University of Texas at Arlington Dissertation Template

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US POETS LAUREATE TO THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS:

A LITERARY AND CULTURAL HISTORY

TONI M HOLLAND

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of

The University of Texas at Arlington in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements

for the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON

December 2011

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am tremendously grateful for the support of my dissertation committee. The reviews contributed to key developments in the writing process of this project. I am particularly thankful for the support of my dissertation director, Tim Morris. My interest in this project began in a graduate course I took with him; he has encouraged my work on poets laureate from that first seminar discussion and through subsequent semesters and chapter drafts. In addition to being a fine director, he has supported my passion for poetry since I began my MA studies here at

UTA. It means quite a lot to me that we have held so many discussions about poetry and that we have observed so many poems together. I am also thankful for the mentorship of Dr. Kevin

Gustafson; although he was not on my committee, he has been another talented role model for emerging scholars in our English Department and has impacted my intellectual growth during graduate studies.

Lastly, I would like to thank the English Department at UTA. Its English graduate program resulted in my having opportunities to study abroad in England, France, and Canada; I have been able to present my work at numerous conferences; the quality of instruction has resulted in my having been awarded many awards, fellowships, grants, and poet’s residencies; I have also been trained and nurtured as a teacher. All of this together reflects an education that

I will continue to cherish.

September 2, 2011

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ABSTRACT

US POETS LAUREATE TO THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS:

A LITERARY AND CULTURAL HISTORY

Toni M. Holland, PhD

The University of Texas at Arlington, 2011

Supervising Professor: Tim Morris

In 1985 the US Congress changed the title of Consultant in Poetry to the Library of

Congress,which was created in 1937, to Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. The significance in thechange is a signal to enhance awareness of American poetry to the general reading public.

Thisdissertation is an initial look at these poets who from a government-sponsored platform represent American letters. The high profile of the position allows for a means by which the role of the poet is performed as an ambassador of poetry. Who is selected to represent the nation, how each laureate’s work is situated within contemporary poetry, and the ways in which each executes tenure of the appointment reflects how Congress has positioned the post as the

“nation’s lightning rod for the poetic impulse of Americans.” There are three ways by which the dissertation critiques this appointment. Chapter One examines announcements of the appointments made by the Librarian of Congress and responses to them by journalists and poets. It shows an overall portrait of who has been chosen and why and addresses some of the ways in which the appointments have eclipsed particular demographics. Common themes that emerged in reviews of laureate’s work grouped laureates within distinctive discussions of contemporary poetics. Chapter Two addresses how Robert Penn Warren, Howard Nemerov,

Richard Wilbur, Mona VanDuyn, and Donald Hall wrote metrical verse in decades that deemed non-metrical composition more fashionable. Their continuity of a more traditional formalism influences New Formalism and Expansionist poetics. The case of VanDuyn indicates that a gendering of metrical verse that took place in the 1960s and 70s has been particularly challenging to the woman writer who sought to critique culture from within the more traditionally received poetic forms. Chapter Three addresses the ways in which the work of Charles Simic,

Joseph Brodsky, Ted Kooser, Mark Strand, Stanley Kunitz, and Robert Hass informs relationships between self and place. The laureateship reflects aesthetics from a sense of regional to international place. Chapter Four addresses the ways in which Rita Dove, Robert

Pinsky, Billy Collins, Louise Glück, and Kay Ryan forge poetic identities and signatures. Chapter

Five investigates poetry programs laureates have founded either before or during tenure: Kunitz

(Poets House, Fine Arts Work Center), Brodsky (free mass distribution of poetry books), Kooser

(American Life in Poetry), Hass (River of Words/Watershed Project), Rita Dove (the town hall meeting), Robert Pinsky (Favorite Poem Project), and Billy Collins (Poetry 180). The Poet

Laureate Consultant in Poetry has culled preeminent women and men of American letters. This project requires sustained attention as there are newly appointed laureates every year or two.

Continued critique of the appointments will document the ways in which the Library of Congress identifies the “poetic impulse” of Americans as well as the ways in which poetry programming reaches diverse communities.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... ……………..iii

ABSTRACT ...... iv

PREFACE ...... viii

TIMELINE ...... xx

Chapter Page

1. A PORTRAIT OF THE US POETS LAUREATE TO THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS……………………………………..………..…...... 1

2 AN AMERICAN MOVEMENT: A METER-MAKING ARGUMENT ...... 24

3. GEOGRAPHY AND US LAUREATESHIP ...... 52

4. POETS LAUREATE: FORGING SIGNATURES ...... 110

5. PROJECTS OF THE US LAUREATES ...... 132

6 CONCLUSION ...... 155

WORKS CITED ...... 157

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION ...... 172

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PREFACE

There are only a few texts on the institution of laureateship. Two books offer a historical overview of the national poet in the United Kingdom. Walter Hamilton’s 1879 publication of The Poets Laureate of England acknowledges that it is “somewhat remarkable that so little should hitherto have been written about the office of Poet Laureate” (viiii). One possibility he saw for the lack of scholarship is that these poets do not necessarily represent

England’s prominent poets and that some “might have been dismissed in one line of literary criticism” (xi). Because the US has had less than thirty years to build a tradition of laureateship, we will need greater historical remove in order to estimate how individual poets will compare to their peers. For the UK tradition, “Davenant, Cibber, Southey” are examples of poets chosen for the appointment over the likes of “Shakespeare, Milton, Pope and Byron” (xi). In the long history of the UK position, political affiliation trumped poetic merit. The UK history carries a tenuous reputation. On one hand it is a designation by the royal family purporting the highest achievement for a poet. On the other, the benefits attached to the position such as salary and proximity to court opens up attacks on the poet as a paid sycophant. Hamilton positioned Ben

Johnson as the first official laureate because he was the first to receive a salary. Hamilton covered the position up to Alfred Tennyson, offering one chapter on those who served a similar function, but preceded creation of an official status, referring to them as “Volunteer Laureates.”

These include poets such as Chaucer, John Skelton, and Edmund Spencer. Hamilton offered biographical sketches pertaining to laureates’ tenure and summaries of their works composed during their tenures.

Quite a few years later, in 1921, Edmond Kemper Broudus published The Laureateship:

A Study of the Office of Poet Laureate in England. He claimed that laureateship is “unique

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among national institutions” and that it deserves “a serious study of the usages, precedents, and traditions which contributed to the establishment of the office, and of the history of the office itself […] As far as [he knew], this attempt has not been made hitherto” (iiv). He held this claim in light of literary historian Edward Gibbon’s 1788 attack of laureateship in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Gibbon thought that that historical moment was “the best time for abolishing this ridiculous custom” (155). Broudus attributes a lack of scholarship on laureates to the times it “hovered on the verge of ridiculous” (iiv). He begins the historical account of laureates with

John Dryden because he received a more frequent “pension from the crown” (iv). Broudus traces a long history of how the idea of laureateship developed in England, beginning with the

“Anglo-Saxon scop” who wrote for the King and whose poetical works resulted in his advancement or banishment at court (1). The idea of laureateship developed into ceremonies at Oxford in the 1260s during which time completion of the baccalaureate resulted in bestowing to graduating students of “grammar, rhetoric, and poetry” the “laurel wreath,” a custom most likely abandoned in the late 1500s (14). The “laureate” shifted from being mostly a title of academic distinction when the king appointed Bernard Andreas in court and requested that he write poems to celebrate events of court and the royal family. Broudus claimed that this early selection of court poet set an example that was long followed in English history: “[t]he contrast between the dignified but uninspired work of Bernard Andreas and Skelton’s mad mixture of genius and knavery serves to fix at the very outset of the laureate tradition the standards of respectable conservatism by which the appointments were later to be determined” (32). Since the death of Andreas, there had not been an official appointment by a king until Ben Johnson, but some poets were considered laureates because of the functions that they filled in court.

The tradition of having a poet play a role in court life ultimately led to an official establishment of the laureateship with Johnson. From Johnson to Robert Bridges, Broudus focused on the duties prescribed to poets and the occasional verse they wrote during their lifetime tenures.

There is only one book that addresses the American appropriation of the “laureate”; however, it covers the history of a position that precedes the official creation of laureateship.

William McGuire’s Poetry’s Catbird Seat, published in 1988, covers the years of the US

Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. McGuire insists that since the inception of this position, “the Consultant was not meant to be the Poet Laureate of the United States of

America” (24). He or she fulfilled the role of a custodian of poetry, primarily to oversee the

Library of Congress’s poetry collection with the Librarian of Congress and to organize its poetry readings. McGuire attributes some of this confusion to journalists who “over the past half century […] have liked the flourish” of referring to these custodians as laureates (24). Perhaps the reason for this confusion is that “poet laureate” has swifter public appeal and recognition than “custodian of poetry.” Reviewing some of McGuire’s commentary on the distinction between these two terms shows that the US did not have an official laureate until 1986.

Archibald MacLeish, “ninth Librarian of Congress,” stated at a 1941 poetry reading entitled “The Poet in a Democracy” that “there ‘never has been and perhaps never should be a

Poet Laureate’” (57). While McGuire does not analyze this remark of MacLeish, McGuire’s reiteration of the distinction between the two suggests that poetry and politics may not be a healthy pairing for poetics. One example of discomfort arising of pairing the two is known as the

“Bollingen Prize crisis” (113). In 1948 Allen Tate established an annual poetry prize to be awarded by the Library of Congress and secured funding from the Bollingen Foundation (105).

The current Consultant and a jury of poets awarded this prize to Ezra Pound for his Pisan

Cantos, despite his having been charged with treason. When the US Justice Department objected, the jury of poets responded by proceeding with this nomination because “to permit other considerations than poetic achievement” would devalue the prize (114). The consequences of giving this award to Pound were twofold: the US Department of Justice pushed to have the award nullified, which it was; and literary awards could no longer be confirred by the Library of Congress. Yale University has since confirred the Bollingen Prize.

In 1956 a laureateship, to be chosen by the US President, was proposed in the House of Representatives. Librarians at the LOC co-authored a reply:

For the Government to make a choice from among the practitionsers of one or another

school would, I believe, tend to discourage rather than encourage experimentation and

artistic development by putting Government’s imprimatur on one style as opposed to

another […] Here at the Library of Congress we have had an unfortunate experience in

the making of awards. (197)

The proposal for a US Poet Laureate was dropped at the first committee meeting. The

“Bollingen crisis” revealed the uncomfortable conjunctions that sometimes arise between poetry and politics.

During Robert Hayden’s consultantship (1976-1978), the confusion of the consultantship with poet laureateship raised another concern. While his tenure in no way confronted controversy, the persistant misrepresentation of the naming of the position created the association between poet and president. Hayden’s 1977 participation in former President

Jimmy Carter’s inaguration ceremonies was presented as “Poet Laureate of the Carter

Administration” (359). Nothing controversial marked this occasion, but the event of conflating the titles is representative of a former time when a poet speaking for the hearts of Amerians is now an embarrasement. Robert Frost was a consultant from 1958-1959, two years prior to reading the inagural poem for J.F. Kennedy. Frost’s performance of not being able to read the poem he wrote for the occasion resulted in his reciting “The Gift Outright,” a sonnet that begins,

“The land was ours before we were the land’s.” MacGuire presents only the title of this poem; the embarrasement stemming from this sonnet as representative of the American people should be obvious to contemporary sensibilities. The poem was presented in the Boston Sunday

Globe as

the most nationalistic poem [Frost] had ever written, a favorite of him, as it is with

President Kennedy. The words […] reverberated, not only over the heads of a

spellbound audience but in their hearts. The faces of two Presidents and Vice-

President Nixon caught by the television camera were the faces of men who were

deeply touched. (226)

The narrative of this inaugural poem needs clarification between the naming of Frost’s position at the Library of Congress: he was not a laureate, but a custodian of poetry for one year. Poets who read inagural poems are not poets laureate; and such poems do not necessarily resonate with the American people. McGuire does not analyze this performance of Frost. It is arguable that Frost did not intend to write or read the occasional verse he supposedly wrote for this event, but instead took this opportunity to present his singular position toward American patriotism. It is also arguable that the journalist covering the inagural ceremony misinterpreted the facial response of John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. It is within the contexts of the

“Bollingen crisis” and Frost’s inagural poem that MacLeish’s caution against the US holding an official laureateship becomes clearer. MacLeish could have preferred a healthier pretense of poetry, an aesthetics that is not constrained by politics.

It is curious that Congress passed an act creating the US Poet Laureate position in light of these literary events. The creation of laureateship is in large part due to the passion of one man. Charting the path toward creating a new national heritage is “Senator Spark M.

Matsunaga of Hawaii, Democrat [who] was responsible for the creation of the Laureateship”

(425). He introduced the Act to Congress in 1963 and “every succeeding Congress [which became] a 22-year effort” (425, 426). He ultimately succeeded by incorporating this change “in

1985, while legislation was under consideration to reauthorize the National Foundation on the

Arts and Humanities Act (the aegis of the NEA and NEH)” (426). His motivation for the change is fairly naïve: “Talented young American poets are now provided with an incentive to aspire for the highest position of the art, just as the young politically inclined aspire to the office of the

President of the United States” (428). This remark is akin to the long-history of the UK laureateship: the highest achievement of a poet was the degree to which he advanced in court.

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The greatest concern with which McGuire ends his historical account of the reconfiguration of the consultantship is for “poetry [to be] in the service of the state [and that] it should be used as a vehicle for patriotic sentiment and celebration by a high-class booster for the American spirit”

(432). The consequences of such a function of poetry hold several plausible outcomes. The term “poet laureate” is fairly recognizable because of its history. It connotes a closer approximation between poet and politician whereby it may be easier for people to presume that a laureate’s work represents the state. As an example of the history of the consultantship, the same government convicting a poet of treason is the same government that had initially bestowed literary honor upon him. Conversely, literary composition written to please the state devalues poetic invention. Another example is that a poet can misconstrue American sentiment such as “The Gift Outright,” thereby alienating a people such as Native Americans; and from a global perspective, projecting an impulse of American colonialism. From another perspective, politicians soliciting ideologies from poets for personal advancement in a democracy would devalue poetry to pandering.

The most recent book on the US laureateship is The Poets Laureate Anthology published by Knoph in October 2011. Its release date coincides in the late stages of this dissertation. The scope of the anthology ranges from the creation of the consultantship up to the most recent laureate, W.S. Merwin (2011). The anthology covers both positions in the

Library of Congress, perpetuating the confusion that McGuire attempted to clarify. The anthology will be used here in the introduction to contextualize the phenomenon of the laureateship, but it will not factor into the chapters because of the newness of the release. Billy

Collins states his confusion of the laureateship in the Forward, “I had hoped that this heavy book [Poetry’s Catbird Seat] might explain the meaning of the laureateship and make it clear what I now was supposed to do, but this was not the case” (xxxiii). McGuire indeed covers the history of the consultantship and deftly distinguishes it from the laureateship. Collins is clear in pointing out that the poems are to be understood as written without the US Laureateship in

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mind: “each of these poems began as smaller things” (xliii). This statement is an acknowledgement to the public not to read them as patriotic poems, but as individual poems emerging from other myriad contexts. Elizabeth Hun Schmidt, the editor of the anthology, does not offer a method that she followed for selecting poems. In the book’s acknowledgements she references collaborations with universities and colleges, and colleagues, but she does not describe what the guiding selection criteria had been.

One comment that she makes on the overall selection of consultants and laureates is that “the list of laureates could reflect a fuller span of North American identity” (xlix). What she means by identity is that most consultants and laureates have been white; she counts “few poets of Native American descent […] no Latino-American or Asian-American laureates. There have only been three African-American poets selected by the Library of Congress” (xlix). She does not give reasons why there has been such underrepresentation of ethnicities and races.

The significance of her commentary is that there will be a recognizable flaw in having a national poet until this role represents the fuller span of American identity.

This dissertation maintains McGuire’s stance that US Poet Laureateship only begins in

1985, when Congress passed an act that changed the title to “laureate.” It is a first look at the

US Poets Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. It gives a literary and cultural history of the post from 1986-2010, from Robert Penn Warren (1986) to Kay Ryan

(2010). Lists of poets who have held both positions are provided after the introduction for reference. This dissertation takes a historical approach to the laureateship different from

McGuire whose work is based largely on archival work at the Library of Congress. This dissertation offers a cultural document that defines different aspects of the laureateship. It traces a cultural history of the post by examining how the laureateship has been presented to the public. It situates laureates’ work within discussions of contemporary American poetry. It also traces the trend in laureateship toward those who have become activists in poetry by devising projects intended to bring poetry to a wider reading public. It does not intend to create

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a cultural theory of laureateship or to present a literary history for the specialist in contemporary poetry and criticism. The dissertation is intended to appeal to a generalist who appreciates poetry. I argue that the US Laureateship was not formed until 1985 and that as a new institution, it is a tradition-in-the-making. One third of the laureates are second-wave formalists, which is a tradition of poetry holding strong appeal for popular culture; the disparate geographic histories of poets both influence their poetics and build local and international reputations of the laureateship. Poetic signatures of laureates show that different laureates have the potential to appeal to audiences with different aesthetics. Lastly, I argue that the laureateship defined its cultural history by a tendency of many poets to become cultural ambassadors by designing projects that would raise awareness of the reading and writing of poetry.

Chapter One produces a cultural document of how the Library of Congress positioned the laureateship in the first twenty-five years of its emergent tradition of national laureateship.

The succession of announcements by the Librarians of Congress determined which demographics of poets were included. It also demonstrated that the laureateship continued to position itself as a vehicle for raising awareness of the reading and writing of poetry. A predominant trend in selecting poets who would create projects for the American public formed an activist role for poetry appreciation. Another major trend in the laureateship was the selection of poets who held international reputations. Responses by poets upon accepting the laureateship also informs this cultural document. Laureates grappled with how they envisioned themselves in a role that had not previously existed in the United States. Journalists’ and critics’ responses to the appointments likewise defined what it meant for America to have a new tradition in poetry. The succession of laureates determined how the laureateship continually repositioned itself as a tradition-in-the-making.

Chapter Two addresses formalism. Formalism in American poetry has a continuity in literary history spanning the past 100 years. Three generations of poets form first (modern), second (post war), and third (contemporary) waves of formalism. Robert Penn Warren, Richard

Wilbur, Howard Nemerov, Donald Hall, and Mona Van Duyn are positioned as post-war, second wave poets. These poets continued to write in traditional forms during the 1960s and 1970s, decades that esteemed non-metrical verse forms more fashionable. The majority of their peers composed in non-metrical “free verse.” Prominent critics also praised the shift away from metrical verse. There are several reasons for this. T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound promoted an aesthetics intended to loosen the poetic line. They were trying to break from “the metronome” of iambic pentameter, mostly as a reaction to Victorian verse forms. The loosening of the poetic line was supposed to be far shorter lived than they had anticipated. The trend they formed away from metrical form persists to this day. During the 1960s and 1970s, emerging poets were breaking from many cultural manifestations of the status quo, or institutions of power that they found oppressive. For many poets, meter became synonymous with the status quo. Non- metrical verse forms started to signify liberation, politically and poetically. Those who continued writing in metrical forms were considered conservatives who would not break from oppressive ideologies. They were also seen as displaying a Victorian sentimentality. From this literary aesthetics, meter also became gendered. Poets and critics drew connections between meter and sentimentality. Metrical forms were considered effeminate and sentimental; non-metrical forms were considered masculine and honest. Works from these poets laureate do not display these assumptions. Rather, their work is marked more by experimentations within metrical composition. Many of them loosened their poetic lines in subsequent decades. Nonetheless, they are situated as middle-generation formalists who in the 1960s and 1970s did not follow the trends in “free verse,” even despite the rise of non-metrical verse as it solidly became the status quo. One third of US Poets Laureate are second-wave formalists. Since so many laureates are second-generation formalists, it is possible that these poets were chosen because they represented displays of an older contract between poetry and audience, an older connection to a general public whereby readers could identify poems through a shared understanding of reading expectations.

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Chapter Three explores the relationship between geography and poetics. The selection of six laureates from disparate geographic regions indicates that the Library of Congress wanted to establish a local, national, and international reputation in the early years of this new tradition in American poetry. Three poets hold strong reputations in major cross-sections of the

US: Robert Hass from the West Coast, Ted Kooser from the Great Plains, Stanley Kunitz from

New England. These appointments bring to the national laureateship an awareness from each major geographic section of America: West, Midwest, East. Three other poets hold strong international backgrounds: Joseph Brodsky from Russia; Charles Simic from the former

Yugoslavia; and Mark Strand, who was born in Canada and raised in South America. This array of poets had the potential to appeal to audiences from different geographic backgrounds.

This diversity sheds light on the different ways in which geography influences literary composition and culture. The West Coast landscape grounds the work of Hass because he is also an environmentalist. Geography informs both his poetics and his activism. Understanding his work necessitates understanding this fusion. Kooser’s poems reflect life in the Great Plains.

He was hailed a regional poet; many of his earlier books were championed and published by small presses in Nebraska. Kunitz’s reputation is firmly rooted in New England, connecting him with poets in that region. As he grew up in an area with a long-established literary history, he had access to major literary centers. What has puzzled critics is that the infrequency of his book publications has made it difficult to trace his development as a poet. The international poets represent quite different aspects of the connections between geography and poetry.

Joseph Brodsky imported Russian poetics into English-language poems, which at times clashed with trends in American fashions of style. Simic’s poems are infused with the violence he witnessed in war-torn Eastern Europe, differentiating his presentation of surrealism from other

Americans writing in this mode. Strand is also situated as a surrealist poet, influenced instead by South American poetics. Critics differentiate his style from other surrealists. His mode of surrealism works more through negation of place and tends toward an ahistoric poetics.

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Chapter Four groups together five poets laureate because they have forged strong poetic signatures. A poetic signature is a recognizable attribute of composition that holds similarities across poems and or books. This chapter defines and characterizes the signatures of Robert Pinsky, Rita Dove, Louise Glück, Billy Collins, and Kay Ryan. Pinsky’s signature is notable for resisting categorizations. Dove’s work is notable for the range she creates in personae. Both of these poets are known to preserve historic events in poetry. The signatures of Glück and Collins could not be more different. Their works are presentations of tragedy

(Glück) and comedy (Collins). A challenge brought about by looking at these poets closely together is the degree to which tragedy is the preferred, “serious” style for poetry. Even though

Collin’s work became bestsellers, he is considered a “minor” poet while she is considered a

“major” poet because comedy in poetry is not valued as much. Ryan’s signature is quite recognizable from the form that her poems take: short poems in short lines. Her work is also known for presenting morals or lessons. Perhaps the intention of the laureateship to reach the general reading public is one reason why there are laureates who appeal to different poetic tastes. The difference in criticism on these poets to those in Chapter Two suggests a shift in criticism as well. Contemporary critics tend to focus less on discussions of metrical form as they did in the 1960s and 1970s. For the case of grouping a majority of the current poets laureate together, defining their signatures yields an understanding of the poetic identities in the early years of the laureateship.

Chapter Five evaluates poetry programming devised by US laureates. The position of

US Poet Laureate does not carry official, required duties. They do carry out the roles of the former position by overseeing investments in poetry and organizing poetry readings. Other than this, laureates are allowed to fashion this role to their liking. Some chose not to provide any other service. However, Joseph Brodksy started a trend of activism. He envisioned free distribution of poetry books in places that have a high influx of people. The succession of other laureates that have produced projects to raise awareness of the reading and writing of poetry

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suggests that poets are selected in part by the potential and desire that they may have for taking on this additional service. This Chapter defines each project and evaluates the success of each. Success is determined by the degree of connection with communities as well as the project’s sustainability. Robert Hass’s Watershed Project encourages K-12 grade students to fuse the study of language arts with science. Robert Pinsky created the Favorite Poem Project, a poetry reading that forms communities of readers celebrating their most cherished poems.

Kunitz had created projects before his laureate tenure. The Poet’s House in New York City provides workshops, lectures, and anually showcases all poetry books published within the year. He also co-founded the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachussettes. Ted

Kooser brought poetry back to newspaper print through his American Life in Poetry. Other laureates have designed projects and envisioned creative ways to raise awareness of the reading and writing of poetry, but they have far less potential in their projects being sustained or implemented by a community.

Chapter Six looks ahead to possible comparisons of who has not been chosen laureate and wh. It also anticipates transnational comparisons. Comparing laureates from the US,

Canada, England, and Australia allows this project to explore global perspectives.

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TIMELINE

Consultants in Poetry to the Library of Congress

1937-1941 Joseph Auslander

1943-1944 Allen Tate

1944-1945 Robert Penn Warren

1945-1946 Louise Bogan

1946-1947 Karl Shapiro

1947-1948 Robert Lowell

1948-1949 Leonie Adams

1949-1950 Elizabeth Bishop

1950-1952 Conrad Aiken

1952 William Carlos Williams

1956-1958 Randall Jarrell

1958-1959 Robert Frost

1959-1961 Richard Eberhart

1961-1963 Louise Untermeyer

1963-1964 Howard Nemerov

1964-1965 Reed Whittemore

1965-1966 Stephen Spender

1966-1968 James Dickey

1968-1970 William Jay Smith

1970-1971 William Stafford xx

1971-1973 JosephineJacobsen

1973-1974 Daniel Hoffman

1974-1976 Stanley Kunitz

1976-1978 Robert Hayden

1978-1980 William Meredith

1981-1982 Maxine Kumin

1982-1984 Anthony Hecht

1984-1985 Robert Fitzgerald

1984-1985 Reed Whittemore

1985-1986 Gwendolyn Brooks

Poets Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress

1986-1987 Robert Penn Warren

1987-1988 Richard Wilbur

1988-1990 Howard Nemerov

1990-1991 Mark Strand

1991-1992 Joseph Brodsky

1992-1993 Mona Van Duyn

1993-1995 Rita Dove

1995-1997 Robert Hass

1997-2000 Robert Pinsky

1999-2000 Robert Pinsky, (W.S. Merwin, Rita Dove, Louise Glück)

2000-2001 Stanley Kunitz

2001-2003 Billy Collins

2003-2004 Louise Glück

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2004-2006 Ted Kooser

2006-2007 Donald Hall

2007-2008 Charles Simic

2008-2010 Kay Ryan

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CHAPTER 1

A PORTRAIT OF US POETS LAUREATE TO THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

In 1985 the US Congress passed Senator Spark M. Matsunaga’s proposal to alter the naming of a poet’s position at the Library of Congress. Between the years 1937-1986 the library had a role for poets to act as custodians for poetry. This position was called Consultants in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Primary roles of a custodial position included overseeing the library’s poetry collection and organizing poetry readings. William McGuire's Poetry's

Catbird Seat notes Matsunaga’s motivation for the change: to “add greater visibility and prestige to the art of poetry” in the hope that future generations of poets would aspire to become US

Poets Laureate (428). The Library of Congress has a website focused solely on the newly formed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress and claims that this role

“serves as the nation’s official lightening rod for the poetic impulse of Americans […] The Poet

Laureate seeks to raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation to the reading and writing of poetry” (“About the Position”). The change in title marks a newly emerged tradition of

American poetry. Before the change, the poet’s role was to maintain investments in poetry at the Library of Congress; after the change, the poet’s role was to engage broadly with the

American public. The term “poet laureate” pulls from a literary history long established in

England. This term might have been chosen because it had potential for greater popular appeal. Prior to 1985, the US had not had a national laureate. McGuire’s historical account of the 1937-1986 consultantship clearly distinguishes between the two roles and concludes that the creation of the laureateship is the consequence of Matsunaga’s 1985 proposal.

The US laureateship is a new phenomenon, and as a new institution, it is a tradition-in- the-making. This Chapter chronologically charts who had been appointed and the reception of the appointments. This review of laureates constructs a narrative of how the tradition defined 1

itself. It defined itself through each appointment announced by the Librarian of Congress, first- hand accounts by poets’ acceptances, and responses to laureates by journalists and other poets. The succession of laureates reflects that Matsunaga’s and the Library of Congress’s vision for an increased visibility for poetry were met in different ways. Announcements by librarians revealed that each appointment repositioned what it meant for the US to have a national laureateship. National laureateship was a new institution continually shifting in the process of forming a tradition. The range in the selection of poets brings forth different takes of individuals grappling with a role the US had not formerly had. Public reception to the poets calls forth different discussions as each poet’s reputation, identity, and literary works highlights particular angles of contemporary American poetry. This Chapter constructs a cultural document of an emerging American tradition. As a cultural document, an overall portrait of US laureateship is defined.

Poets laureate are chosen by the Librarian of Congress, the current laureate and a committee that does not disclose individual member’s names to the public. There is no public record of the pool of poets considered for each appointment or of the guidelines established for the selection process.

A major drawback of this newly formed tradition is that it has thus far failed to reflect a range of race and ethnicity among American poets. There have been sixteen laureates, two small a number to reflect the vibrancy of contemporary American poetry. This particular problem—for the laureateship to reflect the cultural diversity of America—has been mocked as impossible.

The New York Times mocked the laureateship’s potential to reflect an American portrait:

The Economist of London, a bit concerned at the idea that as disparate a county as the

United States should speak with only one official poetic voice, put its doubts into verse not long ago:

'Sing for white men, sing for black ones, sing for redneck, sing for laid-back, sing in

English, Spanish, Yiddish, One voice only? Land of Frost, of e. e. cummings, E. A. Poe,

O Land of Cronkite, Land of Carson, Gertrude Stein and Hammer-ditto, Dorothy Parker,

Dolly Parton, Land of Lowell, of Howl, of Whitman! (Apple)

The challenge of choosing an American voice to represent the nation is evident, but one of the benefits of the US laureateship is the quick turnover of appointments. The UK has had a poet laureate for hundreds of years, each serving a life tenure, which was reduced to ten years after the passing of Ted Hughes in 1998. The UK laureateship had predominantly been a life appointment, officially approved by the king or queen. Life appointment was a secure position, requiring what must have been incredible vetting for the investment of one poet to represent

England for potentially quite a long time. The American adaptation is for a new appointment every year, with the possibility of a second-year renewal.

It is the quick-succession of laureates by which the Library of Congress had the potential to better represent a range of poets. This turn-over had greater potential to represent a fuller span of American identity. Because the appointments were created with such short tenures, poet had significantly less time to appeal to the American public. Each laureate represented more of a gesture of an individual poet’s mark on poetry and less of the historical role of what laureateship has meant in England. The reduction of the UK post after its historical lifetime tenure registered a need to alter the course of its tradition. Its change to a ten-year appointment can be viewed either as a lessening of the investment in one poet, or as an opportunity to increase potential for different poets to represent the UK.

Robert Penn Warren, first US Poet Laureate (1986-1987), declared he “would never have agreed to serve if he ‘had been required to compose an ode on the death of someone's kitten” (Apple). He elaborates why: “That belongs to the old system of things [...] It's part of the trappings of the monarchy—a kind of hired applauder, and I couldn't have any of that” (Apple).

The history of the UK laureate required the writing of occasional verse up to the appointment of

Wordsworth. The reputation of this history is reflected in critiques on the history of the UK laureateship: “[s]ome of the official [UK] bards turned out inspired work, but others have been viewed by posterity as self-important hacks” (Apple). Neither the UK nor the US poets laureate are required to write occasional verse. The skepticism that this statement provoked suggested that the UK’s historical requirement of such verse devalued poetics because poets could have been writing less for the advancement of the art, and more for popular appeal or for seeking the approval of particular members of the royal family. Similar skepticism had been raised about

American state laureates: “A number of American states, including Connecticut, Florida, and

Illinois, have poets laureate, and they are frequently ridiculed by critics for their output” (Apple).

The ridicule that they have received was that they write simple encomium to advance the reputation of the state for which they are laureate.

Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin announced Robert Penn Warren as the best voice for addressing the conditions of American life:

Robert Penn Warren is a characteristically American man of letters in the range and

versatility of his writings and in his feelings for the promise and the frustration of

American life. He has high attainments in poetry, fiction, criticism, and social

commentary. He has been a serious though not a solemn surveyor of our America. His

materials have included the comic, the violent, and the tawdry as well as the grand and

the heroic. He has depicted and dramatized the problems of good and evil and the

historic divisions within American society. His works in prose and poetry have been

widely read, enjoyed, and reread in the five decades of his fruitful career. If there is any

person today whose work unites our America in its splendid variety, that person is

Robert Penn Warren. With his advice and guidance we look forward to a great year.

(“Robert Penn Warren”)

Warren certainly did not reflect the problems in laureateship critics found on the state level. His literary works tended toward historical accounts of America; and as Boorstin pointed out, they

represent “frustration,” “the comic, the violent, and the tawdry.” As the first national laureate, he would not start a tradition of what McGuire had feared: for “poetry [to be] in the service of the state [or] a high-class booster for the American spirit” (432). Warren represented an aspect of a national-laureate tradition that has been carried on through subsequent appointments. The intellectual tone of the laureateship was that these writers are not poets only; they were women and men of American letters. References to versatility echoed throughout most of the announcements of national laureates. Choosing Warren as a first laureate also registered a possible large American reading public. He had the notoriety of his Understanding Poetry, which has educated generations of American students. He was widely known to critics for his central position within New Criticism. His influence continues to impact poetry appreciation today. He had the potential to garner the attention of a large American reading public in another way. He held wide recognition for his novels; they were so well circulated, reviewed and received that they inadvertently drew attention away from his poetry.

Librarian Boorstin introduced Richard Wilbur (1987-1988) as “a poet for us all, whose elegant words brim with wit and paradox. He is also a poet's poet, at home in the long tradition and the traveled ways of the great poets of our language. And he is a cosmopolitan citizen of the world of letters” (“Richard Wilbur”). A “poet's poet” is a phrase used to describe those poets who are most emulated, such as Horace, Sidney and Auden. The political implication of this

“poet's poet” was that the US laureate became an intended model for aspiring writers, one of

Matsunaga’s goals. It is most unlikely that a poet would aspire to become a laureate.

Boorstin’s presentation of Wilber’s work to the American public was as an exemplary model for writing poetry. The announcement also positioned the laureateship firmly as an international phenomenon. Wilbur was not just a man of American letters; he was deemed a man of world letters. The move from Warren to Wilbur repositioned the tradition of laureateship to reflect the

“cosmopolitan citizen of the world.”

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington built upon Boorstin's two declarations of laureates. The definition of the laureate shifted from being not only a cosmopolitan citizen of the world, but also a cultural ambassador:

Howard Nemerov [1988-1990] has given America a remarkable range of poetry, from

the profound to the poignant to the comic. He is also an outstanding critic, essayist,

fiction writer, and teacher. It is a happy moment for poetry that Howard Nemerov will

become our new ambassador of the 'republic of letters' (“Howard Nemerov”).

The laureate was now in the role of an ambassador. These first three announcements showed that the position of laureateship defined itself in the process of a tradition emerging. Warren set the intellectual tone; he was followed by two eminent men of letters. The terminology of what exactly it meant for the US to have a national laureate developed from American literary historian to cosmopolitan citizen to ambassador of the republic of letters—world letters.

Billington gave an announcement for Mark Strand (1990-1991) that had a different focus on the position: “We are pleased that a poet of the versatility and inventiveness of Mark

Strand will bring his creative energy to the position of poet laureate” (“Mark Strand”). The implication was that “creative energy” was needed and that the tradition had thus far lacked ways in which to engage with the American public. The US laureate held minimal requirements as did the consultantship. The change in focus revealed that there was a desire at the Library of Congress for some kind of poetry programming that had not yet been established. The choice in Strand also built upon the tradition defining itself as an international phenomenon.

The Washington Post noted that “Mr. Strand is considered one of the leading poets of his generation and is especially popular abroad” (Hickey). The announcements disclosed the desire that the poet have both “creative energy” and international appeal. The choice of Strand was a move toward forming an international reputation of laureateship at the Library of

Congress

The subsequent appointment built even more upon international recognition. Karen De

Witt, journalist for the New York Times, quoted Billington’s announcement of Joseph Brodsky’s

(1991-1992) potential for “bring[ing] to the post the 'penetrating observations of the outsider while exploring with increasing versatility his own and poetry's Americaness'” (De Witt). The selection of an exiled poet added a different voice for the nation, a voice representing the experience of those who have come to the US seeking refuge. Brodsky wrote about a Russia to which he could never return. She attested to his background of the outsider:

Born in 1940 in Leningrad, he worked as a laborer mill worker and merchant seaman

while writing poetry. He taught himself English by translating metaphysical poetry word

by word. Though his work became popular with underground Soviet literary circles,

Soviet authorities considered his work 'social parasitism.' As a result he was sentenced

to hard labor at a work camp in the Arctic near Archangel. (De Witt)

An international man of letters, Brodsky was a “cosmopolitan citizen” who was also an

“ambassador” of a “republic of letters” and whose work in the US was far from being considered

“social parasitism.” The tradition continued to solidify its distinction of laureateship as an international phenomenon as it widened its representatives to include the “outsider's penetrating observations” of an expatriate. It was not until the laureateship realized itself in an international role that it began to include women.

Mona Van Duyn (1992-1993) was the sixth US Poet Laureate. Billington said, “I look forward to welcoming [Mona] Van Duyn to the Library and I am particularly pleased to have a distinguished poet of such wide range joining us to promote public awareness of poetry and literature” (“LC Names”). He defended his choice by stating that “'the Library's first responsibility was to select outstanding Laureates,' and that he 'hoped to see improvements in attracting more attention to the post through increased use of media and more cross-country visits” (Sullivan). The “creative energy” that had been sought in the selection of Strand signaled that the laureateship reached for a tradition that would engage the American public. The desire

for this outreach began to make clearer contours in that the Library of Congress had targeted a method: the manipulation of media. Billington articulated a strategy that could reflect part of the

Library of Congress’s mission of laureateship. At the same time, a problem of gender representation became visible in public discourse between the changes in laureateship from

Brodsky to Van Duyn.

Part of the problem arose in the difference in introduction of the laureates to the public.

Brodksy was introduced as having a literary “penetrating observation”; Van Duyn was introduced more as a public relations coordinator. The difference in introductions took focus away from her literary work. During his tenure, Brodksy instigated creative methods for promoting awareness of poetry, but his work had first been duly noted. This is not the case with

Van Duyn. The presentation of the first woman laureate overlooked her literary merit. The main description for Van Duyn's work was that it was “distinguished”; emphasis was placed not on her poetry, but on her role of promoting poetry.

The difference in the two is also striking in that Brodsky was introduced as the

“outsider” brought in, while women have tended to be the “outsider” to mainstream literary history. The Library of Congress Gazette announced that she was “The first woman in the post since 'poet laureate' was added in 1985 to the title” (“LC Names”). The public reception of her appointment brought great attention to the place of women in this newly-formed tradition.

Gender had before been mentioned in the public discourse surrounding the laureateship.

In an interview for The Washington Post Van Duyn said, “I search my feelings, and I swear I can't find any significance [in being chosen as the first woman poet laureate]. I'm so used to there being so few women in anthologies and places of power in the poetry world that I didn't find it odd that the Library of Congress should wait seven years to get a woman”

(Streitfeld). Women have been far underrepresented. From 1986 to 2010, we have had sixteen poets laureate, four of whom have been women. In the history of the UK laureateship, it took several hundreds of years before Carol Ann Duffy was appointed the first English woman

laureate in 1999. The New York Times quoted Van Duyn’s views on the underrepresentation of women in poetry:

Women [...] have been neglected in American poetry for many years despite their

achievements. Before the laureateship was created in 1985, she said, the forerunner

position of poetry consultant at the Library of Congress was held by few women. In

fact, 25 men held the title, compared with 6 women. Furthermore, she said, a typical

poetry anthology might include 10 women and 90 men. (Molotsky)

The statistics of four out of sixteen laureates representing women is alarming; and if Van Duy’s count holds true, that a “typical anthology” represents 10 for every 90 men, then clearly women have been grossly underrepresented in the US laureateship and contemporary American poetry at large. Part of this discrepancy could be that appointment to laureate and inclusion in anthologies involved a similar selection process. Such committees have the ultimate decision on who to represent. A more equal representation is less viable if such committees have been following long-standing practices of privileging the selection of men over women. Until the committee that appoints laureates realizes the discrepancy in gender representation and values a more fair inclusion, these statistics are likely to remain the same. Warren had noted the

“trappings of the monarchy” in the history of UK laureates having to write occasional verse. In the process of adapting a tradition from another country, Congress chose which aspects of the

UK’s history to reflect in its own sense of a national laureate. The proposal that it accepted did not mandate the writing of occasional verse. It reduced tenure from life to one to two years.

What the proposal maintained was the sense that a laureate should be chosen through a process of appointment. The proposal could have envisioned the selection process in the way that Canada had in 2001. Its national laureates apply. A committee reviews and selects its laureate from a pool of applicants. This is one way for there to be better representation of women and Elizabeth Schmidt’s notion for a “fuller span of North American identity.” However, changing the appointment process is unlikely as it would require Congress to review another

proposal on the laureateship. The only solution in the time being is to make visible the demographics that have been eclipsed in the appointment process.

The appointment of Van Duyn brought forth discussions of women’s poetry. Billington stated that the “first responsibility” of the Library of Congress was the selection of “outstanding

Laureates.” The primary selection criteria must have been other than poetic merit alone. David

Lehman, series editor of Best American Poetry, and Dana Gioia, former NEA Chair, discussed the state of women’s poetry: “The best living American women poet, Lehman and Gioia said independently, is probably Adrienne Rich. The odds of the controversial Rich being made poet laureate, they said, were about as good as Jesse Helms pinning up a Mapplethorpe nude in his

Senate office” (Streitfeld). Brodsky’s envisioned activism to raise awareness of poetry was acceptable, a woman, a lesbian woman with a background in political activism, was considered a liability. Lehmann further added, “In a climate in which the arts have increasingly come under close scrutiny and in some cases even vicious attack, I have a theory that the people making the choice of poet laureate want to avoid selecting a homosexual poet, even if that person may be a great poet” (Streitfeld). Sexual identification skewed selection of “outstanding” poetry with women like Rich being discriminated against on two fronts. One implication was that women should not be too outspoken on women's issues; another was that women should follow heterosexual models either in personal life or in literary themes. In addition, the underrepresentation of women poets would make it less likely for poets like Rich to be taken seriously for national laureateship. Responding to the discussion of women's poetry that the selection of Van Duyn's appointment brought, poet and scholar Alicia Ostriker responded, “the selection of Ms. Van Duyn as laureate was important in making the presence of women visible among the major poet's in the United States and in recognizing the 'renaissance, the tremendous explosion of powerful women poets writing in this country'” (Molotsky). Other than a first move to represent women's writing in the laureateship, the Library of Congress minimally included women. From 1986-2010 there have only been four women out of sixteen laureates.

Certainly the one-to-four ratio did not reflect the gift and talents of contemporary women poets.

The tradition by far favored men in the laureateship.

The second woman laureate directly succeeded Van Duyn. At 40 Rita Dove (1993-

1995) was the youngest to have been chosen. She has also been the only black laureate.

Billington stated,

I take much pleasure in announcing the selection of a younger poet of distinction and

versatility. Having had a number of Poet Laureates who have accumulated multiple

distinctions from lengthy and distinguished careers, we will be pleased to have an

outstanding representative of a new and richly variegated generation of American

poets. Rita Dove is an accomplished and already widely recognized poet in mid-career

whose work gives special promise to explore and enrich contemporary American

poetry. (“Library of Congress Appoints Rita Dove”)

The library brought in Dove as the “ambassador” of a new generation. The only distinction in this notice from the others was that Dove was a “younger” poet in “mid-career”; Billington did not elaborate on what he meant by a “new and richly variegated generation of American poets.” Of which generation in American literary history can this statement not be made? Perhaps “richly variegated generation” is Billington's quiet manner of recasting the term “multicultural”; and yet again, any previous generation could be potentially moving toward a greater representation of multicultural poetics.

The Times reported that Dove

is further evidence of the success of black American poetry. The choice of Maya

Angelou to write an inaugural poem for President Clinton was described yesterday by

Ms Dove as a breakthrough for black poetry. 'I really did feel this shiver of hope,' she

said, 'Finally after many, many, many years, the poet is being recognized.' (Macintyre)

The poet laureateship envisioned a greater representative national voice in the appointment of

Van Duyn, interpreted by Ostriker as the visibility of the “renaissance” in women's poetry. The

presence of black poets in the laureateship was far less determined than the representation of women. The ratio was one to sixteen, as compared to four to sixteen. Van Duyn and Dove brought into public discourse elements of identity that had not previously attended responses to the laureateship. The racial and ethnic underrepresentation spanning a twenty-five year tradition is strikingly evident. The Library of Congress excluded all other races from the laureateship. It is unlikely that the committee determining laureates knowingly discriminates against women and racial groups. A possible reason for overlooking particular demographics could be that it by default was not accustomed to considering a broader range of inclusivity.

Similar underrepresentation is probably going to continue in the tradition of laureateship until the committee itself values the voices ranging American ethnic demographics. The early proposal for the laureateship was designed to be determined through a process of appointment, rather than through a pool of applicants. Because of this design, the tradition of laureateship solely rests on the predilections of the committee.

After Dove's appointment, the committee repositioned the tradition to reflect regional difference. Billington stated of Robert Hass (1995-1997),

I am pleased to announce the selection of Robert Hass, a first-rate poet from the

American West and a gifted poetic translator as Poet Laureate for 1995-96. His poetry

explores our connectedness with the ancient world and its reverberations in the

emotions of our usual lives. Using both art and nature as starting points, he leads us

into the depths of everyday existence. He looks to Central Europe in his close

collaboration with Czeslaw Milosz and to Japan in his translations of classic haiku. He

is a worthy successor to Rita Dove as poet laureate. He will design some programs

with the poets and poetry of the West, adding a further dimension to our national

outreach. (“Another Verse”)

Mentioning the American West twice indicated that the committee wanted to appeal to particular

regions, indicating, too, that it recognized the potential in region as part of the identity of the tradition. The compositional framing of the announcement opens and ends with an emphasis on place. In the appointment of Hass, place became a primary aspect of the laureateship's

“national outreach.” Hass is a poet and an ecological political activist. His role to raise awareness of American poetry was more clearly stated than in the announcement of Van Duyn, the hope that she would use media as a method of outreach. Billington already knew that Hass envisioned to “design some programs with the poets and poetry of the West.” As an activist, he designed an ecological program in 1996, The River of Words/Watershed Project, which activated poetry toward environmental preservation. In addition to the focus on regional

America, Hass as poet signaled to Europe and Asia. The combination of regional and global literature positioned the laureateship as building and reflecting a globalized American tradition.

A globalised American poetry and activism became trends in the tradition of laureateship. The

Washington Post responded to the succession of Dove to Hass:

Hass has a hard act to follow. His predecessor, Rita Dove, who served for two years,

not only fulfilled her requisite duties, but she also led a crusade to make poetry more

visible and more vital. She showed up on “Sesame Street” and on Garrison Keillor's

radio program. (Weeks, “Something Ode”)

The role of the national poet was no longer to reflect merely a woman or man of American letters, but to also take on an activist role in bringing poetry to the general public.

The appointment of Robert Pinsky (1997-2000) underscored the trend of blending high merit in poetry and versatility of writing with community outreach. Billington stated, “We are fortunate to have a poet of Robert Pinsky's versatility and wide interests as Poet Laureate [...]

His accomplishments in translation, his interest in making poetry accessible through digital technology on the Internet, and his own probing poetry promise an exciting year for us in

Washington” (“Librarian of Congress Appoints Robert Pinsky”). With the launching and success of Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project, two more poets were brought in during the US Centennial

birthday to celebrate poetry. After serving his second term, Rita Dove was brought back to join

Pinsky for this special event; Louise Glück and W. S. Merwin (both future poets laureate) joined

Dove and Pinsky. Billington noted,

Robert Pinsky [is] to serve an unprecedented third term as Poet Laureate Consultant in

Poetry. In addition, the Librarian has named three Special Consultants to assist with

the poetry programs of the Bicentennial Year. The three Special Consultants are

former Poet Laureate Rita Dove, Louise Glück, and W.S. Merwin. They will be

compensated by privately raised Bicentennial [1999-2000] funds. (“Librarian of

Congress Makes”)

These three poets joined together so that Pinsky could bring to fruition his project and others could work on the maintenance of other poetry programs. Details of why these three poets were chosen were not disclosed to the public.. The Library of Congress “want[ed] to create a once-in-a-century arrangement, not only to celebrate poetry during the 200th birthday, but also to significantly increase support for the national outreach of the Poetry Office and the Poet

Laureate” (“Librarian of Congress Makes”). The significance of this event was that the role of laureateship became another vehicle by which to celebrate a national birthday.

At the turn of the century, the Library of Congress chose a poet who was close to a century old, Stanley Kunitz. He served from 2000-2001. Symbolically, his appointment referenced the laureateship’s origin because he shared a birth year with Warren, 1905. These poets mark the same generation. Highlighted was Kunitz’s role as a literary mentor:

Stanley Kunitz is a creative poet in his 95th year, having published his first volume of

poetry in 1930. He continues to be a mentor and model for several generations of

poets, and he brings to the office of Poet Laureate a lifetime of commitment to poetry

that is a source of inspiration and admiration for us all. We derive enormous pleasure

from his willingness to serve as the nation's 10th Poet Laureate, bringing to bear his

unparalleled knowledge of 20th century poetry as we enter the 21st century. (“Librarian

of Congress Appoints Stanley Kunitz”)

While he may not have done much activism during his tenure, his activism preceded his appointment. He co-founded the Poet's House in NYC as well as the Fine Arts Work Center in

Provincetown, MA. He was a well-known mentor and inspirational presence in American poetry; one of his close mentees was Louise Glück.

The next appointment struck yet another repositioning of the tradition in that the choice was for a poet's popular appeal. On announcing Billy Collins (2001-2003), Billington stated,

“Collins's poetry is widely accessible. He writes in an original way about all manner of ordinary things and situations with both humor and a surprising contemplative twist. We look forward to his energizing presence next year” (“Librarian of Congress Appoints Billy Collins”). As the laureateship had been developing a relationship with the media and bringing awareness to poetry, the Library of Congress increasingly intended to reach the general public. For those who may have had perceptions of poetry as being mysterious or difficult, Collins was a poet whose poems are distinctively approachable. Moreover, he already had an established relationship with the general reading public. Others such as Warren, Nemerov, and Wilbur had been embraced by critics as “academic” poets, a term indicating a more exclusive readership.

Collins stated in The Washington Post another way in which he differed from his colleagues: “I'm probably the only poet laureate who's never read at the Library of Congress [...]

I'm probably the only poet laureate who has never met any of his predecessors” (Weeks). He differed from his predecessors in another way: “Billy Collins believes he's an outsider because he's never played the Poetry Game. 'I've never taken a workshop. [...] 'I don't send poems to other poets'” (Weeks, “The Bard”). What Collins referred to here is that one of the duties laureates held was to bring in a series of poets to read at The Library of Congress; former laureates had been brought to DC in a circuit to give readings, but in a way perhaps to interview for the laureateship. The poets who were appointed laureate, the projects they designed, the

kinds of identities they represented, and the region from which they came contributed to the ways the laureateship revealed itself as a tradition-in-the-making.

Collins resembled his predecessors in that he held an international reputation. The

Irish Times touted Collins as “[o]ne of the best-selling poets in the world [His] popular success has rendered him the American media's first port of call whenever poetry-related soundbites are required” (“Keep it Simple”). Even though a poet may achieve momentous acclaim and awards, it is rare for a poet's work to become a bestseller, whether in the US or abroad. Collins's popular appeal could have been one of the reasons he was appointed. His bestselling poetry books in the international market had the potential to bring international recognition to the

Library of Congress. It was one thing for the library to position the laureateship as an international phenomenon. It was another to select a poet whose success in the literary market could bring international attention to the tradition of laureateship in the US. “Poet laureate” is printed on the front covers of his books, thus bringing attention to the position.

The Washington Post pointed out the difference between Collins and the next appointed, Louise Glück (2003-2004) : “Glück may prove to be a different kind of laureate from those of recent years. Outgoing laureate Billy Collins was well, outgoing. [Collins states,]

'Some of us have chosen to spend a lot of time running around the country lighting poetry bonfires [...] The job can be tailored to each individual's personality” (Weeks, , “Glück”). Her response to accepting the post in The New York Times reflected the difference: “I feel honored, but I have not sought public life, so that piece of it is unnerving” (Olson). In addition to being one of Stanley Kunitz's long-term mentees, “[o]ne of her best friends is former poet laureate

Robert Pinsky, whom she talks to nearly every day” (Weeks, “Glück”). Glück was well within the poetry circles at the Library of Congress and far from the feeling Collins had of being an outsider. What she brought to the laureateship was the spark and influence of Kunitz's dedication to craft as well as mentorship. Glück 's emphasis while in the Poetry Office was to bring attention to the work of young writers. Billington stated of her, “Louise Glück will bring to

the Library of Congress a strong, vivid, deep poetic voice, accomplished in a series of book- length poetic cycles. Her prize-winning poetry and her great interest in young poets will enliven the Poet Laureate's office during the next year” (“Librarian of Congress Appoints Louise Glück”).

From her interest in young poets, she carried on the vision of others who have shared this sense of mentorship: Nemerov and Dove.

After an appeal to popular poetry and a return to “serious” poetry, the laureateship appealed again to regionalism. As Hass represented the poet of the West, Ted Kooser (2004-

2006) represented the poet from rural, Great Plains America. The Washington Times noted

Billington's focus on the Great Plains: “Ted Kooser is a major poetic voice for the rural and small town American and the first Poet Laureate chosen from the Great Plains. His verse reaches beyond his native region to touch on universal themes in accessible ways” (Weeks, “Nebraska's

Ted Kooser”). The popular appeal of Collins was reiterated in the selection of an “accessible” poetry, indicating that while poetic merit was one quality for laureateship, so too was the appeal to a general readership. Collins claimed, “Kooser's appointment is 'an international pick' [...]

The middle section of the country needed greater poetic representation” (Weeks, “Nebraska's

Ted Kooser”). What Collins could have been reiterating in this statement is that universal themes in regional poetry appeal beyond local and national borders. The definition of US laureateship continued to strive for the balance of being or becoming both regional and international. Kooser obtained particular national recognition when he won the Pulitzer Prize.

His astonishment of the laureateship and the award was captured in the Library of Congress

Information Bulletin. Kooser had not expected such recognition:

I was idly reading e-mails and found one from a woman in the public relations

department of the University of Nebraska, saying she needed a quote from me about

winning the Pulitzer. That was the first I'd heard of it. I was flabbergasted. I thought

that being appointed poet laureate was a miracle, and now this! (Urschel)

He was first notified by the University of Nebraska about the Pulitzer. Before the Pulitzer and laureateship, Kooser figured like Collins more outside of the literary establishment, although in a different way. While Collins did not play the “Poetry Game,” he is a professor at Lehman

College. Kooser represented a literary tradition of poets who came from non-academic careers.

The Washington Post brought attention to the position of his career; he was “a retired vice president of Lincoln Benefit Life insurance company in Nebraska” (Weeks, “Nebraska's Ted

Kooser”). In response to being compared to Wallace Stevens for working as a lawyer, Kooser humorously pointed out the difference. He does not write on the job like Stevens; he “got in the habit of getting up at 4:30 or 5 every morning to write before I went to work [...] Wallace Stevens

[...] did not have to rise so early. 'Stevens had a better job than I did. I believe he had plenty of time to write in his office'” (Weeks, “Nebraska's Ted Kooser”). The selection of a poet outside of academia brought in the literary tradition of modernist poets who likewise held different careers:

Eliot was a banker and then worked for Faber and Faber; William Carlos Williams was a pediatrician.

After representing a poet “outside” of academia, the next selection was Donald Hall

(2006-2007), a poet who after significant success as a man of letters in academia left the

University of Michigan to move to rural New England in order to live by his pen. These two distinct phases of Donald Hall's career placed him within both of these traditions—the academic and the independent poet. He left academia in order to have more command over his time and writing. Billington noted Hall's reputation within the field of poetry: “Donald Hall is one of

America's most distinguished and respected literary figures. For more than 50 years, he has written beautiful poetry on a wide variety of subjects that are often distinctly American and conveyed with passion” (“Librarian of Congress Appoints Donald Hall”). Sven Birkerts, editor of the literary magazine AGNI, claimed “He's one of the last people around living the full life of the man of letters,” which suggests that academia is no longer producing scholars who write across a range of genres (Thompson, “Set to Verse”).

Hall was the first laureate to which Billington publicly prescribed limitations on the poet's role. Hall was not a poet to hold his tongue concerning tensions between poetry and politics.

Early on in accepting the appointment, he reflected on the time he served for another government position: “It was a time of bitter political controversy over NEA grants to art projects, especially those involving homosexual themes, and Hall argued strongly that the NEA should not act from the 'fear of bigots'” (Thompson, “Set to Verse”). Hall has voiced what is usually disclosed only to the ears of NEA committee members, making public the government's discrimination in grant funding. The New York Times brought his prior experience into public discourse: “[Hall had been] a harsh critic of the religious right's influence on government arts policy. And as a member of the advisory council for the National Endowment for the Arts during the administration of George H. W. Bush, he referred to those he thought were interfering with arts grants as ‘bullies and art bashers’'' (Smith). Billington responded that poets laureate “are chosen for their poetry, not chosen to make a statement about anything else” (Smith). Rich and political activists like her had certainly been discriminated against by the government. The implication was that while it was alright to be activists for the reading and writing of poetry, it was not alright to be vocal about discrimination against homosexuals in government grant funding. The difference between Hall and Rich is the degree to which they approached activism. Hall pointed out discrimination. Rich's activism was part of the feminist movement in the 1970s. As a US Poet Laureate, if she were to raise awareness to discrimination in grant funding, it is possible that she would garner a following that would lead the instigation of political change. Hall's activism had not been that far reaching. Hall responded with humor to his civic role of laureateship; he “didn't see the poet laureateship as a bully pulpit. 'But it's a pulpit anyway [...] If I see First Amendment violations, I will speak up'” (Smith).

Following Donald Hall, Charles Simic (2007-2008) represented a poet who has always been aware of the pressures of politics and language. In The Library of Congress News

Release, Billington announced Simic's upcoming tenure:

The range of Charles Simic's imagination is evident in his stunning and unusual

imagery. He handles language with the skill of a master craftsman, yet his poems are

easily accessible, often meditative and surprising. He has given us a rich body of

highly organized poetry with shades of darkness and flashes of ironic humor. (“Librarian

of Congress Appoints Charles Simic”)

Much of this statement could have been made of any of the laureates thus far appointed.

Perhaps such blanket statements avoided possible controversy over who was chosen and exactly why. What was different in this notice were the words “shades of darkness.” His appointment hearkened back to the selection of Brodsky in that he learned the English language later in life. Simic said: “I am especially touched and honored to be selected because

I am an immigrant boy who didn't speak English until I was 15” (“Librarian of Congress Appoints

Charles Simic”). He told The New York Times about his Belgrade upbringing:

I'm sort of the product of history; Hitler and Stalin were my travel agents [...] If they

weren't around, I probably would have stayed on the same street where I was born. My

family, like millions of others, had to pack up and go, so that has always interested me

tremendously: human tragedy and human vileness and stupidity (Rich).

He was a “cosmopolitan citizen of the world” like Wilbur, but Simic's passage to becoming a cosmopolitan citizen was forced. The reception of choosing Simic focused on the startling violence of his background. The Boston Globe noted the “vileness” that Simic depicts in his work:

Simic was born in Belgrade in 1938. His family was caught in the maelstrom of war

among Germans, Russians, communists, fascists, and other warring armies and

factions. They lived first through German bombing and, later in the war, American

bombing. He was twice blown out of bed by bombs that fell nearby. Near the end of

the war, arrests, killings, and hunger increased, and bodies appeared in rivers and the

streets. Playing with other boys in a cemetery, Simic came across two dead German

soldiers. (Mehegan)

Another similarity that Simic and Brodsky shared was that this appointment again positioned the laureateship in the view of a globalized America. Hass and Kooser at times wrote of regional

America; Simic and Brodsky at times wrote of war-torn Eastern Europe. Taken together, the appointments of these poets indicated that the Library of Congress defined the geographic landscape for contemporary American poetry as emerging across multiple borders. Which borders could be crossed and represented in the laureateship remained selective. Refugees from Eastern Europe were appointed, but a similar openness had not been extended across contiguous US borders: all of North, Central and South America.

The subsequent appointment was another poet from the American West, Kay Ryan

(2008-2010). One of the ways in which she responded to her new role was to point out how her career differed from the poet-scholar. She taught part-time at a community college in order to have more time devoted to writing. Library of Congress Information Bulletin stated that this may be a touchstone of inspiration to others:

Patricia Gray, coordinator of the Library's Poetry and Literature Center, noted that

although Ryan's appointment as Laureate may disrupt her quiet life temporarily, her

career path is likely to inspire poets everywhere who work independently, forgoing time-

consuming career tracks and more remunerative positions so they can lead lives that

nourish their writing. (“Librarian of Congress Appoints Kay Ryan”)

Like Collins, Ryan did not play the “Poetry Game”; she was a model to aspiring writers in several ways. Foremost, Like Hall who resigned from academia and Kooser who woke up before sunrise to write, she placed writing as her first priority. Rather than following the academic path of specializing in creative writing, and rather than following degrees that would lead to a tenure-track position at a university, she independently honed her craft. She apprenticed herself to the art of poetry. Before “[h]er poems [had] been widely reprinted and

internationally anthologized [and became] a Chancellor of the Academy of American poets,” she learned to develop her craft alone (Thompson, “Verse of the Turtle”). The Washington Post noted that she had been rejected from the poetry club while attending UCLA: “At UCLA, the poems she submitted were judged not to meet the poetry club's standards. She 'lept away, mortally stung' and afterward 'stayed pretty remote from the joining business” (Thompson,

“Verse of the Turtle”). Her ultimate success as a poet revealed that pursuing a specialized degree in creative writing was not necessary. During the first year of her laureateship in 2009, she attributed the inspiration to continue developing her art to her partner who had just passed away:

It took her eight years to get a poem accepted at a serious poetry magazine and 10

more to get into the New Yorker. Ryan says she doesn't know how she could have

endured the rejection without Carol Adair, the woman with whom she's shared her life

for close to 30 years. They met when both were teaching classes at San Quentin State

Prison. (Thompson, “Verse of the Turtle”)

Ryan was the third laureate chosen by the Library of Congress that placed the discipline and inspiration of writing first and chose careers that would sustain focused attention on poetry.

Hall, Kooser, and Ryan chose more untraditional lifestyles that most benefited their creative- writing process. This account of Ryan also reflected the mission of the laureateship: to increase awareness of not only the reading, but also the writing of poetry. The Library of Congress presented a model for writing poetry that did not resemble the university creative-writing workshop. Billington gave a summary of her self-styled poetics. He claimed, “[s]he writes easily understandable short poems on improbable subjects. Within her compact compositions there are many surprises in rhyme and rhythm in sly wit pointing to subtle wisdom” (“Library of

Congress Appoints Kay Ryan”). Ryan's poems interrogate the everyday in understandable poetic logic that revels in mystery and wisdom.

She was chosen for a second term for the energy she brought to the laureateship:

Kay has been an uplifting presence as Laureate during the past year, and her poetry

continues to awe and delight readers. In her appearances at the Library, Kay has

captivated audiences with her fresh insights into the beauty, power and importance of

poetry. We are looking forward to her announcement this fall of a project she hopes to

establish. (“Librarian of Congress Appoints Kay Ryan to Second Term”)

The trend of activism in the laureateship was one of the most frequent aspects this newly emerged tradition. These first US Poets Laureate represented key ways in which the nation formed a tradition for contemporary American poetry. Many laureates were presented to the public as models for both the reading and writing of poetry. Equal gender and racial representation was the most neglected aspect of the laureateship's early formation. Even while the Library of Congress vastly narrowed this aspect of identity in the laureateship, it clearly viewed and positioned itself as taking part in an international exchange of poetry, both from the identities and the works of particular individuals.

The literary production of laureates defined what the Library of Congress meant by representing the “nation’s official lightening rod for the poetic impulse of Americans.” Its choice in laureates defined what it most valued in contemporary American poetry. Common threads of poetics are found in the grouping of US Poets Laureate. While they can be clustered according to an approximating poetics, each poet's work brings in particular issues within these common themes or practices. Chapter Two focuses on poets that maintained a more traditional-verse technique in decades that deemed non-metrical composition more fashionable. Literary criticism proves that while the works of Mona Van Duyn, Donald Hall, Howard Nemerov,

Richard Wilbur, and Robert Penn Warren were undercut for pursuing a more traditional poetics, the gendering of meter that took place in the 1960s and 1970s thrust the harshest impact on the woman writer who did not break from tradition.

CHAPTER 2

AN AMERICAN MOVEMENT: A METER-MAKING ARGUMENT

Out of the poetry “anthology wars” of the 1950s and 1960s, a reaction to modernism resulted in a divide of perceptions and attitudes about the formal properties of poetry. Culling a phrase from Claude Lévi Strauss, Robert Lowell claimed in 1960 that there were two forms of poetry: the cooked and the raw. Cooked poetry was a versification whereby poets worked within received forms of tradition such as the sonnet, ballad, villanelle; raw poetry was a versification whereby poets worked toward capturing the process of how forms unfold in “free verse.” The predominant trends of the literary market have privileged the raw, non-metrical verse. And yet prominent poets have continued working within elaborate closed forms of versification, rather than following the more fashionable poetic trends of these decades.

Christopher Beach’s Cambridge Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Poetry traces three generations of formalism: “the first of these moments was associated with the New

Criticism of the 1920s and 1930s; the second included formalists of the generation who emerged in the 1940s and 1950s […] A third wave of formalist poetry, identified as ‘New

Formalism,’ began in the 1980s” (139). Debates about metrical and non-metrical versification have persisted for close to a hundred years. Beach clearly sides with “raw” poetry.

Beach locates formalism as a transatlantic movement and places W.H. Auden and the

New Critics such as Robert Penn Warren as major influences on other formalist, post-war poets such as Richard Wilbur, Howard Nemerov and Donald Hall. In addressing contemporary

American poetry, Beach makes clear that his selection of poems and critiques are to make wider sweeps for his claims. He chooses one poem from Richard Wilbur to represent formalist, post-war poets.

He says of Wilbur’s “A Simile for her Smile,” “[d]espite all of the ways the poem is successful […] we cannot consider it an important poem” (146). He does not see the poem transforming through complexities as with poems by New Critics; primarily, all Beach finds in

Wilbur’s work is technical proficiency. He goes on to say that “[t]he poems that made the greatest impact on the development of American poetry during the 1950s and 1960s were not those written in the formal style” (148). Robert Lowell and Robert Creeley are the poets Beach most values as developing American poetry. On the rise of the third generation of formalism,

Beach gives praise for New Formalists writing “competent” verse, claiming the complexity of work from the New Critics has been lost. He claims that “the poetry [of New Formalism] has developed no new critical or theoretical apparatus to support it” by comparing it with

LANGUAGE poetry that developed its own poetics (153). He claims that New Critics developed

American poetry because they wrote poems reflecting extensions from a theoretical base.

Thus, by development he means that there a movement develops across both poetry and a poetics. His claim for second and third-wave formalists implies that “raw” poetry still reigns in contemporary American poetry.

While Beach shows the transatlantic connection between post-war formalists and

Auden, he does not elaborate on the deeper connection to American and English poetics. The third edition of the Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry’s discussion of The

Movement and New Formalism indicates a closely approximating poetics. The Movement “tried to reclaim a native English line of civil, rational, and accessible poetry that bypassed the complexities of a supposedly imported modernism” (Iv). New Formalist poets’ work aimed to

“have the potential to restore the tattered social contract between poet and the common reader”

(Ixi). This transatlantic connection indicates that formalist, post-war poets are the middle generation from modernist to contemporary American poetry who maintained a common thread of a “civil, rational, and accessible poetry.” One third of US laureates are from this second wave

of formalists, indicating that laureates may have been chosen for a poetics that could reach “the common reader.”

Beach’s summation of contemporary American poetry plays out in the reviews of

Warren, Wilber, Hall, Nemerov and Mona Van Duyn. The reign of “raw” poetry becomes more problematic when discussion of gender and meter intertwine. The grouping of these laureates shows that not only have formal poets’ work been devalued, not following the more fashionable trends in the 50s and 60s also discloses gender politics emerging in poetics. He concludes that

“as feminist critics have argued, the invention of modernist form by male authors was in part an attempt to ‘rescue’ literary writing from what they saw as the ‘effeminacy’ of late-nineteenth century literature” and that women writers of the first two waves “have been rediscovered by readers and critics less under the sway of high modernist tastes” (72). The problem of a reigning “raw” poetry and Beach’s recognition that “women poets of the modernist era have not fared well” and “were often neglected by anthologists and critics” becomes evident in his own omission of Van Duyn in his discussion of second-wave formalists (72). Grouping the post-war formalist laureates together more fully defines the ways in which critics positioned assumptions about formalism as an effeminate poetics.

Maintaining formalism during the post-war years has had an impact on their reputations.

In addition to their appointments as US Poets Laureate, Warren, Nemerov, Wilbur, and Van

Duyn are Triple Crown poets, meaning that they have received the Bollingen Prize for Poetry,

National Book Award for Poetry, and Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Despite earning some of the highest achievements in American letters, resistance to their work becomes visible by the exclusion, or limited inclusion, in major anthologies. Reviewing a few major anthologies shows the degree to which these poets are anthologized in relation to one another: Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, second edition (Warren, eight poems; Wilbur twelve poems); The Poetry

Anthology (Warren two poems; Wilbur four poems; Nemerov three poems; Hall three poems);

Top 500 Poems (Wilbur one). This review shows inequity in gender representation. Their

awards indicate that they approximate each other in terms of poetic merit. Part of the reason for this inequity is that meter itself became gendered as effeminate. Critics did not respond favorably to poets who primarily wrote in traditional form. As women historically have been published less than men, a formalist woman would be far less likely to be anthologized. The case of Van Duyn discloses assumptions held both about formalism and the woman poet.

Mona Van Duyn (1992-1993)

Van Duyn’s minimal inclusion in anthologies may indicate that resistance to formalism can be particularly silencing to the woman poet. Continuing to write traditional verse and not assimilating to the status quo of non-metrical verse could have had particularly damaging consequences to her establishment in American letters. That Van Duyn is a Triple Crown poet like her contemporaries included in this chapter, it becomes evident that her work has been established as holding equal merit by those bestowing the highest accolades in poetry. The omission of her work in major anthologies stands as a representative factor of gender politics.

Despite several nominating committees bestowing her with major literary awards, she still does not figure well in major anthologies. The difference could be that Beach’s claim that women were disregarded by critics and anthologists implies that formalist women writers had a harder time being anthologized than women poets writing in non-metrical verse.

Contemporary poet-critic Annie Finch addresses woman formalists in A Formal Feeling

Comes, an anthology of verse by first-wave modernists to New Formalist women writers. In this anthology, poems are gathered to “contradict the popular assumption that formal poetics correspond to reactionary politics and elitist aesthetics” (1). The purpose of this specialized anthology is to show how for “serious twentieth-century women poets, traditional poetic form is a troubled legacy” (1) and that “almost all of the women poets of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had fallen out of print—and most certainly out of fashion” (2). Rather than write in the more fashionable non-metrical verse forms, Van Duyn frequently wrote “in the

historically powerful poetic forms in order to transform them and claim some of their strength”

(5). The neglect of literary representation and criticism on formalist women writers reinforces the gender discrimination these writers faced; and this neglect denies the power women writers have found in traditional verse forms, by working within the very forms that have historically positioned women poets outside of literary traditions.

A formalist poetics does not necessarily import conservative values. During the 1960s and 1970s, the predominant trend of “free verse” was a reaction against conservative values; those that did not follow the tenet of an assumed “liberated” verse were seen as holding onto forms of poetry and institutions that connoted oppression.

In her 1970 collection of poetry To See, To Take, Van Duyn writes a series of stanzaic mock-singles’ ads found in the back pages of a free-standing city newspaper entitled “‘Billings and Cooings from the Berkeley Barb’ (Want Ad Section).” In this poem, she captures the spirit of the sexual revolution. The poem begins, “…Couples sought (enclose photograph please) / by couple who’ve expeditiously run through / (and are eager for permutations de quatre, de seize) / all known modes of the sweet conjunction of two” (67). The ad runs from Van Duyn voicing swingers to relationships among different sexualities (“Gay guy needs, for a few conventional / dances and such, fem Lez to pose as date, / in return for which she can really have a ball / with her butch friend at parties he’ll give in private”) to commentary on campus

“enlightenment” (“How bright the scholars who use a previous schooling / to get the further enlightenment they want! / rounded girl will do it hung from the ceiling / by ropes in exchange for a used copy of Kant”) to commenting on explicitly stated desires and enthusiasm of the sexual revolution (“How dazzling love’s infinite variety! / How fertile is nature in her forms of joy! / seeks, in the area around Berkeley, / another male whose fetish is corduroy” (68). As she has other poems warmly addressing homosexuality, this poem comes across as a celebratory inclusiveness extending to genders, sexualities, and sexual expressions; the ads and the speaker’s commentaries on the ads reflect a delight and humorous witness to the sexual

revolution. Some of her other poems address a similar, liberal political leaning. In the 1990s she wrote “Addendum to ‘The Block,’” a poem addressing the civil right of abortion. Such poems show that assumptions about form can be generalized to poets’ subject matter. Just because

Van Duyn is known for her mastery of the ballad does not mean that she is a poet who holds neo-conservative views. Instead, she experiments with form within the modernist tradition of formalism in order to express gender politics.

Van Duyn produced work in decades of a “troubled legacy” for women formalist writers.

Yet this is only one possible pressure against her work. Another influence is from a broader gender politics: the position of the woman writer. A collection of critical essays on her work,

Discovery and Reminiscence, brings some of these biases into view.

Sidney Burris attests that her social role, gender and class have contributed to her having been eclipsed by other poets in the earlier decades in which she wrote. Carolyn Kizer stresses the social gender divide: “long before most poets begun writing about domestic matters—‘relationships’ in the most inclusive meaning of that overused term; friendship, which only the T’ang poets had truly dealt with; life in suburbia, a subject which wasn’t ‘poetic’ according to the careful, elegant male poets fashionable then—Ms. Van Duyn was mistress of the world as we actually lived it” (7). This statement implies that critics were not impressed with poems addressing the domestic sphere. An emergent tradition of the suburban housewife’s relationship with nature was harder for some to value. Van Duyn’s work was thus in a double bind of writing formalist verse with content that critics disregarded.

“The Creation” (1970) is a poem of a speaker mourning the loss of a close friend. While erasing a drawing of the deceased, this speaker reminisces about the times they spent together. Moments of friendship are captured: “The hours we had to drink / before you put the dinner on!” is amplified by the speaker’s slipping into a reverie: “we were all so drunk / it didn’t matter, or should you strain / the Mornay sauce” (100). By directly addressing the deceased, the speaker in a way tries to defy death. The speaker continues to conjure up shared moments

while erasing the portrait: “When our repartee would run / too fast, or someone’s anecdote / run long, or someone mention / a book you hadn’t read, / that smile meant you were hidden” (102).

This is an intimate friendship; the speaker holds onto moments of small gestures that only close friends could know. Grief and the loss of friendship are accepted once the portrait is fully erased and blown from the page. Van Duyn addresses domestic matters, including friendships entering that sphere.

Burris suggests why she may have been chosen Poet Laureate of the United States:

the psychological integrity of Van Duyn’s ‘inwardness’—which, as I have indicated,

might well be one of the privileges of living in a liberal democracy—is not compromised

by its lack of engagement with institutional or organized oppression. In fact, the

meditational privacy that the poems so deeply depend upon for their genesis and

development indicates that in a suburban neighborhood in St. Louis, her inwardly

profound and private relationship with humanity and nature reveal that in St. Louis, the

most egregious forms of tyranny are being held in abeyance. Perhaps such moments,

free of oppression, idyllic, privileged, will always be essentially private ones. Such a

fecund privacy we now take for granted in this country and it is one of the important

accomplishments of Van Duyn (71).

Burris contrasts this position to poets of witness such as Seamus Heaney and Czeslaw Milosz, claiming, “how well can a poem fare whose subject concerns the travails of resisting a suburban winter in St. Louis?” Van Duyn’s poems generally attend to matters close to home. Further, unlike Wilbur and Nemerov, she never experienced military life. The crises in her poems are located in safer, day-to-day experiences. Many of her titles immediately situate such experiences: “Notes from a Suburban Heart,” “Earth Tremors Felt in Missouri,” “Relationships,”

“That Was My Grandfather,” “Evening Stroll in the Suburbs.” Her treatment of subjects also employs the literary quality of the plain style.

Steven Yenser defines Van Duyn’s use of idiom as comparable to “Wordsworth’s

notorious demand for “‘a language really used by men,’ not to mention women, and for a

‘plainer and more emphatic’ poetic mode [which] is also answered in her poems” (18). Van

Duyn’s “Letters from a Father” (1982) is written as a series of six letters to a daughter, which reveal her character. They well represents Van Duyn’s poetic idiom. With this piece, it is through the connection with his daughter that the father’s attention is drawn from the enfeeblement of his body to the vim of life. In the first letter, he is prepared to die: “Have made my peace / because am just plain done for and have no doubt / that the Lord will come any day with my release” (131). He yearns for release from pain:

Ulcerated tooth keeps me awake, there is

such pain, would have to go to the hospital to have

it pulled or would bleed to death from the blood thinners,

but can’t leave Mother, she falls and forgets her salve

and her tranquilizers, her ankles swell so and her bowels

are so bad, she almost had a stoppage and sometimes

what she passes is green as grass (131)

This is clearly the plain style. In addition to being responsible for another while he has an ulcerated tooth, the father is simultaneously enduring ill health from prostate, high blood pressure. He has a leg brace and is given to falls, has heart failure, and feels isolated in his home life. He transfers this pain onto chastening what he sees as his daughter’s hapless thrift.

She spends her “good money” on “grain for birds,” which not only is a waste of resources, but also encourages “disease and turds” (131). Van Duyn acutely and directly expresses the physical pain of the dying process. On Van Duyn’s poems of death and dying, Ann Townsend notes that “[s]he has a keen ear for the ironies of medical jargon, charting the indignities of scientific procedures and the callous dehumanizing of patients by the medical staff. And she explores the ways in which the sick are isolated from every concern but that of the body” (80).

Contrasting from deaths in hospitals, this poem humanizes the process of dying at home; but

even though the dying process is at home, Van Duyn urges the reader to see death, to see the pain and the importance of family during life’s last rite of passage.

The father writes that he and his wife “won’t be living / more than a few weeks longer” and thanks her for the feeder and feed that she gave them when she last visited (132). The loving gesture of this gift transforms the focus of pain into joy: “The birds are eating and fighting:

HA! HA!” (132). The speaker’s parents enjoy bird watching so much that the mother asks for a book on birds. Joy heightens with jokes about a few birds flying into their window. He ends one letter, “P.S. The book just came in the mail” (133). As the climax of the narrative, the description of birds shifts from genera to species: “Fox Sparrows, Song Sparrows, Vesper

Sparrows, Pine Woods and Tree and Chipping and White Throat and White Crowned Sparrows”

(133). The fifth letter describes 24 species of birds, several by specific behavior. Van Duyn has humanized dying; medical codification and hospital diction has been replaced with classifications of birds. The couple spends the day reading about birds and watching them. In the last letter, the father discloses that he has gotten someone to go to the library for him and check out books on bird behavior and notes that he “will need thistle seed” (134). While there are health updates in the letters, the tone of the father erupts in jubilation. His character transforms from having felt isolated to inviting other bird watchers from church to join them.

Donald Hall (2006-2007)

One reason that Hall’s work is not well represented in anthologies may be that it is an aesthetics closely approximating Van Duyn’s: employment of an everyday idiom set in a more predictable meter concerning domestic subjects and with an intense sense of inwardness.

Critics address his work as such. And yet there are other layers contributing to the complexity of evaluating Hall’s work. Critics are conflicted about his work because of shifting debates on what is considered proper poetic decorum.

A historical review of critics’ reception to Hall’s work reveals an arc of aesthetics developing from the 1950s to 1980s that favors metrical precision, a slackening of form, and a return to metrical dexterity: “Mr. Hall nowhere experiments or takes risks with his form, being evidently content to work with the given, except for a little roughening here and there” in 1955

(206); “the traditional formal patterns of verse favoured ten years ago have now been abandoned largely by younger poets in preference for free and syllabic forms so self-effacing that their expressive function is in doubt” in 1963 (215); “Alas, Mr. Hall has perhaps improved; alas, he has not improved enough to matter” in 1971 (231); “[w]hatever talent or promise there was in Hall’s early books has almost entirely given way to a formulaic pandering to the basest kind of popular taste” in 1975 (233); Hall “suffered especially in the 1960s when forms loosened up” in 1986 (256); “[g]reat craft informs this poem, the sort of employment of techniques and devices one scarcely hopes to find in anyone’s work anymore” in 1988 (279). While there are numerous accounts of each age searching for a way to freshen its poetic language, Timothy

Steele contends that never before had meter been abandoned in that pursuit. What began as a modern project to experiment in older forms resulted in free verse becoming a fashion in and of itself, a non-metrical ideology that was “reinforced by the iconoclasms of the sixties” and “the burgeoning of creative writing programs” that “[emphasized] contemporary literature” (281).

Hall is also precariously placed by critics between his dual role as a poet-critic. W.D.

Snodgrass asserted that Hall “was the arbiter of poetic taste here; his appraisal, more than anyone’s determined your place in the literary world” (42). Snodgrass differentiated between

Hall’s early and later standing as a poet-critic, claiming that in the early years his poems lagged far behind his assessment as a critic. His later years reversed this standing as, according to

Snodgrass, his poems outshot his criticism. Snodgrass had a complicated relationship with

Hall: “Don’s rigid metrics […] helped me sour on his early poems. I didn’t want to lose a friend—certainly not one who liked my work” (45). While Hall as a critic helped the young poet,

Snodgrass “resorted to the lie” that he hadn’t read his poems (43). His personal testimony of

working with Hall disclosed a double bind of writing poems to please a critic while avoiding addressing Hall’s metrical verse, which was then perceived as an outdated verse form. As a critic, Hall had more of a diversified interest in poetry; however, his dual role did not influence his literary composition. As “the arbiter of poetic taste,” Snodgrass’s comment suggests Hall’s openness of selecting from a range of emerging poetics while editor of the Paris Review (1953-

1961). As a poet, his adherence to metric verse ran counter to some of his closest friends’ poetic interests.

Hall is a poet, Robert McDowell states, of rural New England: “Apples” and “Mount

Kearsarge” (1969) are poems that “work because a personal, localized sense of history—and by extension the history of our country—is alive in them” (156). He praises “Kicking the Leaves”

(1978) as a “perfect synthesis of formal and free verse” (160). It is the title poem for the collection that he sees as Hall’s breakthrough. On a walk home, the speaker recounts

“Octobers walking to school in Connecticut, / wearing corduroy knickers that swished / with a sound like leaves,” and other journeys home and to school as he bought “a cup of cider at a roadside stand / on a dirt road in New Hampshire; and kicking the leaves, autumn 1955 in

Massachusetts, knowing / my father would die when the leaves were gone” (79). He associates the clothing surrounding his flesh with the sounds of leaves swishing underfoot.

This sense of comfort and identification with leaves transforms into comprehension of how seasons mark time and labor. He turns to the work involved with fall as he reminisces about his mother’s parent’s home: “canning, storing roots and apples / in the cellar,” a place where “we cut spruce boughs / and laid them across the leaves” (80). The work exerted from youth has been deeply internalized.

On his walk home in Ann Arbor, the speaker’s attention alters between past memories and the present until his imagination is struck and held by the sheer brilliance of leaves:

This year the poems came back, when the leaves fell.

Kicking the leaves, I heard the leaves tell stories,

remembering, and therefore looking ahead, and building

the house of dying. I looked up into the maples

and found them, the vowels of bright desire.

I thought they had gone forever

while the birds sang, I love you, I love you

and shook its black head

from side to side, and its red eye with no lid,

through the years of winter, cold

as the taste of chickenwire, the music of cinderblock. (81)

Like Wordsworth and Emerson, the poet fosters imagination by the relationship between human and nature. Like Wordsworth, it is the kinetic energy of walking through and with nature that releases stored-up memories. Sound and sense fuse from the recollection of his flesh touching the swishing of his corduroy pants to his observation of a singing bird bobbling its head, which translates as the speaker’s devotion of nature. The speaker feels the bird expressing this devotion back to him. At this titillating moment, nature takes on a full sensuousness: the barrenness of winter and remembrance of death are tasted in the mouth; the rhythms of nature culminate in the music heard by having listened to cinder blocks, that deep scrape.

Many critics note a discernable divergence of Hall’s work before and after 1958. This divergence mirrors shifting aesthetics of proper poetic decorum. Liam Rector notes that while at

Harvard, Hall’s classmates were “Robert Bly, Adrienne Rich, Frank O’Hara, John Ashbury, and

Kenneth Koch (Rector). Lawrence Joseph defines him as “one of the best of a prodigiously talented generation, [his work has] qualities measure[ing] American poetry at the end of the

Modernist century” (Joseph). Hall has been both praised and blamed for maintaining and diverging from formalism, owing to his metrical dexterity. Lewis Turco, author of The Book of

Forms, discusses the differences between Hall and Bly: a spark of divergences came from these two influential poet-critics as the latter began publishing in 1958 an anthology that

promoted Bly’s proclamations for the “deep image” poem, an aesthetics countering Hall’s anthology, The New Poets of England and America. These combating aesthetics resulted in the ‘anthology wars’ of the 1960s:

Deep Imagism began to envelop the college graduate writing workshops, of which there

began to be a great many throughout America during the late 1960s and 1970s. During

this period many formal poets were persuaded to the new view that formalism was no

longer relevant to the times which were becoming oriented to social activism, reform

and to ‘self expression’; i.e. ‘egopoetry’ and ‘confession.’ (Turco)

According to Turco, there are two counts on which the “deep image” poem diverges from

“Imagism.” One is the use of the first person pronoun; another is “reliance on the pathetic fallacy” (Turco). In Imagism, the object stands alone; in deep image, the subjectivity of the speaker emerges and objects are frequently personified.

Because of his position as critic and the role Bly played in the “anthology wars,” another element of contemporary American history emerges. Critics’ responses to poet’s early work persist even while poet’s work may change, which is why Hall’s overall achievements continue to place him in the realm of the formalist poets

It is the subject of poetic decorum over which critics are split on Hall’s work. While

Turco upholds primarily only Hall’s first two books, Joseph praises Halls’ response to modernism and claims that his work continually improves:

in the poems after 1958 […] something altogether aesthetically happens: Hall pretty

much abandons predictable metrical lineation and end-rhymes, aggressively

compressing his language with ‘open’ verbal structures. His focus shifts to visual,

musical, and psychological expressions of image. As the aesthetic expands, so do

Hall’s probing into the relationship between form and emotion […] The ‘new’ poems are

distinguished by an astonishing mix between ‘classical’ and ‘modern’ forms. (Joseph)

He addressed the 1990 publication Old and New Poems in which Hall contextualized his poems within three sections of the book through dates: 1947-1953, 1979-1986, and 1987-1980. The contextualization of poems written through these decades showcased his formal dexterity.

Joseph gave “The Alligator Bride” and “The Town Hill” as examples of his achievements in this

“new” poetics. He quotes the latter as an example:

Back of the dam, under

A flat pad

of water, church

bells ring

in the ears of lilies, (708)

The discursive lineation of the syntax and the heavy enjambment is what Joseph means by a compressed and open, “new” structure for Hall. He attributes the discursive presentation of subject, as in this poem, to the success of Kicking the Leaves. In The Happy Man in 1986, he returned to his former classicism. It was composed simultaneously with his next published book, The One Day which has “multiple voices, rhetorics and subject matter written in ten-line stanzas” (Joseph). The reach in Hall’s formal dexterity between modern and classic compositions is a key to what Joseph locates as the success of Old and New Poems.

Without—a book on the death and dying of Hall’s wife Jane Kenyan—is noted by numerous critics as his best work. What is at stake in this collection is his control over emotion.

Poetic decorum concerns not only form, but also the acceptable limits of expressed emotion.

Too much open emotion can be marked by critics as sentimentality, another term implying an effeminate verse. Reliance on irony, a more masculine trope, is more in line with what is acceptable in a first and second-generation modern poet. Leslie Ullman claimed that “caught up in facts and feelings vastly beyond his control, Hall has managed in this collection to make

[emotions] shapely and sharable. His grief, so keenly and elegantly sustained, provides a map

for others to follow if they risk, as he has, loving what they may well lose” (Ullman). Liam Rector marked this work as superior elegy: “Without rivals Hardy’s poems to his wife as one of the finest, even practical enactments of elegy in English-speaking poetry. The fact that Hall is producing some of his best writing in his later years makes him a patron saint to all poets.

Where there’s this kind of long life in the art, there’s hope” (Rector). He stated that Hall is “[o]ld without sentimentality” (Rector). Dan Chiasson praised the book for being “reassuring: art and love are compatible, genius is companionable, and people stand together in the end. (This story neatly revises that other pair of married poets, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes),” but found fault with the book for “[feeling] like a conduct lesson” (Chiasson). Chiasson, like Turko, was put off by the emotional quality of Hall’s poems. Turco saw this as a fault continuing past Hall’s experimentation with deep image and on into his later work. Upon reading Without, he stated, “I dreaded opening the book” (Turco). Turco admired the distance created by the third-person narration in the opening book and then is taken aback when “Hall dives into what he had avoided for the most part throughout this dismal performance: He is swallowed by the sickening pool of self-pity and switches point of view to the first person” (Turco). Critics like Turco are still holding onto the modernist notion of Imagism—that the poem’s end is to uphold only the object.

Todd F. Davis and Kenneth Womack welcome the divergence from a modernist sensitivity: “Hall shifts from the first to the third person throughout the volume, speaking of himself exclusively in the third person […] In this manner Hall the poet and Hall the grieving husband who ‘acts’ within the margins of the poem effects a kind of narrative separation” (Davis and Womack). The interplay between the two points of view discloses the speaker’s ability to approach and withdraw from the death of the protagonist.

Hall has been both praised and blamed for employing regular and irregular meter; he has been praised and blamed for his steps into and out of deep image and regional poetics; and he has been praised and blamed for presentations of subjectivity. The reaction to the evolution

of his work reveals critic’s lingering apprehension as to the best decorum by which to respond to modernism.

Richard Wilbur (1987-1998)

Richard Wilbur is known as quite the master of form whose treatment of subjects exhibit control and moderation. The second and third editions of the Norton Anthology of Modern

Poetry situate him as a main influence on New Formalists. While his work is considerably more anthologized than Van Duyn and Hall, it has received similar derision from critics. Male poets like Wilbur who continue to work in traditional metrical forms have appeared “feminized” to readers who accept the terms of poetic fashions uncritically. Once again, During the 60's and

70s, performances of a masculine poetics were those that abandoned tradition and strove toward writing in a supposedly liberated "free verse." Longenbach contends that "a lingering mistrust of conventional form” has created a historical focus on establishing a separation between traditional and modernist literary techniques when he would align poets such as

Bishop in both camps (9). His claim indicates that the historic atmosphere in criticism articulated a fragmentation in poetics. In other words, this trend in criticism relegated poets as emerging out of competing poetics, resulting in stereotypes of form and content. Poets like

Wilbur were considered "'ladylike,' especially in a poetic climate that valued the transgression of all decorum" (74). “Transgression” here included breaking from conventional form. The consequences of Wilber's poetry has been, according to Longenbach, "deeply misunderstood: the plain content of his poems is often overlooked because of associations readers bring to his formal dexterity" (75).

Wilbur's discussions of poetic form in no way align with emerging stereotypes between metrical and non-metrical forms. James Longenbach claims, "Wilbur himself has rightly rejected the attribution 'of a kind of intrinsic sanity and goodness and even moral quality to received forms ... There's nothing essentially good about a meter in itself" (8). Even while

Wilbur held firm that there were no direct correlations between form and content, demarcations between “raw” and “cooked” poetry persisted. Associations of both liberalism vs. neo- conservatism and masculinity vs. femininity in relation to verse forms emerged alongside these demarcations. Wilbur’s work reflected “cooked” poetry and the associations attendant to this verse form.

Another aspect of his reputation was that he was a poet of control, which greatly differed from the confessional, “raw” movement in American poetry. His treatment of subjects exhibit control and moderation. He was far removed from the emerging confessional mode.

Bruce Michelson notes how "Wilbur has run counter to the thread of British, Irish, and American poetry [that for the last seventy years] has stressed the breakdown of the form, failures of the words, the poet's self-validating sigh of giving up, stoic defeat in battles in conventional forms"

(35). As the American confessional poets explored the darkest corners of their psyche and exposed its fissures, Wilbur did not follow the "conventional wisdom" that "language is supposed to break down" and that "poems are expected to fail" (14). He is known as one of the

"poets of his generation who has actually endured" (201). While the confessional poets wrote about and lived tragic lives, Wilbur's oeuvre suggests an alternative.

His 1970 poem “For the Student Strikers,” a historical poem recounting Kent State students gunned down by the Ohio National Guard, instantiates this perspective of composure and moderation. The poem neither reflects the outrage of the public toward the students, nor the radicalization following the incident of the students against authorities. As the poem progresses, rather than bolster the heroism of the students or situate them as victims, it encourages the students to not see themselves as further alienated from their neighbors. The poem encourages moderation: “It is not yet time for the rock, the bullet, the blunt / Slogan that fuddles the mind with force”; instead, it is time for “the new sound in our streets [to be] the patient sound of your discourse” (148). Several times in the poem, Wilbur encourages the students to see their neighbors not as alienating others, but as “the people [who] are not unlike

you”; the poem encourages a humanitarian engagement that is constructed by mediation rather than violence (148). This is a view of practical moderation, a view of accepting that mistakes were made on many sides. In order to quell the chaos, the speaker in this poem urges the students to develop a sense of common humanity with their neighbors. The poem in no way breaks down to lament, or forms a litany of the travails of modern life. There is also no trace of the speaker’s tone portraying he or she is ill-equipped to live in modern society. The poem addresses the subject directly and with compassion for all individuals involved.

In Wilbur’s 1976 “The Writer,” which addresses the relationship between the speaker and a daughter who is “writing a story,” there is no family chaos as developed in Plath’s poems centering on the family (128). The speaker recognizes that “Young as she is, the stuff / Of her life is great cargo, and some of it heavy: / I wish her a lucky passage” (128). There is no evidence of a crisis that would bring either the father or the daughter to a breaking point. This in no way de-values the daughter’s struggle. The climax of the narrative makes a grand statement of the impact of her labor to write her story: “It is always a matter, my darling / Of life and death, as I had forgotten. I wish / What I wished you before, but harder” (129). The crisis in her struggle to write is recognized and valued with compassion. In no way does the poem approach any form of hysteria as in Plath’s “Daddy.”

The concept of a “feminized” poetics emerged as one that did not delve deeply into the abyss. Bruce Michelson notes Ian Hamilton's assessment on Wilber’s difference from the confessionals: Wilbur “knows very well that the decline of his reputation since the mid 1960s has been in large part a consequence of Plath's posthumous appeal" (155). Phyllis Rose's analysis of "Cottage Street 1953," a poem on Wilbur's encounter with Plath after her penultimate suicide attempt, addresses Wilbur's sense of control and moderation. Rose contends, "Wilbur knows exactly how wimpy he will seem to the eye of history compared to the tempestuous, raging young suicide. The last stanza contrasts his feat in 'outliving Sylvia' to her own achievement in stating 'her brilliant negative / In poems free and helpless and unjust.'

Neither accomplishment is underrated" (Rose). Longenbach quotes James Dickey's testament to Wilbur's temperament: "Wilbur's is not essentially a tragic mind, and the lack of this one quality will probably keep him, the estimates of literary historians and other fossils, from being called a ‘major poet’" (71). His claim illustrates the persistent debates between “cooked” and

“raw” poetry. Poets who followed the latter such as Plath were considered writing in the stronger, more “masculine” line. Poets whose work performed a more rational, moderate perspective of the modern world were overshadowed.

Bruce Bawer assesses Wilbur's placement in American letters:

[for] all his prominence […] Wilbur seems nearly marginal. We do not, after all live in the

Age of Wilbur. He began his career as one of his generation's two most celebrated

American poets, along with his fellow formalist Robert Lowell (who was four years his

senior); but while Lowell transformed himself into a confessional poet [...] Wilbur

continued to write the sort of formal verse [...] that came to seem old hat. (Bawer)

Wilbur has in fact been interpreted as a poet of lightness and happiness. "Love Calls Us to the

Things of This World” (1956) is a poem where the spiritual world is transfigured into the most everyday object: laundry. The poem begins with “eyes open[ing] to a cry of pulleys” holding up garments that at the poem’s end are transfigured into dispirited people—thieves, lovers, nuns— are uplifted, keeping a “difficult balance” as they are exposed to the spirituality of an impersonal god: “The soul shrinks // From all that is about to remember / From the punctual rape of every blessed day and cries, / ‘Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry’” (307). For Wilbur what remains is the shared bond in love.

Howard Nemerov (1988-1990)

One of the aspects emphasized with Nemerov’s work is that he is an “academic poet.”

This term is usually used in the pejorative sense and is another way in which “cooked” poetry has been defined. Bowie Duncan's 1971 preface to the critical reception of Nemerov’s work

points out that Nemerov detractors have charged him with "writing over intellectual, mannered poetry [of being] cold and therefore unpoetic, of being so intensely concerned with structure and form that his poetry becomes lifeless analysis, not poetic creation [... ] Form controls and stifles the reality or experience he seeks to present, reducing his poetry to discourse and the experience it reveals to superficiality" (ix). Here again we see the assumptions and attitudes given to metrical forms, that they are insincere, not capable of authentic expressions of human experience. Peter Meinke tries to dislocate these associations: Nemerov is "often attacked for being too 'cold' or 'cerebral.' Nemerov's poetry is actually quite the opposite: a passion disciplined, but passionate and humanitarian nonetheless, with cries of anguish constantly breaking though" (35).

Nemerov’s 1958 “The Town Dump” treats human consumption, waste, and the effect of waste on the environment. Nemerov constructs a landfill as a particular city and makes it analogous to cemeteries. Refuse reflects our relationships with economy and labor: “oyster, crab, and mussel shells / Lie here in heaps, savage as money hurled / Away at the gate of hell”

(142). Hell is perceived as the savage effects reflected in waste, what is cast off from disuse and greed. Landfills are peopled with scavenge hunters, with “dealers in antiques” in the hopes of happening upon treasures. Much like determining the difference between a weed and a flower, waste for one person may be valuable to another: “in any sty / Someone’s heaven may open” (143). The heaven found on earth is also coupled with a multitude of swarming flies, in such a magnitude that they have a “hum becoming / a high whine” (143). Heaven and hell coexist in the landfill, although not in balance. The speaker claims that “There should be ratios” of consumption between value and waste. And the state between this disharmony is articulated by the “wild birds, drawn to the carrion and flies” and sing: “their music marvelous, though sad, and strange” (144).

In 1989 Willard Spiegelman addressed the evolution of "lecture hall" language in

Nernerov's poems, stating that his speakers frequently self-reference instruction. He gives

examples from Nemerov's Collected Poems: “‘This morning we shall spend a few minutes /

Upon the study of symbolism, which is basic / To the nature of money' ('Money: an introductory lecture,')” in 1967; “'Today we shall explain the mystery / Of points and lines moving over the void—/ We call it paper—to imitate the world' ('Drawing Lessons,' )” in 1979; and “‘Prepare for

Death. But how can you prepare / For death? Suppose it isn't an exam, / But more like the

Tavern Scene in Henry IV' ('Speculation,')” in 1979. Nemerov was indeed an academic by profession; Speigelman shows that in the case of Nemerov, his poems also reflect the subject of an academic. D.G. Myer discusses the professionalization of the poet a bit further. He notes that Nemerov's "career is also a reminder [...] of the way in which such public recognition has all but replaced the actual reading of poetry. It suggests that the prizes and academies and laureateships—an institutionalized belief in poetry—may stand only as monuments of a passing art" (Myers). William Logan's commentary on the standing of Nemerov's work aligns with Myers:

Nemerov "never enjoyed a commanding critical reputation—sometimes as the honors pile up a poet's reputation withers" (87). In this context, "academic poet" is also reflective of a teacherly poetics whereby the accomplished career of the poet has influenced his poetry.

Several critics have also noted that Nemerov's poems address a general public.

Monroe Spears notes that "[b]oth Nemerov and Auden address the ordinary reader, and both range easily from popular culture to the most difficult and esoteric matters" (Spears). The first stance toward the public counters what is assumed of an "academic" poetics: far flung references couched in an "elitist" style intended for a specialist audience. Sidney Burris' review of Nemerov's last published book, Trying Conclusions: New and Selected Poems, notes the disjunction between modernist poetry and the reading public and claims that this collection just may be suitable for the "ordinary" reader. He notes that Nemerov described it "as a simple respect for an audience who has—or at least ought to have [...] more pressing things to do than read his poems"; Burris continues, "[t]he pose here is important. Austerity, obscurity, ambiguity—the harried reader has little time for these delicacies, however lofty their ultimate

purpose, and their intolerance of these things, indeed their intolerance of modem poetry, makes a further point" (Burris). Nemerov here is noted to have responded to modernism by pointedly straying from its principles to cultivate readers.

Some poets and critics value poetry as a rare and refined commodity and do not care whether or not it can be appreciated by those outside of a "specialized" readership. Burris notes the correlation between rarity, value, and presumption: "[t]hat such an obscurity as contemporary poetry could be labeled public is a vanity that makes all other vanities totter"

(Burris). The labeling of Nermerov as an "academic poet” and the negative, assumption of elitism that that term holds, does not fit with a collection of poems composed in a manner to foster a connection with the “ordinary” reader. Implicit in Burris's statement is that there is a poetry that could engage all people, and that all people should or ought to read poetry. That is the vanity he finds in presuming a “public” poetry.

Nemerov's regard for poetry comes from the line of an Arnoldian poetics. Robert D.

Harvey quotes Nemerov's definition of poetry:

Poetry is a kind of spiritual exercise, a (generally doomed but stoical) attempt to pray

one's humanity back into the universe; and conversely an attempt to read, to derive

anew, one's humanity from nature, nature considered as a book, dictionary and bible at

once. Poetry is a doctrine of signatures, or presupposes that the universe is such a

doctrine whether well written or ill ... Poetry is an art of combination, or discovering the

secret valences which the most widely differing things have for one another. In the

darkness of this search, patience and good humor are useful qualities. Also: The

serious and the funny are one. The purpose of poetry is to persuade, fool, or compel

God into speaking" (49).

“On Being Asked for a Peace Poem” (1973) performs the union of humor with the serious. The poem conjoins the political with the spiritual, the serious with the funny.

The poem begins, “Here is Joe Blow the poet / Sitting before the console of the giant

instrument / that mediates his spirit to the world” (95). After “Flex[ing] his fingers nervously,” he practices writing by writing out scales such as ‘(Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?)’”

(Selected, 95). He prepares to write a peace poem on the Vietnam War and throughout the poem discusses how he can’t come up with a first line—the humor is that the first line is about

Joe Blow writing a poem: “this poem, he figures, is / a sacred obligation” (Selected, 95). After wondering how to “stop this senseless war,” he positions the assertiveness between the serious and funny in that he gives historical allusions of the social role of war-time poets: “Homer stopped that dreadful thing at Troy / By giving the troops the Illiad to read instead; / So

Wordsworth stopped the Revolution when / He felt that Robespierre had gone to far” (Selected,

95). It is comical to think that these poets and their works stopped wars. But the position becomes serious when we think of nature as a book, a dictionary, and the instruction that is received from nature.

His poem ends on a light note; after stating that he could speak about the Creative

Process at the General Assembly and the Security Council, he imagines that he could end up on TV, at which point, “Poetry might suddenly be the in thing” (Selected, 95). While the contexts he mentions are exaggerations, poets do hold positions of authority that gives them points of influence. Ideas arise in poems, and instruct readers; poets engage in social events; more poets write poems; poets boycott and pass on ideas. So while it may be funny that Homer and Wordsworth put ends to wars, the process of ideological dissemination is significant. Such a regard for poetry would not limit access or exposure to poetry by crafting it solely into

"austerity, obscurity, ambiguity." Nemerov responded to modernism by widening an audience for poetry. Burris says of Trying Conclusions,

if poetry is ever to make wishing [to reach a public audience] credible, and if credibility

is ever a standard of aesthetic judgment, then the deepest wish of Nemerov's poetry [...]

is that his poems aim ultimately to dignify the world of our recognizably common

experience. Perhaps this constitutes public poetry. Perhaps not. [...] Readers now have

in their possession some of the most approachable and intelligent verse written in the

last decade. (Burris)

Nemerov's "approachable" poems are not always in the teacherly mode; his speakers also address the most common experiences in which we find ourselves. Myers characterizes

Nemerov's work as "brief poems in which [speakers wonder] about the things of the world which are least wondered about: “waiting rooms [...] people driving fast cars [...] pockets [...] and the fall of leaves" (Myers). Such content of poems certainly cannot be marked as "academic"; these are experiences most all have. Perhaps what has made the label “academic” stick is that his work had early on been defined as “cooked.”

Spears compares Nemerov to Auden in another aspect: "Like Auden, Nemerov is classical in his acceptance of limitations, his belief in the intellect, in clarity, in the importance of form" (Spears). Stephen Metcalf outlines the development of his formalism: Nemerov is a poet who "started out as a would-be modernist, in the school of Eliot and Pound, and ended up a cherished godfather to the New Formalists [...] He pulled off the hardest trick of all: he made blank verse-unrhymed iambic pentameter feel like a product of the tongue, not a chisel"

(Metcalf). While he makes a direct link between his use of form and the New Formalists, he and others such as William Pratt note that he failed to create a formal signature: "[h]e did not […] create a distinctive line of his own" (Pratt); "he never happened upon a signature line" (Metcalf).

A difference to modernism for Nemerov was his engagement with the "ordinary reader" with poems cast in forms he is esteemed for having mastered, influencing generations of formalists.

In addition to claims that he did nothing to create a signature, he has also been scorned for straying from another aspect of modernism: the humor infused in some of his poems

"exposed him to one of the most feared charges of our serious century—the composition of light verse" (Burris). The preference for a "serious" poetics certainly lingers. Billy Collins's poems incur the same response. Many critics are skeptical about poets who are humorous, accessible, and perhaps too popular with a general audience. Such skepticism counters the role of a poet

laureate in general. The mission of the post is to engage with a wider, public audience.

Robert Penn Warren (1986-1987)

The fugitive poets with whom Robert Penn Warren started his career at Vanderbilt questioned the validity of Imagism. William Pratt distinguishes between the imagists and fugitives in terms of one "hav[ing] its counterpart in the other. The Imagists were above all internationalists. Individualists; and experimentalists; the Fugitaives, were above all regionalists, traditionalists, and classicists" (13). According to John Gould Fletcher, "the sole poet who participated in both groups," (14) who wrote in "Two Elements in Poetry," "'free verse' school of poetry under Ezra Pound had run its course, and that a new "Classical" school had been formed in the Twenties, under the general leadership of T. S. Eliot, but [was] best represented as a school by the Southern Fugitives" (15). Warren’s work is representative of first-generation formalism and the South. His early work was greatly driven by narrative technique. “The Ballad of Billy Potts” is a folktale Warren grew up with and re-cast into poetic form which begins,

Big Billie Potts was big and stout

In the land between the rivers.

His shoulders were wide and his gut stuck out

Like a croker of nubbins and his holler and shout

Made the bob-cat shiver and the black-jack leaves shake

In the section between the rivers.

He would slap you on the back and laugh (41).

This 462-line poem continues with a language rooted in the American south and in representations of Western Kentucky.

Warren's poetics is firmly rooted in regionalism, traditionalism, and classicism. Morton

Dauwen Zabel notes that "[t]o belong to the Fugitives was one of the best fortunes that could

befall, in America at that moment, any poet interested in craft and its uses" (23); and William

Bedford Clark notes that "Zabel's favorable review of Warren's first book of poetry in Poetry landed on Warren's "'exacting craftsmanship' [...] and noted that he had obviously profited from his association with the Fugitives without being circumscribed by the biases peculiar to that school'" (2).

Several critics are put off by the degree to which Warren addresses the moral and a didactic presentation of lessons. Original sin is one of Warren's recurring thematic concerns. In

1944 John Crowe Ransom embedded this theme with concurrent debates in evolution: "the present account of Original Sin seems to be nearly related to the Origin of Species—of that species at least which is most self-determining of its behavior" (35). Critics have continued to note Warren’s obsession with original sin. Harold Bloom is one such critic who reacted negatively by Warren's sense of moralizing and is more compelled to Warren's work in the

1980s, a time when his poetics shifted to explore the theme of time. Bloom also responded better to the play Brother to Dragons once Warren revised it thematically. In 1978 he declared that "the burden of Warren's prophecy is morally very harsh, because his vision of God, though personal and undogmatic, is uniquely devoted to an unforgiving spirit, who sees and knows all and is incapable of pity or pardon" (75). Delmore Schwartz noted in 1953 that Brother to

Dragons represents "obsession with guilt and innocence"; and Victor Strandberg in 1968 noted that the theme of original sin is why "Mr. Warren expressed misgivings about Whitman's work because of its undue optimism—its lack of a sense of sin such as Hawthorn and Melville often expressed" (134).

In the foreword to Warren's 1998 collected poems, Bloom claims that his evaluation of an "ideal anthology of American poetry would begin with Warren's 'Leaf' and then include poems at a minimum: 'Birth of Love,' 'Evening Hawk, 'Heart of Autumn,' 'Red Tail Hawk’ and

‘Pyre of Youth,' 'Myth of Mountain Sunrise,' 'Mortal Limit,' and, of the earlier poems, 'Mortmain,'

'Revelation,' and 'Bearded Oaks" (xxv), Bloom sees Warren's later work as the strongest:

"Warren's characteristic mode had been the dramatic lyric; but after the poet turned sixty he internalized drama, in a great contest with time, with cultural and family history, and above all, with himself" (xxiii).

Warren was multi-talented. He was well-known for storytelling, whether in the novel or narrative poetry. He was also central to the New Critic movement. His Understanding Poetry is one of the most historically taught textbooks on how generations have learned how to read poetry. The second edition of the Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry defines Warren as

"a kind of national treasure, a live-and kicking monument" (752). While critics have not responded well to Warren’s incorporation of the moral, he is a literary figure whose reputation arose from success in writing multiple genres. Few writers have such facility of language across so many modes of writing.

Bloom finds Warren’s later work aspired to the conditions of the lyric. Warren's "There's a Grandfather's Clock in the Hall" (1968-1974) represents Warren in the lyric mode. The opening lines contemplate time: "There's a grandfather's clock in the hall, watch it closely. The minute / hand stands still, then it jumps, and in between jumps and there is no Time" (309).

This contemplation of time reaches for the objective measure of a clock as well as the subjective experience of time. He also abstracts time into the element of “no Time.” The speaker makes analogies of intensified experiences that occur within the time of one minute:

"Or perhaps you are fifteen feet under water and holding your breath as you / struggle with a rock-snagged anchor, or holding your breath just / long enough for one more long, slow thrust to make the orgasm / really intolerable" (309). This extended metaphor of the minute is resolved in the last stanza: "But, in any case, watch the clock closely. Hold your breath and wait. / Nothing happens, nothing happens, then suddenly, quick as a wink, and slick as / a mink's prick, Time thrusts through the time of no-Time" (310). As an observation on time, the speaker collapses the distance of the minute into a more intensified and shortened time of a wink as the speaker instructs its reader to watch the clock.

The focus on these post-war US Poets Laureate allows us to encounter specific reactions critics have held against the persistence of “cooked” poetry. Each poet addressed in this chapter represents slightly different manifestations critics have held for the more fashionable “raw” poetry. Assumptions about “cooked” poetry are that it is effeminate, neo- conservative, academic, elitist, and ill-fitted to address modern concerns. One third of the total poets laureate have been distinguished as being a part of an approximating similar American movement (formalism), an indication that the position of laureateship itself values more traditional forms, perhaps because a general audience may recognize poetry through formalism. Another cross-section of laureates can be determined by geography, how the laureateship has been designed to represent geographic inclusiveness. Their works also offer particular attitudes toward the relationship between self and region.

CHAPTER 3

GEOGRAPHY AND US LAUREATESHIP

Appointment to US Poet Laureate does not require that the person be a native citizen.

Several poets laureate—Joseph Brodsky, Charles Simic, Mark Strand—were born in other countries. A focus on the relationship between laureates and geography brings into view the ways in which geography impacts poetry and poetics. Brodsky’s primary difficulty has been with his own translation of poems from the Russian to English language. Simic’s work more closely reflected trends in American surrealism; and yet his poems show the influence of

Eastern-European war. Strand’s work shows less of a direct influence from specific geography.

Although he has lived in North and South America, his poems do not reflect a definite sense of place; rather, his poems function more by negation of place. In addition to these international poets, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Hass, and Ted Kooser have been hailed during their announcements to the American public as representing specific geographic regions. Kunitz had long been established as an influential New England poet. Billington introduced Hass's relationship with the West Coast and Kooser's from the Great Plains as important elements of their appointments. A perspective of laureates from the vantage point of geography compellingly portrays how international and national backgrounds influence poetry and poetics.

Joseph Brodsky (1991-1992)

Curiously, Brodsky is the only poet laureate to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and is one of the laureates that has received some of the harshest critiques for poetry. There are several reasons that critics have responded so strongly against his work. His Russian-

American background formed a rupture of a poet navigating two regions, cultures, and languages. As noted in Chapter One, his poems were critiqued by Soviet police as “social 52

parasitism” and he was sentenced to a labor camp. He has since translated most of his own poems and continued to write in Russian and English after he immigrated to the US. Critics have been disinclined to include him centrally either into Russian or American literature. G.S.

Smith addresses the problems Brodsky faced with Russian audiences. John Taylor, F.D.

Reeve, William Logan, and Derek Walcott locate the difficulties in Brodsky’s translations of his own poems as a major hindrance to American audiences. In 2001 John Taylor unequivocally placed him outside of American literature: “In any event, we must always remember that

Brodsky remained a Russian poet (despite his increasing forays into English) and that only a third of his Russian poems were translated during his lifetime—an arrestingly small amount of work that is available to us” (596). One issue with Brodsky is that he simply does not have enough of his work available to the English-reading American public. From this standpoint, the public does not have access to his work because of the rift caused by a poet navigating two languages. Taylor gives additional causes for Brodsky's problems of English-language poems.

The region in which a poet lives affects language, which in turn affects style and form. The expatriate poet runs the risk of ineffectual poetics that results from working in a non-native region: “Long years in a foreign country can diminish the spontaneity with which the expatriate conjures up his mother tongue, as well as strip a native vocabulary of its [deposited] slang; yet no writer or poet experiences this evolution in the same ways” (599). In addition to being critiqued as a poor translator, Brodsky is charged for having lost the intensity and numinous qualities of his native language since he has been uprooted to another region. The implication is that for some poets, regionalism and native language significantly inform a private poetics.

He compares Brodsky's plight with other emigrant poets: “In contrast to other exiled writers who lock themselves up inside their mother tongue so as to protect their creativity, Brodsky delved headlong into the enticements of his second language, while continuing to write in Russian”

(600). The effects of Brodsky's navigating two regions resulted in poor translations as well as a watered-down poetics. William Logan is harsher in his 2001 critique: “When Brodsky translated

himself it sounded as if he'd been translated by committee—a committee of refrigerators”

(Logan). Logan does not give an example of lines that he finds having supposedly grumbling noises. But he does quote a poem that he calls “doggerel” with “ludicrous allusion to Frost”:

And staring up where no cloud drifts

because your sock’s devoid of gifts

you’ll understand this thrift; it fits

your age; it’s not a slight.

It is too late for some breakthrough,

for miracles, for Santa’s crew.

And suddenly you’ll realize that you

yourself are a gift outright. (Logan)

He does not give the title of this poem, but it is taken from Brodsky’s 2001 Nativity Poems.

Logan does not elaborate or define what he finds as “doggerel.” However, the closely placed rhymes of “drifts,” “gifts,” “thrift,” “fits,” and “it’s” is closer to a song lyric than a lyric. There are problems of idiom such as “sock’s devoid of gifts” because this phrase does not conjure up the more colloquial usage of “Christmas stockings.” “Santa’s crew” is another problem of idiom; the more common phrase is “Santa’s helpers.” The allusion to Frost comes across as an oddity because “The Gift Outright” concerns such a different context. It is a poem celebrating

American heritage; it is also a misguided poem that promotes colonial land conquest. This allusion does not make sense in the context of Christmas.

In 2001, F. D. Reeve, like Taylor, aligned Brodsky's genius instead with the Russian language: “he is remembered for his place in Russian literary history [...] in 1987 he received the Nobel Prize for literature. In 1991-1992 he served as the American Poet Laureate. Despite these honors and achievements, he never became an English-language poet” (31). Like Taylor,

Reeve notes the problems of Brodsky’s skill in translating his own work. Reeve also notes how the region to which Brodsky immigrated differed in terms of Russian style and form: “His dictum

that 'verse meters in themselves are kinds of spiritual magnitudes for which nothing can be substituted' succinctly illustrates how out of touch he was with the postmodern world around him and why his English-language poetry has no influence” (32). Here Brodsky ran into similar problems of the poets addressed in Chapter One. During the 1970s, it was far less fashionable to write in metrical, rather than non-metrical, forms. While American poets were shirking long- held traditional forms (and other conventions), Brodsky maintained close affinities for metrical form. Meter to Brodsky was a mainstay of poetry. He did not want to shirk the poetic traditions of the Russia he loved; he simply did not follow Soviet communism. Maintaining metrical form in the 1970s was a way in which to preserve tradition; it was also a decade in which American poetry was predominantly non-metrical.

Derek Walcott in 1998 exposed another problem, not only on Brodsky's facility as a translator, but also on the problem of translating Russian to English metrical poetry:

The translated Russian risks, in its usually hexametrical rhyming design, a meter which

English associates with the comic, the parodic, or the ironic. There is no modern

English or American poet who will take such risks—being utterly serious with the

feminine endings, of attempting to reach the sublime and noble without the pseudo-

humility of the dying fall, the retractable conceit. Double rhymes and long lines threaten

contemporary poets in English with the bespectacled shade of Ogden Nash, not to

mention the garrulous precision of Byron.” (Walcott)

It is a given that the music from one language will be lost in the process of translation.

Maintaining the poetics of one language imports cultural assumptions about form and meaning.

For example, while the hexametrical line may be powerful in one language, the usage of this line in English can come across as comic, lessening the impact of powerful statements.

too, in the 1960s and 1970s was itself in question for poetic style. The layers of style in meter such as with feminine endings and double rhymes compound cultural differences of a poet navigating two geographic regions.

Reeve noted that the influences with which Brodsky held sway were also out of line with literary fashion: “Brodsky's Anglo-American favorites were Auden and Frost, hardly poets 'on the cutting edge' in the Sixties when Brodsky was beginning his career” (34). If critics have placed his genius in the Russian language, how does he fare with Russian audiences? His status of a poet who left for America was looked down upon in relation to the poets who remained in Russia. G. S. Smith noted in 2005, “By the end, Brodsky had attained a level of international celebrity that has come to no other Russian poet even posthumously, let alone during his own lifetime. The most regrettable effect of this has been a good deal of sneering resentment, especially among Russians who stayed at home” (G.S. Smith). So even while critics place his genius in the Russian language, the rift created by navigating two soils finds him cast out from the cultures of two national literatures, American and Russian.

If critics have so disparaged Brodsky’s facility with the English language in his poetry, what then has been his allure in the US? G.S. Smith suggests that it is Brodsky's personality and the views he espoused about the power of poetry. Smith states, “[t]he canonization of

Brodsky preceded the detailed and specific discussions of his poetry, especially among

Russians who stayed at home. This is perfectly normal; people everywhere prefer to concentrate on the personality than the poem” (G. S. Smith). It is possible that what Brodsky had to say to the American public about poetry overshot his ability to write poems in the English language. What message could have been so powerful to establish such high reverence for this poet? We know that he believed that meter had a “spiritual magnitude,” which is in part why he maintained Russian poetics. Part of what is quite moving about Brodsky is his belief in the transformative power of poetry: his “belief in the supremacy of poetry among the arts and the

Poet among the artists, is the element in Brodsky's attitudes that most impressed the Western literary world after he emigrated” (G. S. Smith).

The Nobel address that he gave before he became a poet laureate reveals the degree of his conviction that literature is socially transformative and a means by which a society safeguards against political oppression. He contended in 1995,

Since there are no laws that can protect us from ourselves, no criminal code is capable

of preventing a true crime against literature; though we can condemn the material

suppression of literature—the persecution of writers, acts of censorship, the burning of

books—we are powerless when it comes to its worst violation: the neglect of books, the

nonreading of them. For that crime, a person pays with his whole life; if the offender is

a nation, it pays with its history (53).

The seriousness that may not come across in his poems from the intricacies of two poetics is evident in his prose. As US Poet Laureate, he had a platform for which to promote the importance of reading literature. Reading literature for Brodsky saves both the individual and the society in which the individual lives. When literature is neglected, political oppression can sweep down upon a nation. Preserving the literary imagination of history protects liberty by safeguarding it from an abuse in the form of a historical amnesia.

Translated in 1971 by George L. Kline, “Natre Morte” is a poem by Brodsky that expresses the power and beauty of his work when it is well presented to an American audience.

The poem is from A Part of Speech, published in 1980. The poem is a meditation on modern life and religion. Section six captures the melancholy resulting from isolation so intense that it feels like a hovering presence of death. The section begins,

Lately I often sleep

during the daytime. My

death, it would seem, is now

trying and testing me,

placing a mirror close

to my still-breathing lips,

seeing if I can stand

non-being in daylight.

I do not move. These two

thighs are like blocks of ice.

Branched veins show blue against

skin that is marble white. (45)

There is no evidence of distracting sounds as the poem Logan addressed. There is no problem with idiom. The lineation of the poem—the force of syntax against enjambment—highlights the crisis of isolation. “[D]eath, it would seem, is now” speaks of the intensity of the speaker’s isolation from not only society, but from the self. “Seeing if I can stand” represents the speaker’s doubt of man’s compatibility with modern life. The image of the last two lines implies that this doubt has become so internalized that death has visibly manifested itself in the speaker. This existential crisis is resolved in the last section of the poem as Mary speaks to

Jesus: “Can I pass through my gate / not having understood: / Are you dead?—or alive? / Are you my son—or God […] Christ now speaks to her in turn: / Whether dead or alive, / woman, it’s all the same— / son or God, I am thine” (46). The Jesus figure does nothing to bring comfort to this impasse of Mary, which alludes back to the impasse of the speaker. This reply gestures back to the title of the poem, which means “dead nature.” What has been affirmed is the continuation of the impasse itself in his ultimate reply, “I am thine.” “Natre Morte” represents the genius of Brodsky’s work to which Reeve and Smith allude.

Charles Simic (2007-2008)

Charles Simic is another poet laureate who has been exiled from his native land. He remembers early from his youth in Yugoslavia having a bomb blast him out of bed. The form of political oppression that he witnessed before he became an expatriate informs the speakers and situations that he creates. As noted by Taylor, no two poets evolve the same way in how regionalism can affect language and poetics. Brodsky maintained Russian poetics while writing in English; Simic's early English-language poems were closer in line to the poetic fashions of

American poetry written in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1992 Steven Cramer located Simic’s work both within and outside of 1970s surrealism, noting the difference among his work and his peers:

Though often associated with the 'new surrealists' of the 1970s—American poets

influenced by 'deep imagist' elders like Bly, Wright, Merwin, Kinnell et al.—Simic

deserves to be distinguished from this group on at least two counts. First as a native of

Yugoslavia, his attachment to riddles, proverbs, magic formulas, and nursery rhymes

has a bona fide regional pedigree [...] Simic has rarely settled for the Jungian

ahistoricity typical of American period surrealism. Instead, Simic's images—pre-

industrial and archetypal at first, distinctly urban and modern later on—bear the scars of

historical witness. (Cramer)

Many titles of Simic’s Selected Poems: 1963-1983 reflect a direct address on “riddles, proverbs, magic formulas, and nursery rhymes”: “Two Riddles” and “Solving the Riddle” in 1974, “Nursery

Rhyme” in 1977, and “Austerities” in 1982. “Butcher Shop” (1971) and “The Soup” (1974) are both poems expressing what Cramer finds as “scars of historical witness.” The former begins with the speaker stopping in front of a butcher shop and the sight of blood triggers visions of bloodshed mingling between the secular and sacred:

An apron hangs on the hook:

The blood on it smeared into a map

Of the great continents of blood,

The great rivers and oceans of blood.

There are knives that glitter like altars. (15)

As visions of violence and blood pour through the poem, horrors are discovered from even from the viewpoint of an altar, suggesting that the very place usually intended for sanctuary and refuge, is tainted with war. Here is a violence that is inescapable: it spills across both land and water. There is no respite from the horror. “The Soup” is a poem expressing the historical witness that Cramer finds in his work. It starts with an imperative, “Take the lump in your throat,” which immediately situates a crisis (80). The unreal quality of the poem promptly follows: a “clock that goes to 13. / The bare room, the iron cot. / The cockroach of history running up the wall” (80). Within this eerie setting, the speaker specifies horrors of history by mockingly asking, “On what shall we cook [the soup]? […] On the moustache of Joseph Stalin. /

The fires of Treblinka. / The fires of Hiroshima. / The head of the condemned / The head swarming with memories” (81).

Like most poets who have been labeled within an American literary movement, Simic frequently dismisses the connection between his work and surrealism. And yet there are qualities of his work that come across to American readers as dreamlike and horrific. His experiences in Yugoslavia have shaped the content of his poems. In 2003 Benjamen Paloff examined why “like so many poets of his caliber, Simic has accumulated a set of journalistic cliches [...] Words like 'inimitable,' 'surreal,' and 'nightmarish' have followed him around in countless reviews and articles” (Paloff). While Cramer notes what Simic has imported into his poems that sets him apart from surrealist writers, Paloff adds another layer as to why Simic has been lumped together with other writers in this movement: “[i]f our world seems unfamiliar in his writing, it may be because most American readers cannot easily relate to the experiences that have shaped Simic's vision” (Paloff). Part of the assessment of Simic as a surrealist writer

stems from how unfamiliar his poems could come across to American readers because these readers do not have the experience of growing up in a war-torn state and with social destruction taking place on native soil such as expressed in “The Butcher Shop.”

Paloff also notes that Simic developed a natural American style: “Born in Belgrade in

1938, Simic occupies an unusual place in American letters in that, on the one hand, he writes in a natural American idiom and, on the other, knows what historical cataclysm looks like on the ground, not as a combatant or sympathizer might see it, but as a sustained, everyday reality in his own neighborhood” (Paloff). Helen Vendler noted in 1995 that Simic, “in the cunning strategies of his forms,[...] has brought the allegorical subversiveness of eastern European poetry into our native practice (Vendler). Brodsky and Simic share the experience of becoming expatriates and having such experiences comprise their poetics as they learned to navigate the differences of two regions. They also share a similar backlash to their expatriation. In 2005

Belinda McKeon quoted Simic's view on the reception of his work in Belgrade: “They regard me as a foreigner [...] they don't think my poetry has anything to do with them. So, you know, there's nothing there for me. I mean, they translate my work, and they're happy to have someone in America...but during the nationalist days, I read it again and again, 'he's a complete foreigner,' said in a very pejorative way. An alien. That was their view” (McKeon). Yet while they share the state of being outcast from their native soil, Simic, unlike Brodsky, has not been received by American critics as an outcast of two nations. The literary success of his English language is what differentiates him from the reception of Brodsky. On a literary landscape, they have both been exiled by native lands, but from critics’ reception to their works, only Brodsky had been exiled twice because of his importation of poetics into a nation that did not value his style as Simic's style was valued.

his work is that it moved too far from the metrical line. Hayden Carruth lamented that the predominant trend in the 1960s and 1970s was symptomatic of an American poetic line having become too lose. In other words, it had veered too far from the metrical line. His appraisal of

Simic as a poet’s poet meant that Simic was one of the poets in the 1970s influencing much of the poetry written at that time. His work became one of the most modeled. Carruth’s assessment of the poetic line indicated that the popularity of Simic’s line had become so replicated that many poet’s works’ were becoming derivatives of this signature, saturating the style of contemporary-American poetry. Several other critics have also focused on defining

Simic’s poetic line, perhaps because his line had become so standard. Vendler outlined its formula. In assessing Simic’s line, Brian Henry (in 1999), Edward Byrne (in 2007), and Paul

Breslin (in 1997) represent a kind of critic who valued and expected poets to change their poetic line over the course of time. They claim that Simic never altered his signature from his earlier work and that this is what holds back his achievement in poetry.

Carruth addressed the degree to which the American poetic line had loosened. He claimed that the state of poetry had reached the same risk of mundanity that had been countered by the first Imagists. The Imagists broke with the metrical line in order to reinvigorate poetry. Carruth attests that the break from metrical verse had gone too far to the other side and that non-metrical verse had become as blunt as in the era the Imagists worked.

He saw the overproduction of non-metrical verse as resulting from the abundance of poets learning poetic craft in creative writing courses: “It is [the loose line] being turned out virtually by rote at tens of thousands of writing tables all over North America, and given to us, thrown at us, in poems which are interchangeable, in books whose authors, relentless ego- tripping solipsists though they are, remain as indistinguishable as the obit-writers of the Times”

poems gain in fluency and intelligibility, and hence in meaning, from being printed as prose, it is because the line has ceased to function, as I have already said, and when the line has ceased to function it is because the language has become too dull to sustain measure” (Carruth).

Pound had disavowed Imagism soon after it first emerged because the break from metered verse was long-enough practiced to have revitalized poetry. Eliot also anticipated a more rapid return to metered verse. Carruth’s discussion is a recapitulation of these two modernist’s concern for the development of poetry.

Vendler focuses less on the metrical quality of Simic’s work and more on the rhetorical formula of his poems. She defined his signature that had been pervasive up through his Hotel

Insomnia (1992): It “exhibits all the hallmarks of the Simic style: an apparently speakerless scene; an indefinite article establishing the vagueness of place and time [...] then a menacing definite article focusing our gaze [...] then a late entrance of the personal pronoun engaging the speaker's life with ours” (Soul Says, 102). She gives “War” from Hotel Insomnia as a prototypical Simic poetic formula: “The Trembling finger of a woman / Goes down the list of casualties / on the evening of the first snow. // The house is cold and the list is long. // All our names are included” (Soul Says, 102).

Critics point out the effects of what happens when a poet develops too strong of a signature: the poet is henceforth held to evaluation by that signature. Brian Henry contended,

signature may be too identifiable, that does not mean that those newly exposed to his poems will not appreciate his work. As noted in Chapter One, US laureateship was created to bring poetry to a greater audience. For readers who become initiated into the reading of poetry because of the visibility brought to the post, they may find Brodsky and Simic on their own terms and build their own affiliations to poetry without following cautionary tales in criticism.

Stanley Kunitz (2000-2001)

Kunitz is a native-born poet, a poet who has not had to navigate two nations’ poetics.

Kunitz is known as a regional poet of New England and is championed as particularly American.

A main difficulty critics find with his work is that he published relatively few books over the course of his life, making it harder to assess his poetic development. In this regard, Kunitz greatly differs from poets who overproduce poems. Some poets are criticized for having over- written, resulting in having written what can be the same poem recast time and again. Some critics see such production as devaluing a poet’s oeuvre; however, there is one main benefit.

The overproduction of poems allows such poets to keep presence within the American literary landscape. This is where critics fault Kunitz’s work; between the publications of his books, his name and work did not circulate as much in book reviews. Other poet’s publications circulated without him, which gave rise to a silence of criticism on his work. That he published fewer books brings to the forefront a particular aspect of contemporary American poetry: how a poet’s oeuvre functions within the literary market.

David Orr stated in 2002, “Kunitz writes sparingly―on the average his books have appeared in fourteen-year intervals. In his words, he writes 'only those poems that must be written, that force themselves into being.' As a result, the transitional poems don't get written, and each poem can represent, or appear to represent departure” (Orr). By “transitional poems”

Orr suggests that there is no way to determine a closer development of how Kunitz’s poetic thinking progressed from one book to another. Kunitz is aware of how the literary market

shapes a poet’s reputation; Marie Hénault notes that Kunitz said that he “realize[d] that reputations are made by volume as much as by anything else. Most of the big reputations in

Modern American poetry have been made on the basis of a large body of work” (25). This aspect of the literary market encourages poets to overproduce books because it keeps their names circulating in print. More poetry book publications lead to a steadier output of book reviews. As the reviews accumulate, critics have more evidence of how a poet is situated within

American literary history. This practice creates more discourse around poets’ works. As a result, this aspect of Kunitz’s participation in the literary market led to a greater silence on his oeuvre. Several critics find this silence unfortunate because they esteem him as one of the most influential American poets. Hénault noted in 1980 that John Ciardi once stated, “Kunitz is certainly the most neglected good poets of the last quarter-century,” and that Robert Lowell commented on how Kunitz had “been one of the masters for years, and yet so unrecognized that his Selected Poems make him the poet of the hour” (24). However, the longevity of his writing career has formed a fascinating continuum of one poet’s response to American poetry.

In a book review of Kunitz’s Collected Poems (2001), Roger Gilbert declared that much of the fascination of [this book] comes from observing the interplay of personal and period styles over the course of seven decades” (30).

Gilbert's addresses why Kunitz’s work makes him an extraordinary candidate for US

Poet Laureate: “Perhaps a Laureate's job is not to address all the nation's issues and occasions, but simply to show it what a poet does” (455). A long-established New England poet, Kunitz, like Brodsky, held powerful convictions on the transformative qualities of poetry.

Ian Tromp noted in 2001, “Kunitz has said that poetry 'is a redemptive art form, a way of being in and positively changing the world. We have to make our living and dying important again [...] and the living and dying of others'” (23). Kunitz dedicated much of his life to poetry and was an influential figure in New England: he mentored numerous poets such as Glück, co-founded a literary center, The Poets House in New York City, co-founded a poets and writers residency in

Provincetown, MA, and was the final judge for the Yale Series of Younger Poets from 1969-

1977. Tromp’s address on the role of the poet suggests that for the laureateship the role of a poet is as important as his or her literary work: “It is not just the work that makes Kunitz such a significant figure in North American Poetry, but the life he has led and the lives he has touched”

(23). His appointment affirms that the US laureateship values the poet who is an ambassador for poetry.

His early work created quite a stir: David Orr stated in 1985 that “it was hailed by Robert

Lowell on the front page of The New York Times” (Orr). Intellectual Things (1930), Passport to

War (1944) and The Testing Tree (1971) in turn incited exceptional praise from critics from one publication to the next. Kunitz’s reputation and 1971 publication raptly caught the attention of

Lowell. Other prominent poet-critics echo Lowell's championing of Kunitz’s work: David Yezzi stated in 1996 that the first few books “are among the poems Yvor Winters recommended to his students at Stanford. For many of that generation, Intellectual Things, by the precocious twenty-five-year-old, with its fluent formalism and lush syntax, was a manual on how to write verse” (Yezzi). Kunitz gained status as the “poet's poet”; the trajectory of his work shows that he developed from a metrical, to a more non-metrical line. The content of his poems approximated the confessional.

Gilbert notes how Kunitz's work does and does not evolve with the confessional movement of poetry:

Kuntz's relationship to the emerging style that eventually came to be known as

Confessional poetry is especially interesting for its mix of resistance and assimilation.

While Kunitz was slightly older than the leading Confessional poets, he clearly admired

and learned from several of them, most notably perhaps Roethke and Lowell. The

influence did not go away, however; indeed it was arguably Kunitz himself who first

opened up the primary subject matter for Confessional poetry. (453)

From one perspective, he is the metrical “poet's poet” for writers like Winters and the Stanford

School; from another perspective, his content has been argued to have given birth to the early movement of confessional poetry. However, Hénault argues against placing him in this movement because he lacks the outwardly directed, public or occasional verse, or the inwardly- directed anguish of Sexton or Plath (29-30). Hénault claims, “Kunitz is not at all a confessional poet, and most likely he would himself, too, as he said about Roethke, 'vomit [...] at the thought' of being called one (30). It is common for poets to not want to be, or tire of being, associated with a particular American movement in poetry. His 1971 poem “The Portrait” feels confessional because of the direct observation of family drama. It begins, “My mother never forgave my father / for killing himself, / especially at such an awkward time / and in a public park, / that spring / when I was waiting to be born” (142). The tension between syntax and enjambment heighten the family drama: the lingering pain of the mother; the direct focus on the suicide; lingering disgrace from the public and impersonal viewing of the husband’s corpse; and the difficulty this placed on a grieving and expecting widow. The pain is evident, too, from the son never having met his father. The trauma here is direct and is highlighted as shorter phrases stand alone as poignant phrases. Even the ending of the poem, “In my sixty-fourth year / I can feel my cheek / still burning” (142). The family trauma of the son having not only lost a father, but also having been slapped by his mother by showing her the portrait of him he discovered stays with him far into adulthood. Even though this poem presents a painful memory, there is no evidence in the poem of “internal anguish”; the speaker does not turn this pain in upon the self. Rather, the poem is an expression of a horrific family drama that has been endured. The poem in no way suggests that this memory has ravaged an internal- downward spiral within the self. While Kunitz indeed uses the first-person pronoun in poems, he also casts poems into a peculiar sense of place.

An address of Kunitz as a regional poet broadens what can be examined by the term

“place.” The backgrounds of Brodsky and Simic inform their poetics and signal to specific

geographic regions: Russia, the former Yugoslavia, and the United States. Critics address the relationship between geography and Kunitz’s poetics as more of a metaphorical sense of place.

Gilbert situates his poetics of place as an internal landscape:

Kunitz's characteristic poetry acknowledges the world's presence, but keeps it at a

distance. His primary concern is with the metaphysical geography of the soul, a

landscape he charts in all its multiple layers of desire, experience, vision, and memory.

The inwardness of his attention shows itself in his preference for short, strongly

accented lines and concentrated syntax. (452)

His 1978 poem “The Layers” displays such a metaphysical geography. It opens, “I have walked through many lives, / some of them my own” (217). The poem is an inwardly guided journey: “I look behind, / as I am compelled to look / before I can gather strength / to proceed on my journey” (217). The speaker looks outward toward the world, which is also a turning back to the speaker’s experiences. This form of journey values all aspects of experience: “every stone on the road is precious to me” (218). It is through this connection with the world that leads him: he “roamed through wreckage, / a nimbus-clouded voice / directed me: ‘Live in the layers, / not on the litter’” (218). The speaker had internalized the world around him (the stone, the road, the clouds), which leads him to find a personal philosophy. The poem ends with his proclamation: “I am not done with my changes” (218). His journey is a life of continual transformation through the intersections of the “world’s presence” and “multiple layers” of an internal “metaphorical geography.”

His internal landscape, quite different from the landscapes of Brodsky and Simic, effects the formal property of his poems. While Brodsky and Simic's poetics are shaped by shifts in regionalism due to social forces, Kunitz's geography is shaped by an internal force. Ian

property of poems. Brodsky found inspiration from the Russian tradition of meter and received forms; Kunitz found inspiration in the English language through the rhythm of his own breath.

Hénault comments on the evolution of Kunitz's style from his early to later works. She recounts

Lowell’s argument that an important mark for poets is to develop their presentation of the poetic lines over time toward a more “free verse.” Hénault quotes Lowell on Kunitz's 1970s work: “call no man old who can grow”; Lowell considered growth having such formal properties as

“syntactic relaxation [...] elimination of punctuation [...] the dropping of conventional line capitalization [...] and often the lack of stanzaic structure and rhyme” (86). These sentiments reflect the fashionable tenants of a “free verse” evolving from the metrical line. “The Portrait” and “The Layers” are poems that display aspects of a “free verse” and are quite different from poems in his first published book. The first stanza of “Particular Lullaby” (1930) indicates the difference between his early and later work:

Decline at evening from your eyes,

Like summer-slipping down a tree,

Your noon-high pride: but not your wise,

Your sensitive pleased beauty. (20)

The capital letters signal that this is a formal poem. The stanza is set in ABAB rhyme scheme, set at each line’s end. The first three lines establish a predictable four-beat iambic line, which returns throughout the poem. This presentation of a poem is quite different from his later work.

The infrequency of Kunitz’s book publication indicates sharp turns in style. The difference between styles are the “transitional” poems, as Orr concludes, that have not been offered to the reader because Kunitz wrote and published only the poems that he felt most compelled to write.

Mark Strand (1990-1991)

While Kunitz published his works fairly infrequently, Mark Strand's intervals of publication are closer to Simic's. Strand’s work is particularly interesting to address in a

discussion of regionalism because he is the only other poet laureate besides Brodsky and Simic who was not born in the US. He was born in Canada and grew up in both North and South

America. While he has the experience of having lived in several countries, his poems give little indication of an outwardly-directed sense of place. Like Simic, he has been associated with surrealists, with the difference being that his poems do not explore any particular history. Like

Kunitz, his sense of place is more of a metaphoric geography. And yet an approximate placement of his literary style is a poetics of negation.

Richard Howard's 1974 review of Strand's Story of Our Lives has formed the framework by which future critics echo or extend his claims on Strand's work. Outlining the process of

Strand's poetics, Howard claims that Strand “begins in ecstasy, the astonishment, the stupor, and seeks to empty it out, to put it behind him, to silence it in order that the story may occur [...]

The only way for the poet who seeks an issue out of Being into Becoming is by negation”

(Howard). The speakers of Kunitz and Strand both have a self developed from an inward focus, an inward geography; the difference between them is that while Kunitz's speakers build identity from an inner landscape, Strand empties out the identity as it forms, leaving instead the story of a “non-self.” Howard states that Strand has reformed “the prosody of erasure. These astounding poems remind us that originally the word verse and the word prose come from the same Latin word, provertere, which in its prose past-participle means to have moved on, but which in its poetic infinitive means to roll around again” (Howard). Strand’s poems do not have a secure ground referencing a beginning or ending. This is how his work difference from the historical impulses of Simic.

Sven Birkerts stated in 1990, “For Strand, it is thus: we have been hurled into being and there is no immanent or transcendent ground for the self” (Birkerts). His 1964 poem “Keeping

Things Whole” exhibits the same kind of negation as in his later work. The speaker states, “In a field I am the absence of field. / This is always the case. / Wherever I am / I am what is missing” (10). Displacement pervades the poem, which ends, “I move / to keep things whole”

(10). While the poem closes with a connection between self and world, there is still the sense of displacement as the line break separates the speaker (“I move”) from the world (“to keep things whole”). This placement of enjambment reinforces the pervasiveness of distance, a continual negation. “My Life by Somebody Else,” from his 1970 collection Darker, shows a similar negation: there is a continued displacement from the title to the poem’s conclusion. It concludes, “Must I write My Life by somebody else? / My Death by somebody else? / Are you listening? / Somebody else has arrived. Somebody else is writing” (63). By referencing both life and death, the speaker is disallowing a personal relationship to emerge with either. From this displacement, the self is further distanced by the encroachment of another. This other is impersonal; the speaker is not even sure that this other is interested or listening. And yet the poem leaves with the speaker giving way to this impersonal other as a kind of ars poetica (a poem focused on the art of writing)—not of being, but of a becoming, an emptying out of the self, a negation. Birkerts continues, “Reading Strand, we are apt to realize just how much most other poetry―most other writing―makes an assumption of telos, is premised on a confidence in events tending toward meaningful ends. But in this poet's world, as in the worlds of Beckett and Kafka, there is no place to which movement leads, except extinction” (Birkets). Strand's poems do not assume a ground, a geography, a telos.

In 2006 Dave Lucas referenced Linda Gregerson's take on Strand's poetics: “When

Mark Strand reinvented the poem, he began by leaving out the world” (Lucas). Brodsky and

both of these constructs, in a place that is more of a “nowhere.” The physical world gives impetus to emerging forces completely outside the realm of the human. Time and space is conceptualized for Strand outside the perception of any particular geography. Without borders, ground, or telos, the self has a hovering plane of exploration.

If there is an “implied search for spirituality,” as Dave Lucas attests, it is an impersonal one. Birkerts appropriately defines Strand's poetics:

[o]ver the past three decades Strand has perfected a chill-inducing poetry of

nothingness. The poems are not about life―the inscrutable forward moving, time-

contending process―but about the emptying out of life [...] where the self thinks about

itself thinking and finds that its thoughts, like the wind, have nothing to adhere to.

(Birkerts).

In 2007 Alexander Nemser defined Strand’s poetics in similar terms. For Strand, it is “not the thunderstorm itself, but how it reminds him of dying” (Nemser). If there is geography for this poet, it moves speakers not toward a ground, but toward a further, hovering rumination.

William Logan commented on the place of Strand in American poetry in 2006: “Had

Sylvia Plath never written a line, Strand would have been the most gifted American poet born in the Thirties” (61). Logan is a poet-critic hesitant to give the slightest praise as he tends more toward discussing faults and mocking those faults; praise from him in any fashion is quite rare.

Strand has early secured and maintained a place within contemporary poetry. Like Simic, he also has a strong signature; Birkerts attests, Strand “is unique among poets in that he has not grown or changed very much over the course of his career. That is not a slight” (Birkets). He stands out as a Poet Laureate in another way: he has celebrity status. Lucas questioned, “After all, how many poets are reviewed in the pages of Elle?” Few poets reach the public through such popular forms of media.

Robert Hass (1995-1997)

While Robert Hass may not be reviewed in the pages of Elle, his poetry and environmental activism has placed him in the public spotlight―for those who follow trends in the relationships between poetry and environmentalism. There are several ways his work can be discussed as more traditionally a regional poetics. Much of his poetic work pertains to the

Californian landscape; and his work has been associated with the influence of the Beats in terms of some West Coast poets having been influenced by Asian aesthetics. Billington praised the appointment of Hass for having a representative from the West Coast. What is different from Hass's treatment of place is his interplay between region, art, and activism. In 2008 Tony

Roberts traced the movement in Hass's early career: “His poetry had a sense of responsibility

[...] from the shady history of the Pacific settlement, to the continuous rape of the land, and outwards to the cultural deprivation of the Polish community in New York State (where Hass was taught) to student activism and the Vietnam War”; and as his career progressed, he continually developed “further meditation on language” (59). Hass’s “Meditation at Lagunitas”

(1979) exemplifies musing on language. It opens, “All the new thinking is about loss. / In this it resembles all the old thinking. / The idea, for example, that each particular erases / the luminous clarity of the general idea” (Lehman, 967). The speaker muses on a woodpecker and emphasizes the inability of language to capture the world. There is a conflicted response to this loss. The speaker accepts this proposition: “because there is in this world no one thing / to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds / a word is elegy to what it signifies” (967). The conclusion of the poem protests this acceptance through attempts to call forth the world: “Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings, / saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry” (967).

The speaker both accepts and protests the capacity of language. Taking the poem alone, if the speaker cannot call forth the world, a literary implication is closer to Auden’s tenet “poetry makes nothing happen.” However, the effect of the elegy can give rise to a stronger sense to respond. This is an occasion where the author as activist adds a different layering to a literary

text. If the tenet of a poem is that nothing can be done, the frustration of this inability of language can give rise to engage with the world socially.

While Roberts discusses the change in his literary work from a felt responsibility of social responsibility and toward meditations on language, he and other critics fail to address

Hass’s dual role as poet and activist. They take into account only his poetry. Separating the poet’s literary works from the role of the poet leads to an incomplete and misguided understanding of Hass’s work because for him the two are intertwined. As such, critics have missed the mark on what they see as a passive view of the landscape because they do not take into account the poet as author and the poet as environmental activist. Hass has a direct connection between poetry and the role of poetry in society, which draws attention to the author.

In other words, because there is interplay between the literary text and a social function of poetry, the “death of the author” is not helpful in interpreting this poet’s works. Instead, the literary and the social should be addressed together in order to create a different layering of interpretation. Hass composes literary-regional landscapes; and he works to preserve those landscapes.

Some critics have not been pleased with a trend in Hass’s literary work from what was an engaged relationship and social concern in his earlier poems to what later is perceived to be an abject passivity of his speakers. Peter Davidson asserted in 1997 that “his poems began to blur into a haze of contemplative passivity [reflective of contemporary American poetry] in which states of mind and feeling were rendered reflexively with passive, copulative, or auxiliary verbs and the present tense” (Davidson). Some find the move toward meditation on language a move away from lyricism. In 2003 Logan considered the trend of Hass’s ruminations as a move away from the lyric: “it's a pity Hass has become a lyric poet with a conscience, because he can't make the conscience shut up” (Logan). What these critics have missed is that for Hass, aesthetics and political activism substantiate one another. While his early work may have suggested speakers engaged with social issues with its author an activist, it is telling that the

speakers have become less engaged. The “passivity” that these critics note can instead be

Hass’s commentary on a general passivity of American citizens to engage in environmental preservation. Even while his poems may have speakers that seem less, as Roberts terms it,

“responsible,” Hass has remained responsible as an activist. His activism is an example to counter the passivity displayed in his poems. He is a poet whose work addresses particular regional concerns; and he is a poet that directly engages with his region in order to preserve its ecosystem. In 2001 Barbara Berman asserted the differences Hass has made as an activist:

“there is also Hass the active citizen, founder of River of Words, a nonprofit that helps young people channel creative energy as they develop environmental awareness, and founder of the annual Watershed readings, which features appearances of River of Words participants with well-known poets and performers” (Berman).

Hass and Strand are both poets who have a ruminative poetics. A significant difference is that while Strand's is one of groundlessness, Hass's incorporation of activism explicitly unites poetry with a geographic and social ground as an inextricable bond. While Strand's poetics is outside the conception of humans as custodians of the earth, as well as humans as reflections of earth's creation, Hass's poetics and environmental activism fuses both perceptions. His work springs from and returns to the earth. The Watershed Project, which is discussed in detail in

Chapter Five, has an outreach component whereby public school age students from all United

States regions fuse the study of science with language arts. Students investigate their own watersheds through scientific inquiry as well as through writing poems and representing their ecosystem through visual arts. The project lends directly to the preservation of watersheds and ecosystems because this interdisciplinary approach sparks awareness, empathy and social engagement with particular regions. Readers influenced by Hass can be moved to join in activism. For some, the inability for language alone to transform the world can lead to transformation through actions. In other words, poetry, like rhetoric, can give rise to action.

Critics respond differently to his poems that directly address the state of environmental destruction. For instance, Logan assessed in 2007 that “[‘State of the Planet’] starts with one of his gorgeous pastoral set pieces [that turns toward a] droning on about chlorofluorocarbons; by the time he's done preaching about the destruction of the ozone layer, you're counting the tiles on the floor” (68). The second section of a ten-section poem begins, “Poetry should be able to comprehend the earth”; and declares, “Topsoil: going fast. Rivers dammed and fouled. / Cod: about fished out. Haddock: about fished out” (50). Logan's assessment signals that Hass’s literary display of environmental concern does not move him in any way. He does not find that

Hass has the capability to enchant through poems with such a concern about the earth.

Instead, he finds such a direct address too didactic; section eight of the poem asserts,

“Chlorofluorocarbons react with ozone, the gas / That makes air tingle on a sparking day” (53).

This to Logan is not poetic. It is possible that Logan holds a historical demarcation between poetry and rhetoric. From this vantage point, poetry should give pleasure. Rhetoric is what gives rise to action. This precludes interpreting Hass’s work as both a literary and socially engaged mixture. This poem indicates Hass’s passion for the state of the environment; his

Watershed Project acts to preserve the environment, which combines the literary with a social function of poetry. In other words, for Hass, the literary and the social function of poetry co-exist as a layered commentary, one influences the other. Logan’s assessment is from a perception that deftly divorces the lyric in particular from social action. For Logan, a poem exists on the page; he does not see the poem as means of inspiration leading to social engagement.

Chlorofluorocarbons to Logan are not poetic. He shows an utter lack of the connection between poetry and possible social and environmental engagement. And yet there are some critics who appreciate connections between poetry and the function of poetry. Nick Powell asserts, “'State of the Planet' –an eight page masterstroke that is both elegy and plea, because, as he puts it, 'the earth needs a dream of restoration'” (Powell). Powell perceives the regionalism of Hass: “language and landscape have always dovetailed with a rare

effortlessness in Hass's best work”; “State of the Planet” is “a kind of lyricism which enables didactics to rest along [with] aesthetics” (Powell). Unlike Logan, Powell does not mind that

Hass's consciousness of ecological preservation tips into poetics.

Peter Davidson observes a thread in American poetry: “Since Frost's death, in 1963, the strongest currents in American poetry may well have pushed westward, away from our

European heritage and toward a more nativist outlook. No practicing poet has more talent than

Robert Hass, who is, to our good fortune, the present and deserving United States Poet

Laureate” (Davidson). Davidson's comment alludes to the history of American literature’s desire to stand distinctly from other traditions, such as British literature. The appointment of Hass, who lives and teaches in Berkeley, CA, clearly delineates the scope and transformation of American literature. Hass's poetics have been noted as particularly East Asian. In 2008 Tess Taylor noted the creative and destructive forces in his work: for “Hass, the consummate Berkeley

Buddhist [...] the two are often one” (Taylor). He is known as an antiwar activist; he is known as an environmental activist; and he is known as a monumental poet of the West Coast.

Ted Kooser (2004-2006)

Ted Kooser is a poet from the Midwest Great Plains; responses to his work directly reflect geography in terms of the content of his poems and the social aspect of the literary market. He is a poet living in and writing about his Nebraska, a state to which he has long naturalized. He differs from Kunitz and Hass because he does not live and work within an urban center. In 1992 Dana Gioia addressed the problem of regionalism in relation to Kooser: his “poetic career reveals some of the problems faced by a regional writer who does not either immigrate to a major literary center or join the university network” (102). Brodsky and Simic are kinds of “outsiders” from their native regions. Kooser’s position of outsider is closer to that discussed in Chapter One on Collins and Ryan. But while they claim to be the “outsider” due to not playing “the poetry game,” Kooser does not live in the literary centers to which these two

poets have access. Participating in a local, rather than national literary center, the nexus for

Kooser’s audience tended to cluster around Lincoln, Nebraska. Gioia states that after his first book, he “disappeared into the gulag of small regional presses [cultivating] a small local audience” (103). Many states provide funding to support local artists in terms of grants, artist colonies, and presses for its residents. Kooser’s work before Sure Signs: New and Selected

Poems found homes in regional presses. The publication of this book “brought Kooser national attention for the first time. It also established him as one of the few openly regional young poets whose work had broad appeal beyond the Midwest” (110). Gioia’s claim that Kooser is “openly regional” suggests that Kooser is comfortable living and working without access to larger literary centers. R.S. Gwynn’s 2005 response to the choice in the appointment of Kooser provided a telling assumption critics hold about regions outside of such centers: “Kooser is, after all, a regional poet (from Nebraska, of all places) who has been elevated to the heights, or dunked to the depths” (Gwynn). Why would critics consider Kansas, or any other state, to be less likely to produce a poet than New York or California? The implication is that poets ought to migrate to larger urban areas and cannot thrive outside of them.

Many critics note Kooser’s attention to the everyday life. “Dishwasher,” for instance, captures moments of the ordinary:

Slap of the screen door, flat knock

of my grandmother's boxy black shoes

on the wooden stoop, the hush and sweep

of her knob-kneed, cotton-aproned stride

out to the edge and then, toed in

with a furious twist and heave,

a bridge that leaps from her hot red hands

and hangs there shining for fifty years

over the mystified chickens,

over the swaying nettles, the ragweed,

the clay slope down to the creek,

over the redwing blackbirds in the tops

of the willows, a glorious rainbow

with an empty dishpan swinging at one end. (“Dishwater,” Academy)

Images of farm life infuse the poem through appeals to everyday sound: doors, sweeping, lugging. The setting is rural: chickens, nettles, ragweed, creek, birds, and trees. The relationship between humans and nature situates itself with the speaker’s pleasant disposition toward labor: the rainbow reflecting in the dishpan.

In 2005 Craig Challender noted the benefits of Kooser’s regionalism by explaining a kind of innate, inspired muse: Sure Signs is “an understanding Plains people, especially, take from the rhythms of earth and weather” (Challender). However, it is this very sentiment of an essential regionalism that aggravates critics like Brian Phillips, a Midwest native, who claimed in

2005,

If there is something maddening about Ted Kooser’s success [...] it has to do with the

way he has been received by critics as with the work itself. [Edward Hirsch champions

that] ‘Something about the Great Plains seems to foster a plain, homemade style, a

sturdy forth-rightness with hidden depths, a hard-won clarity chastened by experience.

It is unadorned, pragmatic, quintessentially American poetry of empty places, of

farmland and low-slung cities. The open spaces stimulate and challenge people. One’s

mettle is tested. (396)

Phillips balks at comments like Hirsch’s on inherent claims about poets from the Great Plains and notes that it’s Kooser’s temperament alone that crafts his work, regardless of geographic region. He ultimately evaluates Sure Signs as “placid stasis” among some “lovely images”

(396).

R. S. Gwynn finds other issues with regionalism, which he sees Kooser transcending.

He is bored with poems about the rural everyday setting: “There are, naturally, some drawbacks

[with too many] suburban meditations on cleaning out gutters or lighting the pilots of furnaces

[because they come] from poets whose days are spent in departmental offices or stuffy seminar rooms [which is] the academic’s attempt to show that he can get his fingernails dirty, too”

(Gwynn). Kooser’s move from regional to national acclaim has left critics in a quandary of where to locate him within contemporary American poetry.

In 1992 Jeffrey Galbraith stated, “The beauty of this landscape carries just the right pitch to connect to the wider public that Kooser’s tenure as laureate will certainly draw” (184).

Kooser’s “Porch Swing in September” represents another speaker’s pleasant disposition toward the everyday found in nature. A spider has built a web from the porch swing to the wall as though to indicate that summer days of swinging on the porch has ended. Instead it’s “time now for the soft vibrations of moths” and time for “the wasp [to tap] each board for an entrance”

(“Porch,” Academy). The poem meditates on the subtle ways nature announces seasonal shifts. Galbraith mused on his success as a laureate: his “appointment as Poet Laureate of the

United States bodes well for efforts to improve relations between American poetry and the general public” (183). R. S. Gwynn questions the desire for poetry to have a closer connection with the general public: “is the desire to reach a common reader; one that Kooser has iterated in interviews, a noble aim or just a pipe dream?” (Gwynn). Whether noble or pipe dream, Kooser’s poems are quite accessible because they touch upon aspects everyday life: dishwater, porch swings and spiders.

The poets in this Chapter indicate the different ways in which some of the US Poets’

Laureate work has been influenced by geography. Another grouping of laureates showcases how a poet develops style. Much in the way that visual artists’ works can be identified at once, poets, too, establish identifiable styles. Strong identifiable styles become poetic signatures.

poets, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Hass, and Ted Kooser have been hailed during their announcements to the American public as representing specific geographic regions. Kunitz had long been established as an influential New England poet. Billington introduced Hass's relationship with the West Coast and Kooser's from the Great Plains as important elements of their appointments. A perspective of laureates from the vantage point of geography compellingly portrays how international and national backgrounds influence poetry and poetics.

Joseph Brodsky (1991-1992)

American background formed a rupture of a poet navigating two regions, cultures, and languages. As noted in Chapter One, his poems were critiqued by Soviet police as “social parasitism” and he was sentenced to a labor camp. He has since translated most of his own poems and continued to write in Russian and English after he immigrated to the US. Critics have been disinclined to include him centrally either into Russian or American literature. G.S.

Smith addresses the problems Brodsky faced with Russian audiences. John Taylor, F.D.

(600). The effects of Brodsky's navigating two regions resulted in poor translations as well as a watered-down poetics. William Logan is harsher in his 2001 critique: “When Brodsky translated himself it sounded as if he'd been translated by committee—a committee of refrigerators”

(Logan). Logan does not give an example of lines that he finds having supposedly grumbling noises. But he does quote a poem that he calls “doggerel” with “ludicrous allusion to Frost”:

And staring up where no cloud drifts

because your sock’s devoid of gifts

you’ll understand this thrift; it fits

your age; it’s not a slight.

It is too late for some breakthrough,

for miracles, for Santa’s crew.

And suddenly you’ll realize that you

yourself are a gift outright. (Logan)

He does not give the title of this poem, but it is taken from Brodsky’s 2001 Nativity Poems.

Logan does not elaborate or define what he finds as “doggerel.” However, the closely placed

rhymes of “drifts,” “gifts,” “thrift,” “fits,” and “it’s” is closer to a song lyric than a lyric. There are problems of idiom such as “sock’s devoid of gifts” because this phrase does not conjure up the more colloquial usage of “Christmas stockings.” “Santa’s crew” is another problem of idiom; the more common phrase is “Santa’s helpers.” The allusion to Frost comes across as an oddity because “The Gift Outright” concerns such a different context. It is a poem celebrating

American heritage; it is also a misguided poem that promotes colonial land conquest. This allusion does not make sense in the context of Christmas.

Reeve notes the problems of Brodsky’s skill in translating his own work. Reeve also notes how the region to which Brodsky immigrated differed in terms of Russian style and form: “His dictum that 'verse meters in themselves are kinds of spiritual magnitudes for which nothing can be substituted' succinctly illustrates how out of touch he was with the postmodern world around him and why his English-language poetry has no influence” (32). Here Brodsky ran into similar problems of the poets addressed in Chapter One. During the 1970s, it was far less fashionable to write in metrical, rather than non-metrical, forms. While American poets were shirking long- held traditional forms (and other conventions), Brodsky maintained close affinities for metrical form. Meter to Brodsky was a mainstay of poetry. He did not want to shirk the poetic traditions of the Russia he loved; he simply did not follow Soviet communism. Maintaining metrical form in the 1970s was a way in which to preserve tradition; it was also a decade in which American poetry was predominantly non-metrical.

Derek Walcott in 1998 exposed another problem, not only on Brodsky's facility as a translator, but also on the problem of translating Russian to English metrical poetry:

The translated Russian risks, in its usually hexametrical rhyming design, a meter which

English associates with the comic, the parodic, or the ironic. There is no modern

English or American poet who will take such risks—being utterly serious with the

feminine endings, of attempting to reach the sublime and noble without the pseudo-

humility of the dying fall, the retractable conceit. Double rhymes and long lines threaten

contemporary poets in English with the bespectacled shade of Ogden Nash, not to

mention the garrulous precision of Byron.” (Walcott)

It is a given that the music from one language will be lost in the process of translation.

Maintaining the poetics of one language imports cultural assumptions about form and meaning.

For example, while the hexametrical line may be powerful in one language, the usage of this line in English can come across as comic, lessening the impact of powerful statements.

Brodsky's belief in the “spiritual magnitude” of meter did not convey the noble aim for which he reached in English. Cultural differences in English such as between the iambic pentameter and the hexametrical line carry different nuances of meaning themselves; the magnitude of meter, too, in the 1960s and 1970s was itself in question for poetic style. The layers of style in meter such as with feminine endings and double rhymes compound cultural differences of a poet navigating two geographic regions.

critics place his genius in the Russian language, the rift created by navigating two soils finds him cast out from the cultures of two national literatures, American and Russian.

Brodsky preceded the detailed and specific discussions of his poetry, especially among

Poet among the artists, is the element in Brodsky's attitudes that most impressed the Western literary world after he emigrated” (G. S. Smith).

Since there are no laws that can protect us from ourselves, no criminal code is capable

of preventing a true crime against literature; though we can condemn the material

suppression of literature—the persecution of writers, acts of censorship, the burning of

books—we are powerless when it comes to its worst violation: the neglect of books, the

nonreading of them. For that crime, a person pays with his whole life; if the offender is

a nation, it pays with its history (53).

The seriousness that may not come across in his poems from the intricacies of two poetics is evident in his prose. As US Poet Laureate, he had a platform for which to promote the

importance of reading literature. Reading literature for Brodsky saves both the individual and the society in which the individual lives. When literature is neglected, political oppression can sweep down upon a nation. Preserving the literary imagination of history protects liberty by safeguarding it from an abuse in the form of a historical amnesia.

Translated in 1971 by George L. Kline, “Natre Morte” is a poem by Brodsky that expresses the power and beauty of his work when it is well presented to an American audience.

Lately I often sleep

during the daytime. My

death, it would seem, is now

trying and testing me,

placing a mirror close

to my still-breathing lips,

seeing if I can stand

non-being in daylight.

I do not move. These two

thighs are like blocks of ice.

Branched veins show blue against

skin that is marble white. (45)

There is no evidence of distracting sounds as the poem Logan addressed. There is no problem with idiom. The lineation of the poem—the force of syntax against enjambment—highlights the

crisis of isolation. “[D]eath, it would seem, is now” speaks of the intensity of the speaker’s isolation from not only society, but from the self. “Seeing if I can stand” represents the speaker’s doubt of man’s compatibility with modern life. The image of the last two lines implies that this doubt has become so internalized that death has visibly manifested itself in the speaker. This existential crisis is resolved in the last section of the poem as Mary speaks to