I don't know that there are points to prove here, but briefly, it's
difficult to see much of Auden in O'Hara, whatever degree of regard O'Hara
had for his work, tho the influence of the very different work of Williams
and Pound, and also Stevens and any number of French poets, is clear. The
"Ginsberg-like" verse you quote isn't much like Ginsberg.  I'd suggest you
might find equal or greater similarities in the old testament, or Whitman,
or Jubilate Agno.

If what you're claiming is that Auden anticipated all subsequent poetric
technique, while  I think the claim ridiculous I also wonder why anyone
should care.

As to "The impossibility you posit is overcome through a poetic process
which the Greeks called "mania" and the Romantics "inspiration"" " neither
mania nor inspiration are poetic processes and in any case since WWII there
have been precious few improvisatory processual  poems in English that
employ rhyme and meter for extended stretches. It may be that I'm right in
assuming that it would be so difficult to do that the technical difficulty
would in fact become the process, or maybe we're all just lazy. Maybe Auden
was, too--he never did it either.

Your estimate of Auden and for that matter Dylan Thomas is far more
generous than mine, but of course, like all taste, unarguable. Important to
remember that it's your estimate, however. And very few continue to learn
from either, at least on this shore.

I have no standards for innovation. You're talking thru me to someone else,
I think. I do have ideas about what I consider relevant, at least for my
own practice. But that's very different from the kind of orthodoxy you seem
to be suggesting.

Mark


At 08:14 PM 7/17/2004, Philip Nikolayev wrote:
>Mark,
>
>
>
>My apologies for replying so late, but you know how it is... In this case
>I thought it'd be better than never.
>
>
>
> >Philip: A couple of thoughts about Auden in the US context.
>
>
>
> >In the 40s thru early 60s Auden became in the US the official
>
> >mainstream poet , the heir presumptive of Eliot. "Innovative"
>
> >poetries--Olson, Oppen, Ginsberg, even O'Hara, add your own
>
> >choices--didn't learn much if anything from him, and he made
>
> >little effort to extend himself in that direction, personally
>
> >or as poet.
>
>
>
>This is so not so. I think you vastly underestimate the pervasive
>influence on American poetry that Auden had in the 40s and 50s, like no
>one else and quite regardless of camp.
>
>
>
>According to O'Hara, who considered Auden "an American poet" in his "use
>of the vernacular" (by contrast with Eliot, the epitome of Englishness)
>"Auden extended our ideas of what poetry could be; his poems saw clearly
>into obscure areas of modern life and they provided us with obscure and
>complex insights into areas which had hitherto been banal." To O'Hara.
>Auden of the American period captures "expressions of what had been looked
>down upon by pretentious eclecticism and mysticism of the Eliot school." I
>am taking these quotes from Marjorie Perloff's biography of O'Hara. She
>says: "So far as I know, O'Hara never reversed these estimates. Of modern
>English and American poets, Williams, Pound, and Auden remained his
>favorites, and certainly he never came to trust the school of Eliot, or to
>have much interest in Yeats, Hopkins or Stevens."
>
>
>
>Another American "innovative" poet that Auden both deeply influenced and
>advanced is John Ashbery. Ashbery wrote his undergraduate thesis at
>Harvard on Auden, and received from his first major literary award, the
>Yale Younger Poets Prize, in 1956 (for his first book, Some Trees). (Auden
>also wrote an interesting letter of apology to O'Hara, who too had
>submitted his manuscript to the competition.)
>
>
>
>And show me something that Ginsberg (who was on friendly terms with Auden)
>did in poetry that Auden hadn't. For example, take a look at poems 9 & 10
>in _Theatre, Film, Radio_. Thus,
>
>
>
>You wish shooting-sticks and cases for field-glasses, your limousines
>
>      parked in a circle: who visit the public games, observing in
>
>      burberries the feats of the body;
>
>You who stand before the west fronts of cathedrals: appraising the
>
>      curious carving:
>
>The virgin creeping like a cat to the desert, the trumpeting angels, the
>
>      usurers boiling:
>
>And you who also look for truth: alone in tower:
>
>Follow our hero and his escort on his latest journey: From the square
>
>      surrounded by Georgian houses, taking the lurching tram
>
>      eastward
>
>South of the ship-cranes, of the Slythe canal: Shopping at Furby and
>
>      Drulger Street,
>
>Past boys all-using: shrill in alleys...
>
>
>
>Etc, etc. Sound familiar? This is Auden of the early 1930s. Ginsberg
>strikes me quite simply as an imitator of these poems.
>
>
>
>The whole New York School was profoundly influenced by Auden (this
>includes James Schuyler in addition to O'Hara and Ashbery).
>
>
>
>Kenneth Koch befriended Auden and was influenced by him.
>
>
>
>To take this out of the American context a bit, Auden was perhaps the
>single most important influence on Dylan Thomas, who to me is one of the
>greatest innovators of the last century.
>
>
>
>And the Australian John Tranter says in an interview: "I've learned more
>from Rimbaud and Auden and Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Ashbery than from
>any Australian forebears."
>
>
>
>Here's an interesting-sounding book that I haven't read: Poetic
>Avant-Garde: The Groups of Borges, Auden, and Breton by Beret E. Strong.
>According to a review, "The Poetic Avant-Garde compares three avant-garde
>groups active in the era between the world wars: those surrounding Jorge
>Luis Borges, W.H. Auden, and Andre Breton. These groups were composed of
>poets and writers who made use of the avant-garde's characteristic modes
>of self-expression: the publication of small journals, unorthodox
>attention-getting tactics, and interaction with the mainstream press.
>However, their differing aesthetic, social, and political agendas
>illustrate the surprisingly broad range of avant-gardism in the interwar era."
>
>
>
> >And sure, that he used meter and rhyme is an issue, and not
>
> >as trivial as you seem to think--perhaps it makes less sense
>
> >from a Russian perspective than from an American. Metrical
>
> >and rhyme schemes require a degree of preplanning and
>
> >presupposition that render almost impossible the
>
> >improvisatory and exploratory goals of much of the best
>
> >innovatiove poetry.
>
>
>
>To me, this is plainly false as well. The impossibility you posit is
>overcome through a poetic process which the Greeks called "mania" and the
>Romantics "inspiration" (I'm not sure I know the modern term for it).
>
>
>
> >I don't follow Language poetry as much as perhaps I should.
>
> >What of Auden do you refer to, and what of stuff that Langpo
>
> >reinvented? Examples?
>
>
>
>Auden knew "disjunctive" and "antiabsorptive" at age 20, well before they
>were named by the theorists:
>
>
>
>Bones wrenched, weak whimper, lids wrinkled, first dazzle known,
>
>World-wonder hardened as bigness, years, brought knowledge, you:
>
>Presence a rich mould augured for roots urged -- but gone,
>
>The soul is tetanous; gun-barrel burnishing
>
>In summer grass, mind lies to tarnish, untouched, undoing,
>
>Though body stir to sweat, or, squat as idol, brood,
>
>Infuriate the fire with bellows, blank till sleep
>
>And two-faced dream -- 'I want', voiced treble as once
>
>Crudely through flowers till dunghill cockcrow, crack at East.
>
>Eyes, unwashed jewels, the glass floor slipping, feel, know Day,
>
>Life stripped of girders, monochrome. Deceit of instinct,
>
>Features, figure, form irrelevant, dismissed
>
>Ought passes through points fair plotted and you conform,
>
>Seen yes or no, too just for weeping argument.
>
>
>
>Auden, 1927. How is that for an avantgarde manifesto?
>
>
>
>I am running out of steam for today, but I recommend his book _The
>Orators_ (1931). Let's me know if it's not innovative enough by your standards!
>
>
>
>Best,
>
>
>
>Philip Nikolayev