are "the tale of the

MARCH/APRIL 1994

tribe," one is compelled to ask: What tribe? Why would I (if I could) wantto belong to it? And do I feel the urge to sing praises, as well as givethanks, when Weinberger says "an us of others"?

Pound revered Tradition, its idea of "handing on" something of use toa younger generation. But what informed both Pound's view that "allages are contemporaneous" and his estimation of the Cantos as "the taleof the tribe" is his belief in the assimilationist view that anything can beturned into poetic matter, as well as the imperalistic notion that thework of other individuals, countries and cultures belongs to whoevertakes it. Weinberger's honoring of an aesthetic which promotes assimiliationism and imperialism calls the usefulness of his anthology intoquestion. For while Pound invented Chinese poetry for the West, he alsoleft future generations another legacy, his model of the Other. And it isWeinberger's active support of this legacy that makes me question bothhis anthology and the reasoning he uses to defend his choices.

In 1913, Pound wrote

FAN PIECE, FOR HER IMPERIAL LORD

o fan of white silk,clear as frost on the grass-blade

You also are laid aside.

In Six Poems (Translated from the Chinese), 1954, which Weinberger hasincluded in his anthology, Pound wrote:

Green robe, green robe, lined with yellowWho shall come to the end of sorrow

Green silk coat and yellow skirt,How forget all my heart-hurt?

When these two selections are placed side by side, it becomes quite apparent that Pound's vision of the Chinese didn't change very much overthe course of four decades. To Pound, the Chinese were born losers. Theyknew how to maintain their heroic dignity amid a whirlwind of chaos andloss. They were exotic and decidedly Other. In Cathay, Pound repeatedlyevoked an Other who is fatalistic, who knows doom is unavoidable, andwho, with stoic dignity, goes to greet his or her fate. This is a ratherprivileged view of the Other. And, as anyone who has read the kind ofacademic poetry Weinberger routinely denigrates, the view of both Selfand Other (I suspect many poets because of their own egotism fail to seethe difference) as stoic and/or fatalist is a persistent one. The notion ofthe Self or Other as a doomed being is ultimately self-indulgent; it is away to celebrate one's superiority and sensitivity because ultimatelysuch an individual is a victim. Pound's vision of the Chinese is similar tohis concept of the poet: the true poet is a teacher who, through example,tries to instruct others about culture and tradition, about what must bepreserved and handed on.

Collected together in Works on Paper (New Directions, 1986) andOutside Stories, Weinberger's essays tend to be a dense collage of information, pithy opinions, finger-pointing, and grumpy arguments. However, at times a holier-than-thou thinking weakens his argument bydrawing attention to the author rather than directing the reader to thesubject. Weinberger can be both lucid and passionate when calling attention to poets he feels have been unjustly neglected or, worse, misunderstood and ignored; and he is at his best when he focuses on one author orsubject. His ability to compress a wide array of facts, opinions, andinsights is noteworthy. In this regard, Weinberger most resembles hishero, Ezra Pound.

A complex, problematic poet, Pound possessed two seemingly exclusive traits: he was immensely generous, as well as completely convincedthat he was right. And because he believed he was right, Pound wasdriven to make generalizations, which all too often were based on falsefacts and inadequate information. In part, this can be seen as amanifestation of his egotism, his belief that all "ages are contemporaneous" and therefore available. Certainly, his anti-Semitism was a virulentproduct of his need to both generalize and categorize. Thus, in the end, apoet dedicated to facts got many of them wrong. Like Pound, Weinberger is convinced that he is right. And while his passionate essays onbehalf of a handful of poets are often full of insights, his generalizationsabout the state of poetry are not. Weinberger's need to constructhierarchies and either/or constructs prevents him from responding tothe changing complexity of post-war American poetry, its varioustraditions.

American Poetry Since 1950: Innovators & Outsiders begins withWilliam Carlos Williams (1883-1963) and ends with Michael Palmer (b.1943). There are thirty-five poets in all, five of whom are women. DeniseLevertov (b. 1923) and Susan Howe (b. 1937) are the only women amongthe nineteen active poets Weinberger has judged important enough to

PAGE 45

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include. Langston Hughes (1902-1967) and Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones)(b. 1934) are the only African-American poets. As to other Others, forgetit. Weinberger has clear reasons for this: "The demographic complexityof the United States is reflected in the work itself, rather than the policeblotter profiles of the poets." I suppose "police-blotter" is supposed tothrow a scare into anyone who might wish to look deeper, who mighteven begin to question Weinberger's assumptions: "Those who countheads according to gender and race should first consider how many poetsgenuinely qualify within these chronological limits." Elsewhere,Weinberger has stated what these limits are: the poet must be bornbefore the end of World War II and publish work of importance after1950.

Since the bombing of Hiroshima took place on August 6,1945, and theJapanese hadn't yet officially surrendered, one suspects that Weinberger believes Palmer is the only poet of significance born between 1943and January 1,1946. It would seem that neither Alice Notley nor Bernadette Mayer, both of whom were born in 1945, fulfills Weinberger'sstandards. As for other poets who were born before August 6,1945, andwho had important work published after 1950, I offer a list which is by nomeans complete: Ted Berrigan, Sterling A. Brown, Joseph Ceravolo,Kathleen Fraser, Barbara Guest, Robert Hayden, Lyn Hejinian, BobKaufman, Philip Lamantia, Ron Padgett, James Schuyler, Gertrude

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PAGE 46

Stein, Wallace Stevens, Melvin Tolson, Paul Violi, Ann Waldman, Rosmarie Waldrop, Keith Waldrop, Philip Whalen, John Wieners, JayWright. It is also worth nothing that David Shapiro, who was born in1947, published his first book of poems, January, in 1965.

Since publishing that book nearly thirty years ago, Shapiro has continued to publish poetry regularly, as well as find time to both translate,mostly from the French, and write books on artists such as Jasper Johnsand Piet Mondrian. Shapiro's poetry and poetics have exerted a stronginfluence on an older poet such as Michael Palmer as well as a youngerpoet such as Tory Dent (What Silence Equals, Persea, 1933). In fact,because of the "chronological limits" Weinberger has established forhimself, he could feel justified in choosing to completely ignore DavidShapiro.

While I consider all of the poets I have mentioned to be both outsidersand innovators, they are of the kind Weinberger cannot bring himself torecognize. Weinberger ignores these poets because they don't, or can't,be made to fit into his understanding of the Pound-Williams-H.D. tradition. The problem with American Poetry Since 1950: Innovators &Outsiders is that Weinberger began assembling it with a fixed idea aboutpoetry and tradition, rather than with poems. In this regard, he is not sodifferent from the conventional academic and workshop poets he loves tolambast. One suspects that all of them are sure they are right. The' 'us ofothers" he claims to believe in is really an us of us.

For the most part, Weinberger's trumpeting of the Pound - WilliamsH.D. triumvirate is a shrill blast of received knowledge, which addsnothing new to our view of them. He has isolated them in a way theythemselves were not, during their lifetimes, isolated. At the same time,by making this triumvirate the central axis of his anthology, and feelingjustified in his exclusion of Wallace Stevens and Gertrude Stein, Weinberger is advancing a rather narrow view of what he believes is the bestinnovative poetry to have been published since 1950. The real stress inthis anthology is on tradition and similarity, rather than on rupture anddifference.

Weinberger seems strangely out of sync with the times. He wants tohonor the poem which embodies Pound's "complex of inrooted ideas ofany period," but he refuses to address either pluralism, multiculturalism, or the relationship between identity and gender, not tomention Stevens's belief in imagination or Stein's insistence on difference. In a great majority of the poems Weinberger has chosen, the poetrefers to a culture other than his or her own. Adept travelers, dislocationis something they want to experience, rather than something forcedupon them. A number of poems refer to the Vietnam War, but none mention AIDS or the homeless in any serious way. It's as if Weinberger's

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THE AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW



COL 0 R ADO

•

Announces its Spring 1994 Issue

EDITED BY DAVID MILOFSKY

POETRY EDITOR JORIE GRAHAM

wEIvER

in our hands. We are also supposed to believe what politicians promiseus.

Weinberger states elsewhere in his "A Note on the Selection": "Onlythirty-five poets have been included, to give them sufficient space to beheard in at least one aspect of their work. (Anthologies with many morepoets, represented by a few short poems, serve mainly to reinforcefriendships with the editor.)" This latter statement leads one to believethat unlike other editors, Weinberger is a superior being concernedsolely with both discovering and upholding the truth. Friendship, itwould seem, has played no part in his selection. If this is so, why is it thatall nineteen active writers in this anthology have had work published inSulfur, a magazine which lists Eliot Weinberger on the masthead as acontributing editor?

Are we surprised that Weinberger feels justified in giving more pagesto Clayton Eshleman (1935), the editor of Sulfur, than to John Cage andFrank O'Hara, among others? Other poets who are included in Weinberger's-anthology and have (or have had) an editorial connection toSulfur include Clark Coolidge (1939), Robert Kelly (1935), MichaelPalmer (1943), and Jerome Rothenberg (1931). In addition to being listedon the masthead of Sulfur as a contributing editor, Weinberger wasgiven the opportunity to guest-edit Sulfur 33, which is the most recentissue and which appeared a few months after his anthology was pub-

anthology stopped in 1979, rather than in the early 1990's. Not surprisingly, there is a paucity of representations of the Other by the Other.

Individual poems have been chosen, Weinberger states, not as discreteexamples of the author's best, but rather for the way in which they interact with other poems: "The intention is a hubbub of conversations, not aseries of monologues." The reader who is attentive to the hubbub willlearn that Weinberger wants poems that speak to and for the Other, buthe isn't ready to let the Other speak. Of course, Weinberger has alreadyprepared his defense when he states, parenthetically: "(A subsequentselection of the innovators from the post-World War II generationswould probably contain a majority of women, with a greater number ofnon-white poets, male and female.)" Some readers might be fooled bythis utopian disclaimer, but does Weinberger really mean it? If he did,his anthology would have had a different focus. -

In his 1983 essay, "The Bomb," which he reprinted in Works on Paper,1986, Weinberger offers his generalizations about the post-World WarII generations:

Morever, American poetry, especially that written by those born after 1945the Irradiated Generation-seems to be written if not in an ivory tower then ina series of gompas: communities of like souls in remote mountain fastnesses.They are a community addicted to whimsy, nostalgia, preciosity. There is alonging for the days of Dada or Surrealism, a longing for the return of Coyote.Fleeting insights are netted and pinned to the page. On the aesthetic right,poetry is seen as a medium suitable only for anecdote and reminiscences ofsummer camp. On the aesthetic left, there is a talking in tongues, as thoughthe Pentecostal fire had truly descended.

Weinberger believes the "us of others" he so values has become "communities of like souls in remote mountain fastnesses." The Other, itseems, has not become enough like Us (Weinberger and his like-mindedcompatriots) to be acceptable. Weinberger would have the reader believethat the poets of the post-World War II generation are talking to themselves, rather than the world; they are nothing more than a bunch of selfindulgent solipsists.

At no point in his characterization of "the Irradiated Generation"does Weinberger refer to non-white poets or women. Is this because hisremarks are based on the truth he has discerned? And truth, as everyoneknows, is colorless. The sarcasm and smug condescension evident inWeinberger's dismissive generalizations make this reader suspect thathis view of the post-World War II generation hasn't changed all thatmuch, and the parenthetical remark he has included in "A Note on theSelection" is, at best, a placebo. We are supposed to believe that Weinberger's phantom anthology will one day be something solid we can hold

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writers Weinberger has chosen, the only women are Denise Levertov andSusan Howe.

Weinberger has selected an anti-Vietnam war poem by Levertov andHowe's poem, "Thorow," which he believes is proof that she is an heir ofCharles Olson. How is one supposed to read the juxtaposition of thesewritings by Howe and Levertov with W~einberger'sselection from Ken~

neth Rexroth's book, The Love Poems of Marichiko? In a note accom~

panying the poems, Rexroth states that "Marichiko is the pen name of acontemporary young woman who lives near the temple of Marishi-ben inKyoto." In his essay, "At the Death of Kenneth Rexroth" (Works onPaper, 1986), Weinberger posits that "Marichiko" is Rexroth'sinvention. "Man as woman: a renunciation of identity, a transcendenceof self," Weinberger points out. "Rexroth became the other." I am notsaying that Rexroth couldn't transcend the self and become the Other,but that Weinberger has, in this anthology (both in its choice of poetsand poems) barely given a nod to women writers. The Other remainsinvisible; they are they. A woman, it would seem, cannot transcend theself.

The Other that Weinberger recognizes is one that conforms to hismodel. Susan Howe is praised for having assimilated into the PoundWilliams-Olson tradition. This is a disservice to both Howe and to thosewomen-the other Others-who Weinberger believes has rejected thistradition. The problem with American Poetry Since 1950: Innovators &Outsiders doesn't lie with the poets so much as with the editor, EliotWeinberger, and the misrepresentative context he places them in.

After reading Rexroth's "Marichiko" poems, his attempt at a "transcendence of self," the reader will read Robert Kelly's poem, "StudyingHorses," which opens:

When you wake up from sleeping with womenwhether or not you yourself are a woman,there are only a few matters left to consider:

Wanting to appear politically correct, Kelly uses the second line to coylyqualify the opening line, Is this the "us of others. all of us talking" thatWeinberger would have everyone inhabit? Is this the "hubbub of conversation"-one man talking to us all about the nature of women-that weare supposed to hear? Are these the tales the tribe is telling and passingon, the tradition younger poets are supposed to revere? Kelly is beingdirective in "Studying Horses," and there is no room for the reader.

I suspect that Kelly knew that if he had simply moved from the poem'sfirst line to its third line, he would have left himself open to the charge of 'being labeled a "sexist." In the poem he wants to come off as a gentleteacher given to talking a little too much: "Sorry for the lecture." The

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lished. Donning a falsely modest, aw shucks pose, Weinberger thanksEshleman for "giving me this space to fool around in. I'll try not to do itagain." Both the timing of the issue and Weinberger's false modestysuggest that Eshleman offered him a chance to guest edit Sulfur so hecould publish a number of poets who aren't in his anthology; this is theirconsolation prize.

Why did Weinberger feel it was necessary to categorically dish otheranthologists, when he himself is implicated by his choices, perhaps evenmore so than the nameless ones he is quick to point at? After all, of thenineteen living poets he chose to include in his anthology of "Innovatorsand Outsiders," five men (or more than one fourth of the active writers)have been, at one time or another, listed on the masthead of Sulfur. Nodoubt Weinberger believes that the women poets listed on the mastheadof Sulfur (Marjorie Welish and Rachel Elau DuPlessis) aren't goodenough to be included in this anthology. But the reasons for his beliefneed to be scrutinized.

I think the real reason that Weinberger left out Marjorie Welish andRachel Elau DuPlessis, not to mention the others I've named. is that hesimply can't read their work. They don't write poems that correspond tohis ideal poem, which must both address and uphold male culture in anacceptable confluence of mythology, geography, history, and the exoticizing view of the Other. It is quite telling that among the nineteen active

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chronological limits. The fact that Stein wrote these poems decades before they were published, as well as the fact that she died in 1946, disqualifies her from being included in this anthology. And yet, Weinberger hasstated: "Of the poets now deceased, more than halfdied with most of theirwork unpublished or out of print." Stein may have written these poemsyears earlier, but their impact was not felt until they were first published, which was after 1950. Because Weinberger has, in his essays,drawn attention to poets whose work has not been, at one time or another,widely available, because either unpublished or out of print, his use of"chronological limits" seem suspicious if only because it ignores the reality: some poets are dead when their work is published. History doesn'tfollow the pattern of orderliness that Weinberger suggests exists.

Weinberger believes the birth of Modernist poetry originates withEzra Pound and his belief that the Self could become the Other; that hecould, for example, become a forlorn or abandoned woman living duringthe T'ang dynasty. This is why Weinberger's exclusion of GertrudeStein is all the more disturbing. For while Pound practiced the aestheticsof assimilation and appropriation, Stein insisted on articulating thematerials of resistance and difference.

Weinberger's claim that the birth of Modernism originated withPound enables him to construct a tidy patrilineal tradition, which can beused to misrepresent many of the poets he has included, assimilating

second line may help deflect the charge that he's a sexist, but the poem'sinclusion in this anthology raises a question. Is "Studying Horses" moreimportant and necessary, or, as Weinberger might stress it, more innovative and outside, and more in the "hubbub of conversation," thanpoems by Kathleen Fraser, Bernadette Mayer, Alice Notley, GertrudeStein, and Rosmarie Waldrop?-all of whom have written about what isimportant to consider after waking up from sleeping with the Other.Kelly's poem is, chronologically speaking, the most recent poem to beincluded in the anthology; it is the latest news Weinberger saw fit toemphasize.

In terms of literature and its relationship to language usage and representations of gender, what Weinberger proposes in this anthology is thata man can become the Other, in this case a woman, but he has not alloweda particularly wide range of women to speak. This is why the absence ofGertrude Stein is so disturbing. When Stein died in 1946, much of herpoetry remained unpublished. In the 1950's, Yale University Press published Bee Time Vine and Other Pieces (1953), and Stanzas in Meditationand Other Poems (1956). The erotic sequence, "Lifting Belly" was included in Bee Time Vine. It was included in the Yale Gertrude Stein (YaleUniversity Press, 1980) and was edited by Rebecca Marks in a singlevolume, Lifting Belly (The Naiad Press, 1989). I don't think thissequence (or much else) by Stein owes its existence to Pound. It is worthremembering that Stein said something to the effect that "Pound is a village explainer, which is fine if you're a village. But if not, not." Thus,decades before Weinberger accused the "irradiated generation" of writing poems for a "community of like souls," Stein issued a very similiarview of Pound.

The publication of Stein's work inspired strong and almost immediateresponses from Robert Duncan and John Ashbery, both of whom wereunder forty at the time. In Duncan's Derivations (Fulcrum Press, 1968),one comes across three large gatherings of poems, "Imitations of Gertrude Stein Imitations 1951-1952," "Writing Writing," and" Imitationsof Gertrude Stein 1953-1954." And one year after John Ashbery was selected by W.H. Auden to be the Yale Younger Poet, he reviewed Stanzasin Meditation in Poetry (July 1957). Both Duncan and Ashbery, alongwith David Antin, John Ca&e, Clark Coolidge, Robert Kelly, MichaelPalmer, and Jerome Rothenberg (all of whom have honored Stein in oneway or another) are included in Weinberger's anthology; Stein is not. Norhas Weinberger chosen any work by a woman who has been influencedby Stein.

The publication of Stein's unpublished writings between 1951 and1958 by Yale University Press is an important and influential eventwhich Weinberger has decided to ignore, because she does not fit into his

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Her eyes were gentle, her voice was soft for singingIn the stiff-backed pew, or on the porch when eveningCO'!les slowly over Atlanta. But she remembered.She said: "After they cleaned out the saloons and the divesThe drunks and the loafers, they thought that they had betterClean out the rest of us. And it was awful.They snatched men off of street cars, beat up women.Some of our men fought back and killed too. Still,It wasn't their habit. And then the orders cameFor the milishy, and the mob went homeAnd dressed up in their soldiers' uniforms,And rushed back shooting just as wild as ever.Some leaders told us to keep faith in the law,In the govem9r; some did not keep that faith,Some never had it; he was white, too, and the timeWas near election, and the rebs were mad.

The poem ends: "And then/ there wasn't a riot anymore.""An Old Woman Remembers" was written over a "score of years"

before it was first published in 1963. On a simple level, the poemreminds us that riots have been a recurring feature of race relationshipsin America throughout the twentieth century, that the riots in th~ wakeof the Rodney King verdict were part of a long history. In 1975,Broadside Press, Detroit, published The Last Ride of Wild Bill andEleven Narrative Poems, and in 1980, Michael Harper selected TheCollected Poems of Sterling A. Brown (Harper & Row) to appear in TheNational Poetry Series. Brown is a major figure whom Weinberger completely ignores.

Brown's empathetic adherence to the woman's speech patterns, pronunciation, and word usage is comparable to Charles Reznikoff's use of

between the end of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1940's and thebeginnings of the Black Nationalist movement in the 1960's. Hisinterest in blues, jazz, folk art and speech helped legitimize them in theeyes of his students, as well as his contemporaries.

Brown (b. 1901), Langston Hughes (1902-1967), and Melvin Tolson(1900-1966) were contemporaries. All three men brought aspects of jazz,blues, and black speech into their poetry. All of them articulated acomplexly-textured music through language, the written. Thus, Weinberger is wrong when he states that the "Harlem Renaissance, with thenotable exception of Hughes, refused to admit African-American speechinto poetry." In direct contradiction to Weinberger's summary isBrown's poem, "An Old Woman Remembers" (The Collected Poems ofSterling A. Brown, Harper & Row, New York, 1980) which begins:

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them to a tradition to which they do not belong. I am thinking of JohnCage, William Everson, John Ashbery, and Clark Coolidge, none ofwhom could be (or would even want to be) considered heirs of thetriumvirate of Pound, Williams, and H.D. The fact that Barbara Guest,poet and author of Herself Defined: The Poet R.D. and Her World, isabsent suggests that Weinberger understands tradition to be patrilineal.And because he understands tradition to be patrilineal, he did not stop toconsider the influence H.D. had on Barbara Guest and Ann Lauterbach,for example. This is one of the primary faults of his anthology. The otheris his representation of African-American writing.

Both in his selection and in his accompanying essay, Weinberger failsto acknowledge the importance of Sterling A. Brown, Henry Dumas,Robert Hayden, Stephen Jonas, Bob Kaufman, Etheridge Knight,Larry Neal, Lorenzo Thomas, Melvin Tolson, and Jay Wright. Inaddition to being a major poet, Sterling A. Brown taught for more thanfifty years at Howard University and influenced numerous generationsof students, including Amiri Baraka, Stokeley Carmichael, and OssieDavis, among others. Brown taught courses in African-Americanliterature at a time when almost no one was teaching such courses atblack colleges, and certainly no one at all was doing so at so-calledmainstream (or white) schools-the kind of schools most of the poets inthis anthology attended. Brown is one of the most important bridges

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court records of eyewitness accounts in Testimony and in Holocaust.Both men wanted to enable the unassimilable Other-the marginalized,scorned, and hated-to testify. Rather than speaking for the Other, theyfound ways to have the Other speak. Almost all of Brown's poems werepublished long after they were written. The larger impact his work had(and we might want to remember Gertrude Stein's poems in this regard)came later. And yet, as even a few lines of "An Old Woman Remembers"make clear, the best of Brown's poems remain fresh and undated.

The variousness of language to be found in the poems of AfricanAmerican writers is absent from Weinberger's anthology. He states thatthe decade of black nationalist poetry "brought in a great deal of Africanand African-American history, mythology and religion previouslyabsent in American poetry," but doesn't offer us much in the way ofexamples. The poems of Baraka's he picks are aggressive oral attacks.Since Baraka is the only active African-American poet Weinberger hasincluded in his anthology, I am led to believe that his vision of an AfricanAmerican is as limiting as Pound's vision of the Chinese; African-Americans are angry screamers, rather than reticent fatalists. Weinberger'schoices of poems by Hughes and Baraka indicate that he believes in theWestern assumption that orality is far more authentic than writing.

The supposed connection between orality and truth can be traced backto Plato and Aristotle. However, by valorizing orality and performancein African-American poetry at the expense of all else, Weinberger upholds a degrading view of African-Americans and African-Americanliterature; they can talk jive, but they can't write. They can swear, butthey can't spell. This is the liberal, postwar update of Rousseau's notionof the relationship between the pure self and corrupt society, as well asthe valorization of the Noble Savage. Rousseau believed that, whilesociety corrupted the individual, the individual could recover aspects ofa purer self. Rousseau's belief in the possibility of achieving a state ofpurity is not only one of the cornerstones of Romanticism, but it alsoanticipates Modernism's notion of recovering the "archaic self."

For Weinberger, the "most vital movement" of the 1960's-the Vietnam Era-"emphasized oral performance and poetry rituals and talismans"; it was based on the "archaic." It should be pointed out that theacademic poems he rails against, the kind which are nothing more than"reminiscences of summer camp," are really nothing more than blandversions of the self as archaic being or Noble Savage. Purity, as everyoneby now should know, is a major American obsession. And all too often,the "archaic self" is a product of the avant-garde's fixation on recovering the pure or noble self; it is the elitist, hedonistic version of advertisement's puritanical call for breath freshener, soap, and spot remover, away of slumming both in history and among the Others.

The reason Weinberger excludes the work of other African-Americanpoets is that they don't conform to his view of what constitutesauthenticity; they aren't black enough, because they don't scream,stamp, or shout the blues. Weinberger's view of African-American literature is both simplistic and reductive. Thus, an African-American poetwho prefers literacy to orality, singing (disparate things woven together)to speech (something which immediately communicates its message), isa person to be distrusted. And an African-American poet who subvertsboth the authenticity of orality and literacy must be mad. Thus, JayWright and Bob Kaufman, two poets who emerged in the 1960's, areexcluded.

The following is a short poem from Jay Wright's Elaine's Book(University Press of Virginia, 1988):

CORNELIA STREET

You compromise with size when you step aroundthe comer from Bleecker, or when you come from the opposite end,taking that little dogleg left just as you pass Sixth Avenue.A couple of trees cinch the street at the waist.There is always an Italian dough and chicory air

in its hair.

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Cornelia, coming from Cornelius.Not much manure for berries in that one.

There used to be a cafe, about here,where country scribblers shook out their city achesamong the cups.

Cornelia, daughter of Scipio Africanus,mother of the Gracchi and of Sempronia,as proud of her family jewels as of letters.Here she lies, just a heartbeat awayfrom the tombs of city benches,where old Sicilians gnash the vowelsof a song she can never learn to sing.

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Like many of the other poems in Elaine's Book, "Cornelia Street" Iembodies the poet's attention to history as a cross-cultural vortex, andto the relationship between past and present, as well as his awareness oflanguage and its uses. Between 1976 and 1980, Wright published fourlong texts that he called "cycles." In these "cycles," he articulated hisobsession with the history of the New World, and his need to understandthe complex relations that occur between Other and Other, betweenhistory and mythology, between now and then.

In long poems such as "Benjamin Banneker Helps to Build a City"and "Benjamin Banneker Sends his 'Almanac' to Thomas Jefferson,"(both are included in Soothsayers and Omens, Seven Woods, 1976),Wright examined the life and times of the first African-Americanastronomer, in order to further understand the historical roots of thedisplaced self. An astronomer understands the literal place he (or she)inhabits, its shifting relationship to the contiguous world. Bannekerlived during the latter part of the eighteenth century and the beginningof the nineteenth-a period when America itself was being transformedfrom a colony into a nation. At the moment when America was achievingindependence and becoming a home, Banneker remained in diaspora. Hewas intimate with the constantly shifting orders of the universe, withchange, but he was ultimately in exile from both the nation he lived inand from the world he inhabited. The place he lived in had changed, buthis status hadn't. This, despite the fact that he knew more about thechanging world than most of his contemporaries.

Wright's poetry is comparable to that of other poets concerned withhistory and place (Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Charles Olson,and Susan Howe). Beginning with the publication of Death as History(Poets Press, 1967) and the The Homecoming Singer (Corinth, 1971),Wright has emerged not only as a major poet, but also as a figure whooffers, in his poems and cycles, their range of subjects, formal means,and sonorous language, another possibility to younger writers such asNathaniel Mackey, who emerged in the late 1970's, and whose most recent book of poems-The School of Uhdra (City Lights, 1993)-is a signalevent. Like Wright, Mackey attempts to gain self-knowledge through recovering African myths (-note: along with Dogon, Egyptian and Bedouin myths are from Africa-), as well as celebrating African-Americanfolklore and jazz. Perhaps Weinberger thinks Wright and Mackey, whowas born in 1947 and is thus a member of "the irradiated generation,"are members of the same gompas and are singing only to each other andno one else; but I know he is wrong.

Making a pun on his name, Bob Kaufman called the author of theAbomunist Manifesto Bomkauf. His poem "Abomunist RationalAnthem" begins: "Derrat slagelations, flo goof baberol Sorash sho

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dubies, wago, wailo, wailo." Here, Kaufman is heir to a little-known sideof Langston Hughes, who, in the late 1920's, sent this poem to CounteeCullen:

SYLLABIC POEM

Ay ya!Ay ya!Ky ya na minaKy ya na minaSo lee,So lee nakya

Ky ya na mina,Ky ya na mina.

Both Hughes and Kaufman distrust orality for orality's sake, becausethey know that it can become too easy a way to manipulate the audience,and that speech isn't necessarily truthful. Not to confuse orality withtruth, and yet to be faithful to the speech and music of those who inhabitthe same world you do; this is the task Sterling A. Brown, LangstonHughes, and Melvin Tolson set out to accomplish. This is very differentfrom Weinberger's belief in "oral performance and ritual."

Weinberger is stuck in a view of poetry that one associates with the1960's and the belief in poetry as a form of exalted, enlightened speechand a recovery of the archaic and ritual: the poet as shaman. Much of hisessay, "American Poetry Since 1950: AVery Brief History, ,. focuses onthe late 1960's. He characterizes his friend and editorial asociate ClaytonEshleman's Caterpillar as "the most important poetry magazine of theperiod." (At no time does he mention more recent magazines such asCallalloo, HOW(ever), or Hambone.) And he pays significant attention tothe poets he feels emerged during that period: Clayton Eshleman, RobertKelly, and Jerome Rothenberg. These are clearly the heroes he wants tohonor, with the rest being used to bolster his argument that the vital,ongoing Modernist tradition that originated with Pound, Williams, andH.D. was passed on by these poets to the younger ones he includes. Theproblem is that Weinberger's view of Modernism is a narrow view rooted .in the sixties.

It is one thing to advocate a group of poets and quite another to misrepresent poets about whom you are less than enthusiastic. Thus,Weinberger can detail the contents of a single issue of Eshleman'sCaterpillar (Sulfur's predecessor), but get other facts completely wrong:

In New York, poet-art critics like John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara, closely associated with the flourishing Abstract-Expressionist scene, were importingcertain aspects of French surrealism, including whimsical juxtaposition, freefloating fancy, random apprehensions of modern life, and, for O'Hara, thepanorama of the street.

John Ashbery began writing about art in the mid-1950's, and between1955 and 1966 lived mostly in Paris. He was not intimately connectedwith the "flourishing Abstract-Expressionist scene," because he wasn'tliving in New York. Moreover, O'Hara was a bridge between the AbstractExpressionists and younger artists, such as Norman Bluhm, Jane Freilicher, Michael Goldberg, Jasper Johns, and Alex Katz. At the sametime, O'Hara supported a little-known poet such as Edwin Denby, aswell as a little-known artist, Giorgio Cavallon.

In a parenthetical remark about George Oppen, Weinberger statesthat he was "the only important American poet since the Civil War toactually engage in combat." I would like to point out that Frank O'Hara,a homosexual, served on a destroyer during World War II; that RobertCreeley, who lost an eye in a childhood accident, dropped out of Harvardand served in the American Field Service in India; that William Eversonspent time in a camp for conscientious objectors; that Robert Duncan, ina letter he wrote to Everson in 1940 (before America entered the war),declared, "I am an anarchist"; and that Gertrude Stein drove supplies tothe front in World War 1. Weinberger's need to sound like John Wayne,and thus be both provocative and simplistic, prevents him from seeingthe larger, more complex picture-the range of responses by poets in theface of war. And his dismissal of the postwar generation ignores the factthat a poet such as John Balaban served in Vietnam and has since thengone on to recover and translate poems from the Vietnamese. Weinberger's failure to see the larger picture doesn't bode well if one isputting together an anthology.

It is significant that Weinberger mentions no woman poet whoemerged during the 1960's. Is it because Barbara Guest wasn't particularly concerned with oral performance, with recovering her archaic selfand becoming a shaman? Does he ignore Anne Waldman because shedidn't subscribe to the right shamanistic tradition? However, Weinberger states that since the 1970's, "one evidently positive force inAmerican poetry in the period-and it continues to be so-wasfeminism." And for Weinberger, "Central to the new writing by womenhas been the work of Susan Howe, who is ironically the true heir of a poetwho didn't recognize women poets, Charles Olson."

Why does Weinberger feel it necessary to stress that Howe is the "trueheir" and "central"? Why does he find it necessary to make hierarchicalconstructions based on what he has determined are acceptable lineages?Does he think Rosmarie Waldrop is peripheral? Or that Kathleen Fraser,Lyn Hejinian, Alice Notley and Bernadette Mayer are insignificant? Isassimilating into the tradition Weinberger has identified as the only oneof importance what young poets, the ones who theoretically will be

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considered in the future, have to do? Do they have to honor what

Weinberger honors in order to get his stamp of approval? If, as Weinberger claims, feminism is one evident force to emerge since

the 1970's, then why hasn't he included more women writers? After all, more than two decades have pased since 1970. And yet, only the work of one woman who emerged after 1970?Susan Howe?is included. Wein

berger points out that "twenty-five of the thirty-five poets here also devoted themselves to translation, and the poetry of the period is

inseparable from the simultaneous, and sometimes equally radical, work in translation." Rosmarie Waldrop's translations of Edmond Jabes's

multi-volume The Book of Questions is of major importance, both as a work of stunning accomplishment and because of the influence this work has had on many younger poets. Her recent translations of post-war German poets are a project which should engage our attention if we are interested in the news from elsewhere. In The Reproduction of Profiles (New Directions, 1987) and Lawn of the Excluded Middle (Tender

Buttons, 1993), she investigates the kinds of spaces that exist between the self and Other, as well as between the self and self.

This is an untitled poem from the sequence, "Facts," in Reproduction of Profiles:

The proportion of accident in my picture of the world falls with the rain. Some

times, at night, diluted air. You told me that the poorer houses down by the river still mark the level of the flood, but the world divides into facts like

surprised wanderers disheveled by a sudden wind. When you stopped preparing quotes from the ancient misogynists it was clear that you would

soon forget my street.

The language is at once distant and intimate, disembodied yet physical, simultaneously abstract and particular. It is a language which has no

place in Weinberger's anthology. "Palmer," Weinberger tells us, is "the last poet born before Hiro

shima, and the first of the poets to come of age in that new world." He "stands on the cusp between this volume and another." That other vol ume, we have been told, will include more women and minorities. Mean

while, this anthology, which is ungenerous and narrowly focused, as well as full of misinformation and uninformative characterizations, is a major disappointment because it does not do its job. It does not demonsrate Modernism's capacity to be re-formed, as well as deformed. Outsiders remain outsiders. The Other is either invisible or appropriated.

Weinberger's ideas about tradition, about what must be handed on, has blinded him to a richer, more complex history than the one he has given us. If he has proven anything, he has proven that he is a good student of Pound's worst side, his simplistic moralizing about what constitutes culture.

I am thankful that Rosa Parks didn't wait for the bus driver to have a revelation. And I am glad that Barbara Guest wrote this poem, which was included in her book Poems (Doubleday & Company, 1962), which was published some eight years before, as Weinberger claims, feminism became an acknowledged force, and which is no longer in print:

PARACHUTES, MY LOVE, COULD CARRY US HIGHER

I just said I didn '? know And now you arc holding me

In your arms,

How kind.

Parachutes, my love, could carry us higher. Yet around the net I am floating Pink and pale blue fish are caught in it, They are beautiful, But they are not good for eating. Parachutes, my love, could carry us higher Than this mid-air in which we tremble,

Having exercised our arms in swimming, Now the suspension, you say, Is exquisite. I do not know.

There is coral below the surface, There is sand, and berries

Like pomegranates grow. This wide net, I am treading water

Near it, bubbles are rising and salt

Drying on my lashes, and yet I am no nearer

Air than water. I am closer to you

Than land and I am in stranger ocean

Than I wished.

Had Weinberger truly believed and supported a vision of poetry that is an "us of others, and all of us talking," he might have heard these words and so much else.

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Submissions of any length or style welcome(original and unpublished). Include name,address and phone on each. Reading fee: $3per poem (checks payable to Gee Poetl)'Center). Deadline:]uly 15. 1994. For contest guidelines and entl}' forms. send SASEto: Dr. Sylvia Baer, Poetl}' Center.Gloucester County College, Tanyard Rd.•RR #4. Box 203. Sewell. N] 08080.

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I just said I didn't knowAnd now you are holding meIn your arms,How kind.Parachutes, my love, could carry us higher.Yet around the net I am floatingPink and pale blue fish are caught in it,They are beautiful,But they are not good for eating.Parachutes, my love, could carry us higherThan this mid-air in which we tremble,Having exercised our arms in swimming,Now the suspension, you say,Is exquisite. I do not know.There is coral below the surfa.ce,There is sand, and berriesLike pomegranates grow.This wide net, I am treading waterNear it, bubbles are rising and saltDrying on my lashes, and yet I am no nearerAir than water. I am closer to youThan land and I am in stranger oceanThan I wished.

Had Weinberger truly believed and supported a vision of poetry that isan "us of others, and all of us talking," he might have heard these wordsand so much else. •

considered in the future, have to do? Do they have to honor whatWeinberger honors in order to get his stamp of approval?

If, as Weinberger claims, feminism is one evident force to emerge sincethe 1970's, then why hasn't he included more women writers? After all,more than two decades have pased since 1970. And yet, only the work ofone woman who emerged after 1970-Susan Howe-is included. Weinberger points out that "twenty-five of the thirty-five poets here alsodevoted themselves to translation, and the poetry of the period isinseparable from the simultaneous, and sometimes equally radical, workin translation." Rosmarie Waldrop's translations of Edmond Jabes'smulti-volume The Book of Questions is of major importance, both as awork of stunning accomplishment and because of the influence this workhas had on many younger poets. Her recent translations of post-warGerman poets are a project which should engage our attention if we areinterested in the news from elsewhere. In The Reproduction of Profiles(New Directions, 1987) and Lawn of the Excluded Middle (TenderButtons, 1993), she investigates the kinds of spaces that exist betweenthe self and Other, as well as between the self and self.

This is an untitled poem from the sequence, "Facts," in Reproductionof Profiles:

The proportion of accident in my picture of the world falls with the rain. Sometimes, at night, diluted air. You told me that the poorer houses down by theriver still mark the level of the flood, but the world divides into facts likesurprised wanderers disheveled by a sudden wind. When you stoppedpreparing quotes from the ancient misogynists it was clear that you wouldsoon forget my street.

The language is at once distant and intimate, disembodied yet physical,simultaneously abstract and particular. It is a language which has noplace in Weinberger's anthology.

"Palmer," Weinberger tells us, is "the last poet born before Hiroshima, and the first of the poets to come of age in that new world." He"stands on the cusp between this volume and another." That other volume, we have been told, will include more women and minorities. Meanwhile, this anthology, which is ungenerous and narrowly focused, as wellas full of misinformation and uninformative characterizations, is a majordisappointment because it does not do its job. It does not demonsrateModernism's capacity to be re-formed, as well as deformed. Outsidersremain outsiders. The Other is either invisible or appropriated.Weinberger's ideas about tradition, about what must be handed on, hasblinded him to a richer, more complex history than the one he has givenus. If he has proven anything, he has proven that he is a good student ofPound's worst side, his simplistic moralizing about what constitutesculture.

I am thankful that Rosa Parks didn't wait for the bus driver to have arevelation. And I am glad that Barbara Guest wrote this poem, whichwas included in her book Poems (Doubleday & Company, 1962), whichwas published some eight years before, as Weinberger claims, feminismbecame an acknowledged force, and which is no longer in print:

PARACHUTES, MY LOVE, COULD CARRY US HIGHER

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John Yau, American Poetry Review

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