Generally, I have to agree with Pierre on this one. Although, I would be
curious to see if there were a conservative poetry community somewhere
that felt that the Leary sampling was nearly so well done as was
Kelly's. With 33 years hindsight, Robert's selections were remarkably on
target. I'm not at all clear that one would say the same for Leary's
even if one were a fan of that sort of poem. So that book seems to me
always to have had some sort of imbalance. Although, Pierre, I will
confess to having read every single page of it -- some of which
dissolved from memory almost on contact, mercifully. (And yet, and
yet...I saw a book by Melvin Walker LaFollette in a bookstore in Santa
Cruz, CA, two weeks ago and stooped to read through it precisely to see
what he had been up to, since I've barely heard a peep of him since that
anthology.)
But there were lots of kinds of American poetry left out of that book
even then. All the modes of surrealism surrounding The Sixties and Kayak
for example (Bly, James Wright, George Hitchcock, James Tate, Bill
Knott, Russell Edson, et alia).
An even broader attempt, it seems to me, was The Voice That Is Great
Within Us, Hayden Carruth's attempt at a 20th C. anthology of American
verse (though only up to around 1960). It seems to me more in the line
of some of the early anthologies done by Harriet Monroe or Alfred
Kreymbourg in the 1920s that tried to be entirely inclusive. One of the
problems that such a project faces, of course, is the absolute number of
poets and the sheer diversity of it all. One would end up with a page or
two of everything and no sense of shape.
There are magazines like that, of course, usually edited by college
students, and they prove pretty forgettable. In that sense, I much
prefer the ardent and committed perspective of someone with a vision --
Clayton Eshleman at Sulfur, Barrett Watten at This -- to a mishmash of
everything.
Ron Silliman
----Original Message Follows----
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 08:01:20 -0400
Subject: Re: factuality
From: Pierre Joris <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Reply-To: Pierre Joris <[log in to unmask]>
> At 12:06 AM 11/12/98 +0000, Cris Cheek wrote:
> .
> >I see no problem with Al Fisher and Simon Armitage.
I do cris. wouldn't wish that on old friend Al. As far as readings are
concerned, okay, "un moment de honte est vite pass=E9" one grits one's
te=
eth if
reading in the other's den (as Lisa clearly did, in PQ's post). But to
do=
an
anthology, which was I think the first suggestion re Fisher + Armitage,
d=
oesnt
seem viable. For one, the toll it would take to work with someone of
oppo=
site
sensibility on a large-scale project, would be too much. For two, the
res=
ult
will always be very mixed bag. There's one example of such a
collaboratio=
n I
know of: Robert Kelly & Paris Leary's _A Controversy of Poets_ from
1965.=
And
after all these years I still haven't read all of the Leary section,
dep=
ite
various attempts. If the book itself was indeed a valiant attempt, it
wa=
s also
finally a failure if it intended more than a controversial
juxtaposition.
The two modes simply do not connect. Jackson Mac Low makes James
Merr=
ill
look like a boring dinosaur. Just as Gray Burr is made to look even more
=
dead
than he is, when you read the preceding poet, i.e. Robin Blaser, first.
Obviously the Leary crew will just turn these names around. But, for me,
=
for
example, reading the book in 1967, was an absolute confirmation of what
=
was the
interesting US poetry at that moment. And who were the enemies. (Well, I
=
guess
you could say that in that sense the book was successful!)
Pierre
ps. Guess there could be some liminal ways in which for thematic or
conte=
xtual
reasons one could bring some of the other company in. Which is what
Jerry=
& I
tried to do in MILLENNIUM with, say, Adrienne Rich or Anne Sexton.
Though the dream of such a catholic anthology that wld gather the "best"
=
of both
sides seems to resurface at periodic intervals -- Jed Rasula for
example,=
keeps
mentioning the necessity of such an enterprise to me.
--
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
Pierre Joris
[log in to unmask]
http://www.albany.edu/~joris/
6 Madison Place
Albany NY 12202
tel: 518 426 0433
fax: 518 426 3722
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
Through the living the road of the dead
=97 Ungaretti
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
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