Helen Vendler: In Memoriam

As a young poet, I secretly dreamed of one day being introduced by Stephen Yenser and reviewed (even panned) by Helen Vendler. I will have to find a new dream.

I don’t recall when I first encountered Vendler’s poetic critique—I would guess it was in grad school, while indulging my passion for Yeats. She was certainly the most astute reader of Yeats that I have ever encountered—and that’s saying something. What I remember most, though, is checking out The Given and the Made from the Oakland library a few years later. In that book, she focused on four poets who would seem to have very little in common—Berryman, Lowell, Graham, and Dove. Though the four sections of the book were distinct, they were tied together by a simple premise: great art lies at the intersection of circumstance and genius. In other words, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade—or rather, a triple-layer lemon-chiffon wedding cake. On some level, I found this theory disquieting: my background was exceptionally unexceptional. How could I make something memorable when I was given nothing memorable to work with? 

As for her subjects, I had of course studied Berryman in school, though I ultimately found his alter-ego Mr. Bones problematic to say the least. I had also encountered Lowell in school, but that barely scratched the surface; I would later immerse myself in his work—most notably, The Mills of the Kavanaughs and Lord Weary’s Castle—and remain to this day a fervent devotee. Graham? Well, not even Vendler could raise her in my esteem, though I appreciated the explication. On the other hand, she sparked my interest in Rita Dove, whose work I’d had little exposure to previously. A later book, Soul Says, cast a wider net, analyzing poets I admired, such as Ammons, Merrill, Dave Smith, and Heaney, along with others I have never quite grown to appreciate. 

But what I’ve always appreciated about Vendler was that she approached every text on its own terms, rather then through the lens of any particular critical theory. Structuralism, deconstruction, feminism, formalism, psychoanalysis, etc.—they all seemed to choose their subjects to fit their intended conclusions. Indeed, many literary critiques were inseparable from the school of thought they espoused. Vendler, on the other hand, is not synonymous with any school. She was simply an attentive (I don’t think she would’ve accepted the term “close”) reader. 

While many lit crit schools were subtly or overtly political, she seemed to have no overarching agenda (other than to promote the greater appreciation of poetry). Perhaps that’s why she could espouse a position that would seem to flout current conventions and themes. Her scathing review of Rita Dove’s Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry was the stuff of legend (as was Dove’s response). She faulted Dove for prioritizing inclusiveness over critical consensus. Nowadays, her stance—essentially dismissing efforts to promote diversity and equity—would seem to align with the “anti-woke” rhetoric of certain far-right politicians. I doubt many university academics would be so bold in print, regardless of how they may feel in private.

Nonetheless, her argument—as always—was hard to disagree with, assuming you did not have a vested interest in doing so. When I look at that anthology today, I can’t help but side with Vendler. Though it contains many poets who are well worth reading, many are simply not in the same league as others. And of course, in devoting pages to those poets, Dove gave short shrift to those heavy-hitters. 

I have a book on my shelf called something like Silver Poets of the 17th Century. It gathers together several poets who are wonderful but not necessarily “Great.” That’s what Dove really needed to create—an anthology of poets who may well be considered important one day, but who still have their best work ahead of them.

In reading Vendler’s obituary, I was amused by a few intersections I did not previously realize. She was born a Hennessy in Boston. I have Hennessy clan in the family, and distant Irish relatives in Boston (not that I’m suggesting any relation—Hennessy folk are as common as clover). I wonder how much that Irish Catholic education—ruler on the knuckles if you misremember your catechism—influenced her approach to poetry, which on the one hand seemed to presume a set of sacred laws or expectations that needed to be upheld, and on the other hand, assumed that laypeople could not understand the holy word directly, but needed a priest to act as mediator. She also taught, however briefly, at my alma mater, Cornell. She also lived out the last of her years not far from me, in Laguna Niguel, a short drive (traffic permitting) from LA. 

Vendler wrote carefully about poetry—because she cared about poetry. I don’t think anyone would deny that the proliferation—the democratization—of poetry is overall a positive development. Poetry is like love—there is never enough. Still, we need someone like Vendler to thrust the Haw Lantern in the face of each poet’s work and either nod approvingly or intone, “No, not you.”

Fred Chappell: In Memoriam

News travels fast—until it hits LA traffic. Which would explain why I only just learned about the death of Fred Chappell last month. In all my years, I never met anyone who so fully epitomized the concept of the “Man of Letters.” I probably still have somewhere the letter of recommendation he wrote for me when I left UNC-G, touting my ineffable virtues—he was, after all, a master storyteller. Because to be honest, I was a bit of an ass back then. OK, that’s not entirely fair; I was a complete ass back then. So much so that I squandered my access to such a brilliant mind. Partly due to scheduling conflicts, mostly due to my sense of inadequacy, I held off until my final semester before enrolling in an independent study with him. And being hands-down the least prolific member of my class, I did not produce much work to discuss in our weekly meetings. I should’ve realized that discussing my own work would be the least instructive thing we could do—far better to discuss just about anything he cared to hold forth on. He was exceedingly generous. Following the publication of my first book, I finagled a reading at UNC-G. Naturally, he was there, even though he was on the cusp of retirement (“No more in ’04” was his boisterous motto).

In an eerie coincidence—the kind that makes you wonder if the universe is random after all—I recently grabbed I am One of You Forever from my local library, not knowing that Fred was gone. I hadn’t read it in—what, 30 years?—but loved every word, even though I seemed to remember every word. Perhaps that’s one of the hallmarks of epic writing: you know it by heart, and yet it always seems new. 

For those unfamiliar with the book, it’s not so much a novel as a collection of linked stories, all told from the perspective of a tween boy growing up in rural North Carolina, in a family visited by a succession of picaresque uncles. It merges magical realism with a Faulknerian connection to the Southern gothic tradition, along with some straight-up blarney. The result defies comparison.

Of course, I first knew Fred as a poet. If he is not generally listed among the ranks of New Formalist poets, it’s only because he predates them, being, as always, ahead of his time. There is a structure, if not an obvious form, to all of his poems, even those that appear to be written in free verse. Perhaps because he wrote stories and literary criticism, and his poetry often seeks to accomplish what can not be done in any other medium. There’s no better example than “Narcissus and Echo” from his book, Source. According to myth, Echo could not speak on her own, but could only give back what others have said. Miraculously, Fred composed a poem that demonstrates this impossible constraint. There’s simply no way to describe it without reproducing it here, in total:

Of course, we are all Narcissus—but Fred alone seems sufficiently aware of his narcissism to banish it. A poem like that results from two things: a stroke of brilliance to conceive of it, and the long diligent effort to make it work out (Fred believed that regularity was a writer’s bread and butter). Fred could be dauntingly erudite, bouncing from Norse mythology to Grimm’s fairytales without missing a beat; in fact, the title and epigraphs in his book First and Last Words allude to or name-drop Vergil, Livy, Kant, Goethe, Tolstoy, Vermeer, Rubens, Einstein, Beowulf, and of course, the Gospels, to name a few. Nonetheless, he could be funny. His sense of humor is evident in poems such as “Recovery of Sexual Desire After a Bad Cold,” which begins “Toward morning I dreamed of the Ace of Spades reversed,” or “Charge,” which looks upon a statue of a (Civil War?) general and muses that the “Black pyramid of cannonballs / by the pediment are turds / of the bronze horse.” About the Confessional poets, he wrote (and I’m going from memory here, because it appeared on community poetry bulletin board, not in any permanent publication), “If my peccadilloes were so small / I don’t think I’d want to show them off at all.” Fre understood that poetry should encompass all human conditions, including humor.

Further evidence of that sly humor can be found in the title of his collected poems, “Spring Garden.” The Amazon review describes it as “a story of the poet classifying and selecting among his work while his wife, Susan, botanizes in their private garden.” That may be true, but the real fact is, Spring Garden was the name of a bar near the UNC-G campus, quite popular with the MFA crowd (the beer was cheap). Fred would often join us for a drink at the end of the day. He always tried to be approachable, and down-to-earth. Perhaps it was his way of showing encouragement. He was well aware of the difficult challenges facing a young writer. He once remarked: “Because of the emotional wear and tear, and because of the uncertainty of success or of even making progress, many give it up and eventually take up something else.” I think that knowledge was a burden to him. In fact, I suspect he identified with Vergil—not just because of his pastoral lyrics, but because he led Dante through the depths of Hell and into the gates Paradise. Teaching a bunch of rag-tag would-be writers must stem from the same tradition.

I can’t begin to guess how many writers he mentored during the course of his lengthy tenure. Many have gone on to achieve renown in their own right—but I’m sure they would all acknowledge their debt to him. He once joked, in typical humility, “If I am going to be remembered, I guess I’d like to be remembered as someone who did less harm than he was capable of.” Sorry, Fred, you will be remembered as someone who did far more than that.

You are one of us forever.

Louise Glück: The Wild Iris

Big news in the poetry world: Louise Glück has been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. Like many, I was inspired to revisit my poetry shelf. Yes, I was familiar with the name—Glück has achieved considerable renown—and yet, I could not call to mind a single poem or line. I found her first four books, in a single collected edition, as well at The Wild Iris. I flipped through them, waiting for that spark of recognition. It never came. I had to admit, despite being a receptive reader, that her work does not speak to me on any level. It is sparse, elliptical, often first-person though not Confessional. The diction is unfailingly deadpan. It’s not quite cerebral, not quite emotive. In fact, it’s largely devoid of affect. Interestingly, I could not discern any major shift or growth between her first book and her later works. For some poets, that comes from having a unique, compelling voice. But I don’t find Glück’s voice to be particularly distinct, which is to say, I can’t tell the difference between a line by Glück and a line by, say, Jorie Graham.  In The Wild Iris, it’s initially intriguing to see so many poems with the same title (e.g., “Matins” and “Vespers”); but rather than collectively present a Cubist view of a subject, they each seem self-contained and interchangeable, and eschew any dialog amongst themselves. 

So, my initial enthusiasm at seeing an American poet honored with a Nobel prize was undercut by the uneasy suspicion that the committee had made yet another questionable decision in an effort to stay relevant or divert attention from its salacious recent history. And though I hesitate to disparage the work of any poet, I’m sure that a few critical words from me will do nothing to sully Glück’s reputation, or detract from her widespread acclaim. There are clearly many people, in positions of authority, who find more in her work than I do.

Donald Hall: In Memoriam

The effusive obituaries and encomiums for Donald Hall have given me pause. He was, by most accounts, an “important” poet, part of the miraculous crew born in the mid- to late-1920s. He served as poet laureate for a time, and remained something of a revered public figure. He received the Frost Medal and Ruth Lilly prize, both for lifetime achievement. And yet, I could not name a single poem of his, let alone quote one. The only books of his on my shelf are Remembering Poets and its later revision, Their Ancient Glittering Eyes, which I recall greatly enjoying once upon a time. But as for the poetry itself? I had nothing. So, I turned to my floppy, well-worn copy of Poulin’s Contemporary American Poetry, and was amused to discover that Hall had edited the first edition!

Perusing the poems, I vaguely recall reading them decades ago, but nothing really stuck with me. And, I must admit, the intervening years have not endowed them with any new and uncanny resonance. I still find them all rather pedestrian.

Hall was a vocal critic, and seemed to have little patience for poetry that did not comport with his tastes and preferences. But even if you agree with his assessments, it’s hard not to view them as the peevish pronouncements of a crotchety old man who just can’t understand these kids nowadays.

In fact, Hall was basically the poster child for white male privilege in the academy. Born in New Haven, he attended Exeter, Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford. He taught for a while at U. Michigan, but then retired to the family estate in New England. He served as The Paris Review’s first poetry editor. He was an advisor to the NEA during the senior Bush presidency and was named Poet Laureate by the junior.

Much has been made of his marriage to Jane Kenyon; perhaps it was happy and productive, but I, for one, find it distinctly icky when a college professor shacks up with an undergrad 20 years his junior. Surely an older academic should engage in some self reflection before plunging in to such a relationship—especially with his divorce so recent (or perhaps not even finalized) when it began. To be fair, Hall is not the only one with such a complicated personal history (Yeats, of course, comes to mind); but his relationship with Kenyon perhaps provide a lens through which to view his work, a lens defined by self-regard without self-awareness.

Perhaps I’m being unfair. Clearly, many people have a high opinion of his poetry. Maybe I simply haven’t read enough, but I can’t say that I share that assessment. On the other hand, he exhibited a profound influence on American poetry, and helped shape the debate about the value and function of poetry. Much of that debate—between the raw and the cooked, the well-wrought and the naked—was still going on during my formative years, and helped shape my own ideas about what makes a poem (or a poet) truly great.

How come no one told me?

I was flipping through the latest issue of Poets & Writers when I happened to glance at the “In Memoriam” column—and was somewhat stunned to see Richard Wilbur listed there. How is it that I did not know he died? How could I have missed something like that? (Well, I see that he died on a Saturday, so maybe there’s a lesson here: don’t die on a weekend if you want the public to notice.)

Wilbur ranks among my favorite poets, and was certainly an influence and inspiration for me (as I’m sure he was for many who followed in the “New Formalist” tradition). When did I first encounter his work? I vaguely recall reading “Praise in Summer” in my high-school textbook, Sound and Sense (back when it had an eye-assaulting neon-fuchsia cover—I may still have it somewhere), but I may be misremembering. In college, though, I started reading him in earnest in the pages of Poulin’s Contemporary American Poetry, which included, among others, “Hamlen Brook.” That poem was a revelation for me. It evinced a mastery of technique that I’ve been striving ever since to achieve, most notably in its vivid descriptive imagery (especially about the natural world) and the use of the unexpected but oddly juste word, the word you wouldn’t have thought to use, but after you see it, you couldn’t imagine using a different one. For example, “I lean to the water, dinting its top with sweat,” or “A startled inchling trout … Trawling a shadow solider than he.” Dinting?!?! Trawling?!?! Amazing! I remember sharing that poem with my girlfriend, who remarked, “You could’ve written that poem… Well, all except for the last stanza.” Well, yeah… the last stanza makes the poem, and I certainly couldn’t have written it. But it did make me start to understand that vivid description is not enough in itself—it must serve a greater purpose. “How shall I drink all this?” Wilbur writes. That’s the question I would not have though to ask, but the question that takes the poem beyond the beautiful into the sublime.

I have loved so many of his poems, and committed some to memory. “A Late Aubade” comes to mind (“I need not rehearse / the rosebuds-theme of centuries of verse…”). As an interesting sidenote, many of his poems make casual reference to certain touchstones of art and culture—e.g., Schoenberg’s serial technique, or Schliemann staring down on the crowns of Troy. In this way, he shares the genius of Merrill; but with Merrill, such references and nuances always bore a whiff of the patrician, the commonalities you learned by virtue of your station in life, not the hunger of your mind. Wilbur’s poetry, while certainly not plebeian, was more grounded in the things of this world. I could not imagine Wilbur playing around with a Ouija board, much less writing a book-length poem about one.

And who could forget “The Writer?” The richness of metaphor is astounding—even as he undercuts his own “easy figure.” And I suppose, in our electronic world, fewer readers will appreciate the way he likens the sound of a manual typewriter to a “chain hauled over a gunwale.” My keypad makes no such noice, though the typewriter that I learned on certainly did. And his pacing is impeccable: who doesn’t share in his exuberance, or feel his spirits rise, when the trapped bird suddenly clears “the sill of the world?”

Also remarkable about Wilbur, he could write for any audience. My kids encountered his work at an early age in books such as Opposites and The Disappearing Alphabet (Oh, do not let / anything happen to the alphabet!). It is a far journey indeed from that to Molière.

I learned in Wilbur’s obituary that he grew up not far from where I did, so perhaps that’s why a poem such as “Hamlen Brook” or “The Death of a Toad” or “A Grasshopper” speaks to me so directly. I can place myself completely in the scene; but I suspect I’d be able to, even if I didn’t have that sort of referent.

I will miss him. He was most surely called to praise, called by love to the things of this world: fountains, and insects, and train stations, and birds, and art, and sound, and legends. It was always a matter of life or death. The forsaken will not understand. Mr. Wilbur, I do not place much faith in a hereafter, but wherever you are, I wish you a lucky passage.

Freshman year, English 201, seminar, first class. Professor R.—a rather intimidating and authoritative figure—explains that if we really want to develop an appreciation for poetry, we should be grabbing the New Yorker each week to see what’s being written right now. To illustrate, she gives us all a copy of a page from the most recent edition. We read:

That was my first introduction to John Ashbery, and perhaps my first introduction to real poetry by a real poet (as opposed to my fellow students) that just left me scratching my head. In the countless years since then, that line has stuck with me. It’s offhand, it’s ridiculous, it’s non sequitur. I’m sure that’s what many people love about Ashbery’s poetry, but it’s certainly what I like least—about anybody’s poetry. It’s disjointed, it’s solipsistic, it’s random, it’s simply words on a page. What does it tell us about the human condition at this particular point in time? What does it tell us about anything? A generous reading might suggest that the enormity of history, the calamity of humanity, has left us with nothing to say, but being human, we have to say something—even if it is meaningless outside a context that is so specific it excludes all but the smallest social circle. A less generous reading just says, don’t quit your day job—unless your day job is “poet.” There’s no denying that Ashbery exerted considerable influence on a generation (or two or three) of young poets, who apparently learned that obscurity and insularity were qualities to admire. I personally believe that poetry is not meant to be deciphered, any more than music or architecture is. A poem is not a puzzle—life is the puzzle. Even the title of the poem, “Wet are the Boards,” is an exercise in abstruseness. What is being emphasized by the inverse construction? Why do we even need “are the” in this case? How does it relate, if at all, to what comes next?

When people say, “I don’t get poetry,” I think a large share of the blame falls on Ashbery and his imitators. From a young age, we’re taught that poetry is special. So when we encounter a poem that does not reach out to us the way poems are supposed to, we’re less likely to think, “this poem is stupid because it makes no sense,” and more likely to think, “I am stupid because I can not make sense of this poem.” And who wants to feel like that?

Ashbery died this week; his legacy will no doubt endure, though we may hope that his influence will not.