Ken, you have my sympathy for the really bad time you're going through.
It would be a great loss for this list if you lost your internet access
- please keep on kvetching !
Viel Glück
mj
Kenneth Wolman wrote:
> Really, it is. No more after this, to comment or answer. I'm tired,
> my health is shot, I really was incarcerated, I stand a good chance to
> losing my internet access and my car next month, and you may interpret
> all this is a "Get the hell away from me" plaintive melody if you
> wish, played upon the English horn. Or not. I don't really care.
>
> In late September 1990 I sat up all night in the visiting room of a
> north Jersey hospital where my then 9-year-old son was recovering from
> emergency surgery. I, who had been writing less than a month at that
> point, was totally caught. I read through the Harvard Book of
> Contemporary American Poetry, which Vendler edited, and interspersed
> it with reruns of Linda Hamilton in *Beauty and the Beast*. But I
> read enough, and what I read seized me and still has not renounced its
> hold. Okay, HHV was promoting her Curia, at the time including Jorie
> Graham and Michael Blumenthal. The latter was the poet who gave me my
> first voice and who remains a favorite to this day. At age 46 I wanted
> to write like him and by 63 have found I can barely stutter like one
> of Eugene O'Neill's fog people. That's not a change of voice so much
> as an irrecoverable loss because I listened to everyone but myself.
>
> What if HHV had read some piece of whatever that I had in print or
> online. What if she'd anointed me? Could I have done my "I'm not
> worthy!" routine and pushed aside a hand with her strength and reach?
> Did David, son of Jesse, tell the prophet Samuel to go kiss a duck?
> Or would I have let Helen show me around, poet under glass, and open
> me to opportunities like the Briggs-Copeland lectureship at Harvard
> and other plums? Would I have let her pre-critique my work as she's
> reputed to have done with Ms. Graham?
>
> A lot of this feels like it's about a poetic demimonde into which I
> suspect people stagger without intending to do so. Except Michael
> Blumenthal does not appear to be a courtesan. He is hugely talented,
> with a voice like a cello. Some people like Jagged but truthfully I
> know it when I see it and I despise it. It is a curious state of
> affairs that Blumenthal's association with HHV makes some--not
> me--wonder how good he really is (like your own instincts are not good
> enough) and why he became as lucky as he became. And why should I
> feel this way? Simple jealousy? Or resentment that systems of
> influence exist--be they from Vendler or from other parts of the
> world--into which some or many of us do not fit? I am sure Silliman
> too has his collection of acolytes, wannabes, and offers promotional
> opportunities if you sit at his feet long enough. The trouble is that
> labels adhere to us like napalm. I rather liked Silliman until I
> found out he was supposed to be a Language poet. Is that fair or
> unfair? I still sort of like him: he links to my blog among 800 others.
>
> Since I made the mistake of sleeping on this, I don't remember the
> point except that it has something vaguely to do with spheres of
> influence, personal Oy Gevalts, and some such such. So I stop.
>
> ken
>
--
A man may write of love, and not be in love, as well as of husbandrie, and not goe to plough: or of witches, and be none: or of holinesse, and be flat prophane. - Giles Fletcher the Elder.
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