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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, with
Michael 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," (Out-
side 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, and
all of us talking." A well-known translator and essayist, Eliot
Weinberger has assembled an anthology, American Poetry Since 1950:
Innovators & Outsiders, (Marsilio Publishers, 1993) which raises a
number of insights, as well as questions, regarding what he envisions as
an "us of others, and all of us talking." For while I admire the work of
many of the thirty-five poets Weinberger has selected for this anthology,
I find something deeply disturbing about the logic and didactic reason-
ing he uses to bring them together in a single volume.
Towards the end of his essay, "American Poetry Since 1950: AVery
Brief History," which comes at the end of his anthology, Weinberger
states: "Thanks to the Modernist interest in Chinese poetry and the
inheritance from Whitman, it [American poetry] has been preoccupied
with the detailed observation of the world around: an epic of particulars.
And thanks to Pound it has believed that everything is suitable for sub-
ject matter." As everyone knows, the Modernist interest in Chinese
poetry began with Ezra Pound and his book of translations of T'ang
poetry, Cathay (1915). According to T.S. Eliot, it was Pound who
established "Chinese poetry for our time."
In addition to his considerable poetic genius, what helped Pound to
invent Chinese poetry for the West was his belief that "all ages are con-
temporaneous." (Here, it should be pointed out that Weinberger's' 'us of
others" mirrors Pound's vision of time.) Convinced he could be true to
the voices of T'ang dynasty women and men, Pound transported them
and much else into his own work. The result was Cathay, a book of dra-
matic monologues which became a cornerstone of Modernist poetics.
However, nearly eighty years after Cathay was first published, I believe
it is time to reexamine both the aesthetic premises and the historical
circumstances that helped bring it into existence.
Pound's aesthetics are based on the idea that anything and anyone can
be appropriated, and, in this regard, he is very much a man of his times.
For at the beginning of the twentieth century, imperialism and colonial-
ism were still going strong. Pound's belief that one can speak in the voice
of the Other seems very much the aesthetic counterpart of colonialism;
both can be understood as self-serving, paternalistic enterprises, which
appropriate the raw materials, goods, and culture of the Other for
themselves. 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) want
to belong to it? And do I feel the urge to sing praises, as well as give
thanks, when Weinberger says "an us of others"?
Pound revered Tradition, its idea of "handing on" something of use to
a younger generation. But what informed both Pound's view that "all
ages are contemporaneous" and his estimation of the Cantos as "the tale
of the tribe" is his belief in the assimilationist view that anything can be
turned into poetic matter, as well as the imperalistic notion that the
work of other individuals, countries and cultures belongs to whoever
takes it. Weinberger's honoring of an aesthetic which promotes assimi-
liationism and imperialism calls the usefulness of his anthology into
question. For while Pound invented Chinese poetry for the West, he also
left future generations another legacy, his model of the Other. And it is
Weinberger's active support of this legacy that makes me question both
his anthology and the reasoning he uses to defend his choices.
In 1913, Pound wrote
FAN PIECE, FOR HER IMPERIAL LORD
ofan 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 has
included in his anthology, Pound wrote:
Green robe, green robe, lined with yellow
Who 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 ap-
parent that Pound's vision of the Chinese didn't change very much over
the course of four decades. To Pound, the Chinese were born losers. They
knew how to maintain their heroic dignity amid a whirlwind of chaos and
loss. They were exotic and decidedly Other. In Cathay, Pound repeatedly
evoked an Other who is fatalistic, who knows doom is unavoidable, and
who, with stoic dignity, goes to greet his or her fate. This is a rather
privileged view of the Other. And, as anyone who has read the kind of
academic poetry Weinberger routinely denigrates, the view of both Self
and Other (I suspect many poets because of their own egotism fail to see
the difference) as stoic and/or fatalist is a persistent one. The notion of
the Self or Other as a doomed being is ultimately self-indulgent; it is a
way to celebrate one's superiority and sensitivity because ultimately
such an individual is a victim. Pound's vision of the Chinese is similar to
his concept of the poet: the true poet is a teacher who, through example,
tries to instruct others about culture and tradition, about what must be
preserved and handed on.
Collected together in Works on Paper (New Directions, 1986) and
Outside Stories, Weinberger's essays tend to be a dense collage of infor-
mation, pithy opinions, finger-pointing, and grumpy arguments. How-
ever, at times a holier-than-thou thinking weakens his argument by
drawing attention to the author rather than directing the reader to the
subject. Weinberger can be both lucid and passionate when calling atten-
tion to poets he feels have been unjustly neglected or, worse, misunder-
stood and ignored; and he is at his best when he focuses on one author or
subject. His ability to compress a wide array of facts, opinions, and
insights is noteworthy. In this regard, Weinberger most resembles his
hero, Ezra Pound.
A complex, problematic poet, Pound possessed two seemingly exclu-
sive traits: he was immensely generous, as well as completely convinced
that he was right. And because he believed he was right, Pound was
driven to make generalizations, which all too often were based on false
facts and inadequate information. In part, this can be seen as a
manifestation of his egotism, his belief that all "ages are contemporane-
ous" and therefore available. Certainly, his anti-Semitism was a virulent
product of his need to both generalize and categorize. Thus, in the end, a
poet dedicated to facts got many of them wrong. Like Pound, Weinber-
ger is convinced that he is right. And while his passionate essays on
behalf of a handful of poets are often full of insights, his generalizations
about the state of poetry are not. Weinberger's need to construct
hierarchies and either/or constructs prevents him from responding to
the changing complexity of post-war American poetry, its various
traditions.
American Poetry Since 1950: Innovators & Outsiders begins with
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) and ends with Michael Palmer (b.
1943). There are thirty-five poets in all, five of whom are women. Denise
Levertov (b. 1923) and Susan Howe (b. 1937) are the only women among
the nineteen active poets Weinberger has judged important enough to
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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, forget
it. Weinberger has clear reasons for this: "The demographic complexity
of the United States is reflected in the work itself, rather than the police-
blotter profiles of the poets." I suppose "police-blotter" is supposed to
throw a scare into anyone who might wish to look deeper, who might
even begin to question Weinberger's assumptions: "Those who count
heads according to gender and race should first consider how many poets
genuinely qualify within these chronological limits." Elsewhere,
Weinberger has stated what these limits are: the poet must be born
before the end of World War II and publish work of importance after
1950.
Since the bombing of Hiroshima took place on August 6,1945, and the
Japanese hadn't yet officially surrendered, one suspects that Weinber-
ger believes Palmer is the only poet of significance born between 1943
and January 1,1946. It would seem that neither Alice Notley nor Berna-
dette Mayer, both of whom were born in 1945, fulfills Weinberger's
standards. As for other poets who were born before August 6,1945, and
who had important work published after 1950, I offer a list which is by no
means complete: Ted Berrigan, Sterling A. Brown, Joseph Ceravolo,
Kathleen Fraser, Barbara Guest, Robert Hayden, Lyn Hejinian, Bob
Kaufman, Philip Lamantia, Ron Padgett, James Schuyler, Gertrude
POETS HOUSE
72 SPRING ST, NEW YORK, NY 10012
FEBRUARY 24. 7:00 PM
PASSWORDS:
Kathleen Fraser on Lorine Neidecker
MARCH 10. 7:00 PM
WOMEN POETS TWENTY YEARS LATER:
WHERE WE STAND
Panel Discussion with Sharon Bryan, Cheryl Clarke,
Cynthia MacDonald and Deborah Tall
MARCH 11.7:00 PM
WOMEN POETS TWENTY YEARS LATER:
NO MORE MASKS
Poetry Reading with Cheryl Clarke, Linda McCarriston,
Molly Peacock, Ruth Stone, and others
MARCH 24, 7:00 PM
PASSWORDS:
Mutlu and Randy Blasing on Nazim Hikmet
Reading and Discussion. Followed by a screening of excerpts from the
new documentaly fIlm, Nazim Hikmet: Living Is a Beautiful Thing
APRIL 6. 7:00 PM
PASSWORDS:
William Matthews on Richard Hugo
APRIL 2 I. 7:00 PM
CON V E R SATION S:
Carl Rakosi and Michael Heller
PAGE 46
Stein, Wallace Stevens, Melvin Tolson, Paul Violi, Ann Waldman, Ros-
marie Waldrop, Keith Waldrop, Philip Whalen, John Wieners, Jay
Wright. It is also worth nothing that David Shapiro, who was born in
1947, published his first book of poems, January, in 1965.
Since publishing that book nearly thirty years ago, Shapiro has con-
tinued to publish poetry regularly, as well as find time to both translate,
mostly from the French, and write books on artists such as Jasper Johns
and Piet Mondrian. Shapiro's poetry and poetics have exerted a strong
influence on an older poet such as Michael Palmer as well as a younger
poet such as Tory Dent (What Silence Equals, Persea, 1933). In fact,
because of the "chronological limits" Weinberger has established for
himself, he could feel justified in choosing to completely ignore David
Shapiro.
While I consider all of the poets I have mentioned to be both outsiders
and innovators, they are of the kind Weinberger cannot bring himself to
recognize. Weinberger ignores these poets because they don't, or can't,
be made to fit into his understanding of the Pound-Williams-H.D. tra-
dition. The problem with American Poetry Since 1950: Innovators &
Outsiders is that Weinberger began assembling it with a fixed idea about
poetry and tradition, rather than with poems. In this regard, he is not so
different from the conventional academic and workshop poets he loves to
lambast. One suspects that all of them are sure they are right. The' 'us of
others" he claims to believe in is really an us of us.
For the most part, Weinberger's trumpeting of the Pound- Williams-
H.D. triumvirate is a shrill blast of received knowledge, which adds
nothing new to our view of them. He has isolated them in a way they
themselves were not, during their lifetimes, isolated. At the same time,
by making this triumvirate the central axis of his anthology, and feeling
justified in his exclusion of Wallace Stevens and Gertrude Stein, Wein-
berger is advancing a rather narrow view of what he believes is the best
innovative poetry to have been published since 1950. The real stress in
this anthology is on tradition and similarity, rather than on rupture and
difference.
Weinberger seems strangely out of sync with the times. He wants to
honor the poem which embodies Pound's "complex of inrooted ideas of
any period," but he refuses to address either pluralism, multi-
culturalism, or the relationship between identity and gender, not to
mention Stevens's belief in imagination or Stein's insistence on differ-
ence. In a great majority of the poems Weinberger has chosen, the poet
refers to a culture other than his or her own. Adept travelers, dislocation
is something they want to experience, rather than something forced
upon them. A number of poems refer to the Vietnam War, but none men-
tion AIDS or the homeless in any serious way. It's as if Weinberger's
The Brown University
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A Festschrift for BARBARA GUEST
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-featuring a reading by Barbara Guest
with readings and talks by-
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Program Information: 401/863-3260
Accommodations: Days Hotel 401/272-5577
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THE AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW








































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































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COL 0 R ADO

Announces its Spring 1994 Issue


EDITED BY DAVID MILOFSKY
POETRY EDITOR JORIE GRAHAM
w E I v E R
in our hands. We are also supposed to believe what politicians promise
us.
Weinberger states elsewhere in his "A Note on the Selection": "Only
thirty-five poets have been included, to give them sufficient space to be
heard in at least one aspect of their work. (Anthologies with many more
poets, represented by a few short poems, serve mainly to reinforce
friendships with the editor.)" This latter statement leads one to believe
that unlike other editors, Weinberger is a superior being concerned
solely with both discovering and upholding the truth. Friendship, it
would seem, has played no part in his selection. If this is so, why is it that
all nineteen active writers in this anthology have had work published in
Sulfur, a magazine which lists Eliot Weinberger on the masthead as a
contributing editor?
Are we surprised that Weinberger feels justified in giving more pages
to Clayton Eshleman (1935), the editor of Sulfur, than to John Cage and
Frank O'Hara, among others? Other poets who are included in Wein-
berger's-anthology and have (or have had) an editorial connection to
Sulfur include Clark Coolidge (1939), Robert Kelly (1935), Michael
Palmer (1943), and Jerome Rothenberg (1931). In addition to being listed
on the masthead of Sulfur as a contributing editor, Weinberger was
given the opportunity to guest-edit Sulfur 33, which is the most recent
issue and which appeared a few months after his anthology was pub-
anthology stopped in 1979, rather than in the early 1990's. Not surpris-
ingly, there is a paucity of representations of the Other by the Other.
Individual poems have been chosen, Weinberger states, not as discrete
examples of the author's best, but rather for the way in which they inter-
act with other poems: "The intention is a hubbub of conversations, not a
series of monologues." The reader who is attentive to the hubbub will
learn that Weinberger wants poems that speak to and for the Other, but
he isn't ready to let the Other speak. Of course, Weinberger has already
prepared his defense when he states, parenthetically: "(A subsequent
selection of the innovators from the post-World War II generations
would probably contain a majority of women, with a greater number of
non-white poets, male and female.)" Some readers might be fooled by
this 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 War
II generations:
Morever, American poetry, especially that written by those born after 1945-
the Irradiated Generation-seems to be written if not in an ivory tower then in
a series of gompas: communities of like souls in remote mountain fastnesses.
They are a community addicted to whimsy, nostalgia, preciosity. There is a
longing 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 of
summer camp. On the aesthetic left, there is a talking in tongues, as though
the Pentecostal fire had truly descended.
Weinberger believes the "us of others" he so values has become "com-
munities of like souls in remote mountain fastnesses." The Other, it
seems, has not become enough like Us (Weinberger and his like-minded
compatriots) to be acceptable. Weinberger would have the reader believe
that the poets of the post-World War II generation are talking to them-
selves, rather than the world; they are nothing more than a bunch of self-
indulgent solipsists.
At no point in his characterization of "the Irradiated Generation"
does Weinberger refer to non-white poets or women. Is this because his
remarks are based on the truth he has discerned? And truth, as everyone
knows, is colorless. The sarcasm and smug condescension evident in
Weinberger's dismissive generalizations make this reader suspect that
his view of the post-World War II generation hasn't changed all that
much, and the parenthetical remark he has included in "A Note on the
Selection" is, at best, a placebo. We are supposed to believe that Wein-
berger's phantom anthology will one day be something solid we can hold
"Having published nearly 250 books by more than 150 poets in 35 years, the
Wesleyan series has gone further than any other in defining the prevailing
trends and styles of postwar university-based poetry_" -Library Journal
"Wesleyan's characteristic independence in scooping up unfound poets
and publishing them well-and in sustaining the ongoing publication of
established writers like David Ignatow and James Tate-is shown to
advantage in this anthology __ . The quality is as high as the range is broad_"
-Puhlishers Weekly
MAXINE KUMIN
CHARLES WRIGHT
JOHN ASHBERY
W.S. MERWIN
JOSHUA CLOVER
PHILIP LEVINE
NORMAN DUBIE
CHARLES SIMI C
MICHELE GLAZER
GEOFFREY NUTTER
JOSEPH LEASE
ROBIN REAGLER
ANDREW OSBORN
REGINALD SHEPHERD
LARRY LEVIS
CATHERINE MARVEL
DAVID LEHMAN
JAMES TATE
LINDA GREGERSON
ERIC PANKEY
MARK LEVINE

Four Decadesof

MICHAEL COLLIER
the American ]Joetic landscape_
Eighty-six poets arc represented.
MICHAEL COLLIER, editor
heralds the lasting impact of a
single puhlishing program on
A maior anniversary volume
Four Decades
of American Poetry
The Wesleyan Tradition
~ l ~ a n
Tradition
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS 316pp. Cloth,O-H195-221OA. $29_95
New England At your bookstore
Department of English
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523
University Press of New England Hanover, NH 03755-204H H00-421-1561
MARCHI APRIL 1994 PAGE 47






















































































































































































































































































































































































































































































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Third annual week of
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writers Weinberger has chosen, the only women are Denise Levertov and
Susan Howe.
Weinberger has selected an anti -Vietnam war poem by Levertov and
Howe's poem, "Thorow," which he believes is proof that she is an heir of
Charles Olson. How is one supposed to read the juxtaposition of these
writings by Howe and Levertov with selection from
neth Rexroth's book, The Love Poems of Marichiko? In a note
panying the poems, Rexroth states that "Marichiko is the pen name of a
contemporary young woman who lives near the temple of Marishi-ben in
Kyoto." In his essay, "At the Death of Kenneth Rexroth" (Works on
Paper, 1986), Weinberger posits that "Marichiko" is Rexroth's
invention. "Man as woman: a renunciation of identity, a transcendence
of self," Weinberger points out. "Rexroth became the other." I am not
saying that Rexroth couldn't transcend the self and become the Other,
but that Weinberger has, in this anthology (both in its choice of poets
and poems) barely given a nod to women writers. The Other remains
invisible; they are they. A woman, it would seem, cannot transcend the
self.
The Other that Weinberger recognizes is one that conforms to his
model. Susan Howe is praised for having assimilated into the Pound-
Williams-Olson tradition. This is a disservice to both Howe and to those
women-the other Others-who Weinberger believes has rejected this
tradition. The problem with American Poetry Since 1950: Innovators &
Outsiders doesn't lie with the poets so much as with the editor, Eliot
Weinberger, and the misrepresentative context he places them in.
After reading Rexroth's "Marichiko" poems, his attempt at a "trans-
cendence of self," the reader will read Robert Kelly's poem, "Studying
Horses," which opens:
When you wake up from sleeping with women
whether 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 coyly
qualify the opening line, Is this the "us of others. all of us talking" that
Weinberger would have everyone inhabit? Is this the "hubbub of conver-
sation"-one man talking to us all about the nature of women-that we
are supposed to hear? Are these the tales the tribe is telling and passing
on, the tradition younger poets are supposed to revere? Kelly is being
directive 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's
first 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 gentle
teacher 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 thanks
Eshleman for "giving me this space to fool around in. I'll try not to do it
again." Both the timing of the issue and Weinberger's false modesty
suggest that Eshleman offered him a chance to guest edit Sulfur so he
could publish a number of poets who aren't in his anthology; this is their
consolation prize.
Why did Weinberger feel it was necessary to categorically dish other
anthologists, when he himself is implicated by his choices, perhaps even
more so than the nameless ones he is quick to point at? After all, of the
nineteen living poets he chose to include in his anthology of "Innovators
and 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. No
doubt Weinberger believes that the women poets listed on the masthead
of Sulfur (Marjorie Welish and Rachel Elau DuPlessis) aren't good
enough to be included in this anthology. But the reasons for his belief
need to be scrutinized.
I think the real reason that Weinberger left out Marjorie Welish and
Rachel Elau DuPlessis, not to mention the others I've named. is that he
simply can't read their work. They don't write poems that correspond to
his ideal poem, which must both address and uphold male culture in an
acceptable confluence of mythology, geography, history, and the exoti-
cizing view of the Other. It is quite telling that among the nineteen active
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PAGE 48 THE AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW



















































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































This content downloaded on Tue, 26 Feb 2013 01:29:33 AM
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LSD t Press
chronological limits. The fact that Stein wrote these poems decades be-
fore they were published, as well as the fact that she died in 1946, disqual-
ifies her from being included in this anthology. And yet, Weinberger has
stated: "Of the poets nowdeceased, more thanhalf died with most of their
work unpublished or out of print." Stein may have written these poems
years earlier, but their impact was not felt until they were first pub-
lished, 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 real-
ity: some poets are dead when their work is published. History doesn't
follow the pattern of orderliness that Weinberger suggests exists.
Weinberger believes the birth of Modernist poetry originates with
Ezra Pound and his belief that the Self could become the Other; that he
could, for example, become a forlorn or abandoned woman living during
the T'ang dynasty. This is why Weinberger's exclusion of Gertrude
Stein is all the more disturbing. For while Pound practiced the aesthetics
of assimilation and appropriation, Stein insisted on articulating the
materials of resistance and difference.
Weinberger's claim that the birth of Modernism originated with
Pound enables him to construct a tidy patrilineal tradition, which can be
used 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's
inclusion in this anthology raises a question. Is "Studying Horses" more
important and necessary, or, as Weinberger might stress it, more inno-
vative and outside, and more in the "hubbub of conversation," than
poems by Kathleen Fraser, Bernadette Mayer, Alice Notley, Gertrude
Stein, and Rosmarie Waldrop?-all of whom have written about what is
important to consider after waking up from sleeping with the Other.
Kelly's poem is, chronologically speaking, the most recent poem to be
included in the anthology; it is the latest news Weinberger saw fit to
emphasize.
In terms of literature and its relationship to language usage and repre-
sentations of gender, what Weinberger proposes in this anthology is that
a man can become the Other, in this case a woman, but he has not allowed
a particularly wide range of women to speak. This is why the absence of
Gertrude Stein is so disturbing. When Stein died in 1946, much of her
poetry remained unpublished. In the 1950's, Yale University Press pub-
lished Bee Time Vine and Other Pieces (1953), and Stanzas in Meditation
and Other Poems (1956). The erotic sequence, "Lifting Belly" was in-
cluded in Bee Time Vine. It was included in the Yale Gertrude Stein (Yale
University Press, 1980) and was edited by Rebecca Marks in a single
volume, Lifting Belly (The Naiad Press, 1989). I don't think this
sequence (or much else) by Stein owes its existence to Pound. It is worth
remembering that Stein said something to the effect that "Pound is a vil-
lage explainer, which is fine if you're a village. But if not, not." Thus,
decades before Weinberger accused the "irradiated generation" of writ-
ing poems for a "community of like souls," Stein issued a very similiar
view of Pound.
The publication of Stein's work inspired strong and almost immediate
responses from Robert Duncan and John Ashbery, both of whom were
under forty at the time. In Duncan's Derivations (Fulcrum Press, 1968),
one comes across three large gatherings of poems, "Imitations of Ger-
trude Stein Imitations 1951-1952," "Writing Writing," and" Imitations
of Gertrude Stein 1953-1954." And one year after John Ashbery was se-
lected by W.H. Auden to be the Yale Younger Poet, he reviewed Stanzas
in Meditation in Poetry (July 1957). Both Duncan and Ashbery, along
with David Antin, John Ca&e, Clark Coolidge, Robert Kelly, Michael
Palmer, and Jerome Rothenberg (all of whom have honored Stein in one
way or another) are included in Weinberger's anthology; Stein is not. Nor
has Weinberger chosen any work by a woman who has been influenced
by Stein.
The publication of Stein's unpublished writings between 1951 and
1958 by Yale University Press is an important and influential event
which Weinberger has decided to ignore, because she does not fit into his

Writtrs
Rttreat-
June 19-25, 1994
NEW HARMONY, INDIANA
WORKSHOPS CONFERENCES WRITING TIME
In the historic setting of two 19th century utopias
!facu{ty:
Jll.my!Jfempe{ !Jfeat/ier t.Mc!J{ugfi Larry Levis
'13oD Sfiacocliis 'Davit!Smitfi
Science and Other Poems
Alison Hawthorne Deming
Winner of the 1993 Walt Whitman Award of The Academy of
American Poets
In her first collection of verse, Alison Hawthorne
Deming establishes astonishing parallels between the
mute, inexorable processes of the physical universe
and the dark mysteries of the human heart. "I greatly
admire Alison Deming's lucid and precise language,
her stunning metaphors, her passion, her wild and
generous spirit, her humor, her formal cunning....
I am amazed, and delighted, by her authority and her
tenaci ty. "--Gerald Stern
$17.95 cloth, $9.95 paper
Red and Yellow Boat
Poems by Anthony Petrosky
In his long-awaited second book, Anthony Petrosky,
winner of the 1982 Walt Whitman Award, deftlyjuggles
themes of class and family conflict, unity and brother-
hood, love, suffering, and transformation. "With this
book Petrosky affirms a profoundly redemptive talent.
It brings a smile of relief and gratitude that such an art
can happen."-David Ignatow
$15.95 cloth, $8.95 paper
Crossroads
. Poems by David R. Slavitt
In his twelfth book of original verse, David R. Slavitt
leads us to a crossroads where terror, loneliness, and
despair are transfigured by love and art. Throughout
this collection Slavitt's keen intelligence, wry humor,
and deep compassion shine through, revealing a poet
working at the peak of his powers. .
$15.95 cloth, $8.95 paper
For more information contact
Engl ish Department
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN INDIANA
Evansville, Indiana 47712
812/464-1735 800/467-8600
MARCH/APRIL 1994
1993 National Book Award Finalist
The Vigil
A Poem in Four Voices
Margaret Gibson
"The poems [are) extraordinarily well crafted, conjuring clear, individual voices....
An admirable and compelling work."-Booklist
"Gibson's impressive ability with line and meter contribute greatly to the volume's
success. "-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
$19.95 cloth, $9.95 paper
LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSIlY PRESS BatanRouge 70803
PAGE 49



















































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































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WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY PRESS
Phone 910-759-5448 / Fax 910-759-9831
Box 7333 / Winston-Salem, NC / 27109
The Magdalene Sermon and Earlier Poems
Eilean Ni Chuilleamlin
64 pages cloth $15.95 (signed) paper $8.95
Nonfiction:
Richard Hawley,
Ron Powers
For information and
application materials,
please write to:
Mrs. Carol Knauss
The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference
Middlebury College - APR
Middlebury VT 05753-6125
or call (802) 388-3711, Ext. 5286
Poetry: Marvin Bell, Michael Collier,
Carol Frost, Richard Jackson, Mark Jarman,
Donald Justice, Gary Margolis,
Paul Mariani, William Matthews,.
Jean Nordhaus, Carole Oles,
Robert Pack, Linda Pastan,
Lawrence Raab
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Special Guest Readers:
Iii Richard Ford,
John Irving
The 69th Annual
BREAD LOAF
WRITERS' CONFERENCE
August 9-21,1994
Robert Pack, Director
Fiction: Julia Alvarez, Elizabeth Arthur, Andrea Barrett,
Pinckney Benedict, Larry Brown, Rosellen Brown,
Judith Ortiz Cofer, Thomas Gavin, Philip Gerard, Ron Hansen,
Amy Hempel, Ann Hood, David Huddle, Margot Livesey,
Antonya Nelson, Bob Reiss, Dinitia Smith,
Elizabeth Dewberry Vaughn, Nancy Willard, Hilma Wolitzer
Her eyes were gentle, her voice was soft for singing
In the stiff-backed pew, or on the porch when evening
CO'!les slowly over Atlanta. But she remembered.
She said: "After they cleaned out the saloons and the dives
The drunks and the loafers, they thought that they had better
Clean 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 came
For the milishy, and the mob went home
And 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 time
Was 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 poem
reminds us that riots have been a recurring feature of race relationships
in America throughout the twentieth century, that the riots in t h ~ wake
of the Rodney King verdict were part of a long history. In 1975,
Broadside Press, Detroit, published The Last Ride of Wild Bill and
Eleven Narrative Poems, and in 1980, Michael Harper selected The
Collected Poems of Sterling A. Brown (Harper & Row) to appear in The
National Poetry Series. Brown is a major figure whom Weinberger com-
pletely ignores.
Brown's empathetic adherence to the woman's speech patterns, pro-
nunciation, and word usage is comparable to Charles Reznikoff's use of
between the end of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1940's and the
beginnings of the Black Nationalist movement in the 1960's. His
interest in blues, jazz, folk art and speech helped legitimize them in the
eyes 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 a
complexly-textured music through language, the written. Thus, Wein-
berger is wrong when he states that the "Harlem Renaissance, with the
notable exception of Hughes, refused to admit African-American speech
into poetry." In direct contradiction to Weinberger's summary is
Brown's poem, "An Old Woman Remembers" (The Collected Poems of
Sterling A. Brown, Harper & Row, New York, 1980) which begins:
Ciaran Carson
is the winner
of the 1989
Irish Times/
Aer Lingus
Award for
Belfast Con-
fetti.
80 pages
cloth $13.95
paper $8.95
Ciaran Carson First Language
-Gerald Dawe,
Irish Times
First Language is
a spectacular
collection.... If
you buy only one
poetry book ...
this year, make
sure it's this one."
"Ciaran Carson's
them to a tradition to which they do not belong. I am thinking of John
Cage, William Everson, John Ashbery, and Clark Coolidge, none of
whom could be (or would even want to be) considered heirs of the
triumvirate of Pound, Williams, and H.D. The fact that Barbara Guest,
poet and author of Herself Defined: The Poet R.D. and Her World, is
absent suggests that Weinberger understands tradition to be patrilineal.
And because he understands tradition to be patrilineal, he did not stop to
consider the influence H.D. had on Barbara Guest and Ann Lauterbach,
for example. This is one of the primary faults of his anthology. The other
is his representation of African-American writing.
Both in his selection and in his accompanying essay, Weinberger fails
to 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. In
addition to being a major poet, Sterling A. Brown taught for more than
fifty years at Howard University and influenced numerous generations
of students, including Amiri Baraka, Stokeley Carmichael, and Ossie
Davis, among others. Brown taught courses in African-American
literature at a time when almost no one was teaching such courses at
black colleges, and certainly no one at all was doing so at so-called
mainstream (or white) schools-the kind of schools most of the poets in
this anthology attended. Brown is one of the most important bridges
Winner of the first T. S. ELIOT POETRY PRIZE
for most outstanding book of poetry published
in Britain or Ireland in the past year.
News of the World: Selected Poems
Peter Fallon
"Peter Fallon's poetry has become very tough and alive,
like a just-cut holly stick. Snappy and weighty. Very
strong, sharp savour - and where do you find that these
days." - TED HUGHES
79 pages cloth $13.95 paper $8.95
The Astrakhan Cloak
Poems in Irish by Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill
Translations by Paul Muldoon
112 pages cloth $15.95 paper $10.95
PAGE 50 THE AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW












































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































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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, they
found ways to have the Other speak. Almost all of Brown's poems were
published 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 African-
American writers is absent from Weinberger's anthology. He states that
the decade of black nationalist poetry "brought in a great deal of African
and African-American history, mythology and religion previously
absent in American poetry," but doesn't offer us much in the way of
examples. The poems of Baraka's he picks are aggressive oral attacks.
Since Baraka is the only active African-American poet Weinberger has
included in his anthology, I am led to believe that his vision of an African-
American is as limiting as Pound's vision of the Chinese; African-Ameri-
cans are angry screamers, rather than reticent fatalists. Weinberger's
choices of poems by Hughes and Baraka indicate that he believes in the
Western assumption that orality is far more authentic than writing.
The supposed connection between orality and truth can be traced back
to Plato and Aristotle. However, by valorizing orality and performance
in African-American poetry at the expense of all else, Weinberger up-
holds a degrading view of African-Americans and African-American
literature; they can talk jive, but they can't write. They can swear, but
they can't spell. This is the liberal, postwar update of Rousseau's notion
of the relationship between the pure self and corrupt society, as well as
the valorization of the Noble Savage. Rousseau believed that, while
society corrupted the individual, the individual could recover aspects of
a purer self. Rousseau's belief in the possibility of achieving a state of
purity is not only one of the cornerstones of Romanticism, but it also
anticipates Modernism's notion of recovering the "archaic self."
For Weinberger, the "most vital movement" of the 1960's-the Viet-
nam Era-"emphasized oral performance and poetry rituals and talis-
mans"; it was based on the "archaic." It should be pointed out that the
academic poems he rails against, the kind which are nothing more than
"reminiscences of summer camp," are really nothing more than bland
versions of the self as archaic being or Noble Savage. Purity, as everyone
by 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 recover-
ing the pure or noble self; it is the elitist, hedonistic version of advertise-
ment's puritanical call for breath freshener, soap, and spot remover, a
way of slumming both in history and among the Others.
The reason Weinberger excludes the work of other African-American
poets is that they don't conform to his view of what constitutes
authenticity; they aren't black enough, because they don't scream,
stamp, or shout the blues. Weinberger's view of African-American liter-
ature is both simplistic and reductive. Thus, an African-American poet
who prefers literacy to orality, singing (disparate things woven together)
to speech (something which immediately communicates its message), is
a person to be distrusted. And an African-American poet who subverts
both the authenticity of orality and literacy must be mad. Thus, Jay
Wright and Bob Kaufman, two poets who emerged in the 1960's, are
excluded.
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 around
the 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.
SQ!)AW VALLEY COMMUNITY OF WRITERS
POETRY WORKSHOP
JULY 24 - JULY 31, 1994
LUCILLE CLIFTON
RICHARD HOWARD
GALWAY KINNELL
LUCI TAPAHONSO
Participants in the Poetry Program are asked to spend much of the time
writing. Only new work is discussed in the morning workshop. The idea is
to try to expand the boundaries of what one can say. There are afternoon craft
sessions. Deadline for submission of manuscript: May 10.
Call or write for a Brochure: (415) 389-5931 or (916) 583-5200
S.V.C.W. P.O. Box 2352 Olympic Valley, CA 96146
PRESENTING THE NEWEST COLUMBIA
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Reading by Li-Young Lee
Wine and Cheese Reception following
Adults, $30 in advance, $35 at the door, Seniors
and Students, $20 in advance, $25 at the door.
Martins Feny Public Library
P.O. Box 130
Martins Feny, OH 43935
(614) 633-0314 Fax (614) 633-0935
Ohio Arts Council, Martins Feny Public Library,
Eastern Ohio Arts Council, Ohio University.
2:30
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Friday, April 15, 7:00 p.m.
7:00 Remarks, Annie Wright
7:30 Reading by Jean Valentine
8:30 Open Mike (please limit your selections to 5 minutes)
Wine and Cheese Reception
Saturday, April 16
11:00 Discussions on Contemporary Literature
12:00 Lunch (served at library, induded in registration)
1:30 Reading James Wright's Work
Li-YoungLee and Jean Valentine
Readings by Regional Poets
TBA
14th Annual
JAMESWRIGHT
April 1516, 1994
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YOUROWN POET'S CORNeR
THE COLUMBIA HISTORY
OF BRITISH POETRY
CARL WOODRING, EDITOR
James Shapiro, Associate Editor
700 pp / $59.95 cloth
This magmficent new history assimilates and interprets thirteen centuries of British
poetry, sweeping from Beowulf to Seamus Heaney to map the poetical landscape of
England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Rethinking the boundaries of British poetry,
critics reexamine the individual achievements of poets as well as the movements in genre
and politics that shaped their worlds. Highlights include Margaret Anne Doody on
eighteenth-century poetry; Jerome McGann on Romanticism; Calvin Bedient on Yeats,
Lawrence, and Eliot; and Edna Longley on contemporary Irish, Scottish, and Welsh poetry.
8

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THE COLUMBIAHISTORY
rn OF AMERICAN POETRY
JAY PARINI, EDITOR
Brett Millier; Associate Editor
800 pp / $59.95 cloth
Parini's book captures the spirit of American poetry: its search and struggle for individual
as well as national identity. America's best, contemporary critics begin with
the Puritans and end with the visionary poetics of our time, including thorough
discussions of African American and Native American poetry. Highlights Helen
Vendler on Wallace Stevens; Diane Wood Middlebrook on confessional poetry; Arnold
Rampersad on the Harlem Renaissance; and Dana Gioia on Longfellow.
MARCH/APRIL 1994 PAGE 51











































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































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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 aches
among 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 away
from the tombs of city benches,
where old Sicilians gnash the vowels
of a song she can never learn to sing.

Unanimous Raves for Stanlty Nelson's


IMMIGRANT Books I & II
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Like many of the other poems in Elaine's Book, "Cornelia Street" I
embodies the poet's attention to history as a cross-cultural vortex, and
to the relationship between past and present, as well as his awareness of
language and its uses. Between 1976 and 1980, Wright published four
long texts that he called "cycles." In these "cycles," he articulated his
obsession with the history of the New World, and his need to understand
the complex relations that occur between Other and Other, between
history 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-American
astronomer, in order to further understand the historical roots of the
displaced self. An astronomer understands the literal place he (or she)
inhabits, its shifting relationship to the contiguous world. Banneker
lived during the latter part of the eighteenth century and the beginning
of the nineteenth-a period when America itself was being transformed
from a colony into a nation. At the moment when America was achieving
independence and becoming a home, Banneker remained in diaspora. He
was intimate with the constantly shifting orders of the universe, with
change, but he was ultimately in exile from both the nation he lived in
and from the world he inhabited. The place he lived in had changed, but
his status hadn't. This, despite the fact that he knew more about the
changing world than most of his contemporaries.
Wright's poetry is comparable to that of other poets concerned with
history 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 who
offers, in his poems and cycles, their range of subjects, formal means,
and sonorous language, another possibility to younger writers such as
Nathaniel Mackey, who emerged in the late 1970's, and whose most re-
cent book of poems-The School of Uhdra (City Lights, 1993)-is a signal
event. Like Wright, Mackey attempts to gain self-knowledge through re-
covering African myths (-note: along with Dogon, Egyptian and Be-
douin myths are from Africa-), as well as celebrating African-American
folklore and jazz. Perhaps Weinberger thinks Wright and Mackey, who
was 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 and
no one else; but I know he is wrong.
Making a pun on his name, Bob Kaufman called the author of the
Abomunist Manifesto Bomkauf. His poem "Abomunist Rational
Anthem" begins: "Derrat slagelations, flo goof baberol Sorash sho
1721 Walnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19103
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PAGE 52 THE AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW












































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































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Jane Hirshfield
Garrett Hongo
David St.John
FictiO/1 Foell/tv
Pam Houston
David Shields
Christopher Tilghman
14th Annual
Napa
Valley
Writers'
Conference
July 3I-August 5, 1994
SAI.ll1ARIl:\ rU\ . roar T"\<"HXI), WA
1I1t1t#tUJtiRIIHthlll'llll.1f f
MAKING THE PATH
WHILEYOUWA
by Craig V:n Riper
li.,Iu4.ffiu wcy,,,,ur/,i "lIS Q'I6lI'las\-j
... lA11 { Of rllJ al: nul' I
\on I' AY<, 1\Nk'ky CA ')4701
MARCHI APRIL 1994
dubies, wago, wailo, wailo." Here, Kaufman is heir to a little- known side
of Langston Hughes, who, in the late 1920's, sent this poem to Countee
Cullen:
SYLLABIC POEM
Ay ya!
Ay ya!
Ky ya na mina
Ky ya na mina
So lee,
So lee nakya
Ky ya na mina,
Ky ya na mina.
Both Hughes and Kaufman distrust orality for orality's sake, because
they know that it can become too easy a way to manipulate the audience,
and that speech isn't necessarily truthful. Not to confuse orality with
truth, and yet to be faithful to the speech and music of those who inhabit
the same world you do; this is the task Sterling A. Brown, Langston
Hughes, and Melvin Tolson set out to accomplish. This is very different
from Weinberger's belief in "oral performance and ritual."
Weinberger is stuck in a view of poetry that one associates with the
1960's and the belief in poetry as a form of exalted, enlightened speech
and a recovery of the archaic and ritual: the poet as shaman. Much of his
essay, "American Poetry Since 1950: AVery Brief History, ,. focuses on
the late 1960' s. He characterizes his friend and editorial asociate Clayton
Eshleman's Caterpillar as "the most important poetry magazine of the
period." (At no time does he mention more recent magazines such as
Callalloo, HOW(ever), or Hambone.) And he pays significant attention to
the poets he feels emerged during that period: Clayton Eshleman, Robert
Kelly, and Jerome Rothenberg. These are clearly the heroes he wants to
honor, with the rest being used to bolster his argument that the vital,
ongoing Modernist tradition that originated with Pound, Williams, and
H.D. was passed on by these poets to the younger ones he includes. The
problem 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 mis-
represent poets about whom you are less than enthusiastic. Thus,
Weinberger can detail the contents of a single issue of Eshleman's
Caterpillar (Sulfur's predecessor), but get other facts completely wrong:
In New York, poet-art critics like John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara, closely as-
sociated with the flourishing Abstract-Expressionist scene, were importing
certain aspects of French surrealism, including whimsical juxtaposition, free-
floating fancy, random apprehensions of modern life, and, for O'Hara, the
panorama of the street.
John Ashbery began writing about art in the mid-1950's, and between
1955 and 1966 lived mostly in Paris. He was not intimately connected
with the "flourishing Abstract-Expressionist scene," because he wasn't
living in New York. Moreover, O'Hara was a bridge between the Abstract-
Expressionists and younger artists, such as Norman Bluhm, Jane Frei-
licher, Michael Goldberg, Jasper Johns, and Alex Katz. At the same
time, O'Hara supported a little-known poet such as Edwin Denby, as
well as a little-known artist, Giorgio Cavallon.
In a parenthetical remark about George Oppen, Weinberger states
that he was "the only important American poet since the Civil War to
actually engage in combat." I would like to point out that Frank O'Hara,
a homosexual, served on a destroyer during World War II; that Robert
Creeley, who lost an eye in a childhood accident, dropped out of Harvard
and served in the American Field Service in India; that William Everson
spent time in a camp for conscientious objectors; that Robert Duncan, in
a letter he wrote to Everson in 1940 (before America entered the war),
declared, "I am an anarchist"; and that Gertrude Stein drove supplies to
the front in World War 1. Weinberger's need to sound like John Wayne,
and thus be both provocative and simplistic, prevents him from seeing
the larger, more complex picture-the range of responses by poets in the
face of war. And his dismissal of the postwar generation ignores the fact
that a poet such as John Balaban served in Vietnam and has since then
gone on to recover and translate poems from the Vietnamese. Wein-
berger's failure to see the larger picture doesn't bode well if one is
putting together an anthology.
It is significant that Weinberger mentions no woman poet who
emerged during the 1960's. Is it because Barbara Guest wasn't particu-
larly concerned with oral performance, with recovering her archaic self
and becoming a shaman? Does he ignore Anne Waldman because she
didn't subscribe to the right shamanistic tradition? However, Wein-
berger states that since the 1970's, "one evidently positive force in
American poetry in the period-and it continues to be so-was
feminism." And for Weinberger, "Central to the new writing by women
has been the work of Susan Howe, who is ironically the true heir of a poet
who didn't recognize women poets, Charles Olson."
Why does Weinberger feel it necessary to stress that Howe is the "true
heir" and "central"? Why does he find it necessary to make hierarchical
constructions 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? Is
assimilating into the tradition Weinberger has identified as the only one
of importance what young poets, the ones who theoretically will be
for a week of workshops in poetry,
jiction, and non-jiction, craft
lectures, and readings in an
informal setting on Flathead Lake
in western Montana. Special guests
include Keith Buckley, British actor
and stage director and Carol Houck
Smith, vice-president and editor in
the trade department of W W
Norton. 1994 faculty are:
Edward Hirsch
Gretel Ehrlich
Earl Ganz
Beverly Lowry
For a brochure and application, contact: YBWW,
Center for Continuing Education, The University of
Montana, Misooula, MT 59812 or (406) 243-2094
The Writers' Center
At Chautauqua
on the grounds of
Chautauqua Institution
in western New York
Choose your own week(s)
June 25-August 27, 1994
Combine a daily two-hour workshop, with
vacation in a Victorian lake-side village.
Families welcome.
POETS IN RESIDENCE
Elaine Terranova Jim Daniels Carol Frost
Richard Foerster Gerald Costanzo
Michael Waters Diana Hume George
Stephanie Strickland Stan Sanvel Rubin
Also
Fiction
Creative Nonfiction
Journalism
Writing for Children
Young Writers' Workshops
Symphony, opera, ballet, pop and chamber
music; lectures on contemporary issues;
sports, rituals, antiques, beaches, restaurants.
Baby sitters and day camp for kids.
For information packet,
send SA5E-52C to:
The Writers' Center at Chautauqua
Mary Jean Irion, Director
149 Kready Avenue
Millersville, PA 17551
VERSEtility BOOKS
P.O. BOX 1366
BURLINGTON, CT 06013-1366
(203) 675-9338
BOOKS OF
CONTEMPORARY POETS
AND PRESSES
WITH A SPRINKLING
OF EARLIER TIMES
WRITE FOR CATALOG
Poetry is the past that breaks out in our hearts.
-Hilke
PAGE 53
POETRY
We
specialize
in
out-of-print
first editions of modern
poetry
by
well & lesser known
poets.
Inquire
for a
catalog,
or a
quote
on
specific poets
or titles.
Serving
collectors & libraries.
JETT W. WHITEHEAD
RARE BOOKS
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48708
517-892-0719
Announcing
The Fourth
Annual Des Moines
National
Poetry
Festival
April
23,
1994
Des
Moines,
Iowa
Guest Poets:
Lucille Clifton
W.S. Merwin
Gerald Stern
For information call or write:
Debbie McCarroll
P.O. Box 12196
Des
Moines,
Iowa 50312
515-277-5091
APR'S MAILING LIST
IS NOW AVAILABLE
FOR RENTAL
ON A LIMITED BASIS.
FOR TERMS AND CONDITIONS
PLEASE WRITE TO:
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1721 WALNUT STREET
PHILADELPHIA,
PA 19103
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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from
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Literary
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Press
INLAND
BOOK
CO.
VISIONS
International
Join the world's
great poets: Dickey,
Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, Hacker, Seifert,
Siipson,
Sonnevi and
nany, nany
lore I
fine translations fron
Armenian, Arabic,
Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hindi, Korean,
Persian, Ukrainian, Urdu, Yiddish,
etc.,
See
why
critics rive: VISIONS is in the
test tred it ion., results ere
impressive.
Highly
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Fourth Annual
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and
$50
prizes plus
Honorable Mentions
All
published
in
anthology
1993
Judges
Michael
Collier,
Stephen
Dunn, Katba Pollitt
Submissions of
any
length
or
style
welcome
(original
and
unpublished).
Include name,
address and
phone
on
each.
Reading
fee: $3
per poem (checks
payable
to GCC
Poetry
Center).
Deadline:
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15, 1994. For
con
test
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and
entry
forms,
send SASE
to: Dr.
Sylvia
Baer,
Poetry
Center,
Gloucester
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THE AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW
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POHRYHMEW

at Gloucester County College
Fourth Annual Poetry Awards
$300, $150 and $50
prizes plus Honorable Mentions
All published in anthology
1993]udgtt
Michael CoUier. Stephen Dunn. Katha Pollitt
Submissions of any length or style welcome
(original and unpublished). Include name,
address and phone on each. Reading fee: $3
per poem (checks payable to Gee Poetl)'
Center). Deadline:]uly 15. 1994. For con-
test guidelines and entl}' forms. send SASE
to: Dr. Sylvia Baer, Poetl}' Center.
Gloucester County College, Tanyard Rd.
RR #4. Box 203. Sewell. N] 08080.
POHRYHMEW
is available in Microform.
University Microfilms International
JOO Nonh Z"eb Road. Dept P.R.. Ann Arbor. Mi. 48106

'Iflll!/ VISIONS13]1.
,..i
l

I
tS
l ,'_ International [*:il
I

Join the world's greet poets: Dickey,
Ferlinghett I, Ginsberg, Hacker, Sel fert, :';;'1
Silpson, Sonnevi and uny, uny Mre I
fine translations from Armian, Arabic,
DutCh, Finnish, Greek, Hindi, Korean,
Persian, Ukrainian, Urdu, Yiddish, etc.,

Sa. why crlt ICI rave: VISIONS is in the
best tfldition.. results m i,pressive.
1 H' d d '.... ,
i@1
SUBSCRIBE .01 in t ill for our fabulous
15th anniversary. Send check or 11.0.
I.@ $14.00 for 1 yr. or $6.50 for anniv, ,

f ""I! TO: BLACK BUZZARD PRESS
I
1110 SEATO. lUE
!""' :/2048;, dl
CHANGE OF ADDRESS: It takes six weeks
to process a change of address so please
notify us before you move. Send your old
mailing label along with your new address
and zip code. We want to keep APR coming
your way but we need your cooperation.
I just said I didn't know
And now you are 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 surfa.ce,
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.
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
APR'S MAILING LIST
IS NOW AVAILABLE
FOR RENTAL
ON A LIMITED BASIS.
Debbie McCan-oil
P.O. Box 12196
Des Moines. Iowa 50312
515-277-5091
For information call or write:
April 23, 1994
Des Moines, Iowa
1412 Center Avenue
Bay City, Michigan 48708
517-892-0719
Serving collectors & libraries.
We specialize in out-of-print
first editions ofmodempoetry
by well & lesser known poets.
Inquire for a catalog, or a quote
on specific poets or titles.
Guest Poets:
Lucille Clifton
W.S. Merwin
Gerald Stern
Announcing
The Fourth
Annual Des Moines
National
Poetry Festival
POURY H[VIEW
FOR TERMS AND CONDITIONS
PLEASE WRITE TO:
THE AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW
1721 WALNUT STREET
PHILADELPHIA, PA 19103
POETRY
I I
PAGE 54
THE AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW

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