20th Century American Poetry (DOB 1900-1902)

Source of book: I own this

 

This is the third installment of my reading from this Library of America volume, American Poetry: The Twentieth Century Volume Two. You can read the previous installments linked below.

 

20th Century American Poetry (DOB 1894-1896)

20th Century American Poetry (DOB 1897-1899)

 

Because the book is organized by the date of birth of the poet, the actual poems can date from a variety of dates. Any given poet may have a few dozen poems, or as few as one. Many of the names are familiar, at least to fans of American poetry, but some are definitely new to me. 

 

While I will not discuss every poet, here are the ones I read this time:

 

Edward Dahlberg, Yvor Winters, Sterling A. Brown, Robert Francis, Lindley Williams Hubbell, Laura Riding, Arna Bontemps, Kenneth Fearing, Langston Hughes, Ogden Nash, and Eve Triem.

 

The first one I decided to feature was Yvor Winters. I have read some of his poems before, some of which were featured in this book. I chose to avoid the ones I had quoted on the blog previously, and look at new ones. 

 

Two Songs of Advent

 

I.

On the desert, between pale mountains, our cries -

Far whispers creeping through an ancient shell.

 

II.

Coyote, on delicate mocking feet,

Hovers down the canyon, among the mountains,

His voice running wild in the wind’s valleys.

 

Listen! listen! for I enter now your thought. 

 

At his best, Winters writes haunting poems involving nature, and this one spoke to me this time. 

 

Here is another one of his that I liked:

 

The Fall of Leaves

 

The green has suddenly

Divided to pure flame,

Leaf-tongued from tree to tree.

Yea, where we stood it came.

 

This change may have no name,

Yet it was like a word

Spoken, and none to blame,

Alive where shadow stirred.

 

So was the instant blurred.

But as we waited there

The slow cry of a bird

Built up a scheme of air,

 

The vision of despair

Starts at the moment’s bound,

Seethes from the vibrant air

With slow autumnal sound

 

Into the burning ground.

 

Next up is Sterling A. Brown, who I was not particularly familiar with - a bit embarrassing since I love the Harlem Renaissance. He was an African-American writer and scholar, the son of a formerly enslaved man. Initially, he was more well known for his decades of teaching, in which he pioneered what we might now call Black Studies, incorporating everything from jazz to folk tales into his classes. He also wrote non-fiction and fiction. 

 

The poetry mostly came later: he retired from his academic career and devoted himself to poetry. And also to his work with the NAACP. 

 

His poems often are written in dialect, which seems a bit dated, but others remain fresh in our own time. I selected my two favorites out of many worthy works. This one is an example of a dialect poem that tells a story - there are several of these in the collection, and all of them are good. 

 

Scotty Has His Say

 

Whuh folks, whuh folks; don’ wuk muh brown too hahd!

 

‘Cause Ise crazy ’bout muh woman,
 An’ ef yuh treats huh mean,
 I gonna sprinkle goofy dus’
 In yo’ soup tureen.

 

Whuh folks, whuh folks; don’ wuk muh brown too hahd!
 Muh brown what’s tendin’ chillen in yo’ big backyahd.

 

Oh, dat gal is young an’ tender,
 So jes’ don’ mistreat huh please,
 Or I’ll put a sprig of pisen ivy
 In yo’ B.V.D.’s.

 

I got me a Blackcat’s wishbone,
 Got some Blackcat’s angel dus’,
 An’ yuh crackers better watch out,
 Ef I sees yo’ carcass fus’ —

 

Whuh folks, whuh folks; don’ wuk muh brown too hahd!
 Muh brown what’s wringin’ chicken necks in yo’ backyahd.

 

‘Cause muh brown an’ me, we’se champeens
 At de St. Luke’s Hall;
 An’ yo’ cookin’ an’ yo’ washin’
 Jes’ ani’t in it, not at all,

 

Wid de way we does de Chahlston,
 De Black Bottom an’ cake walkin’,
 Steppin’ on de puppies’ tail;
 Whuh folks, ain’ no need in talkin’, —

 

You is got nuh purty brownskin
 In yo’ kitchen an’ yo’ yahd,
 Lemme tell yuh rebs one sho thing
 Doncha wuk muh brown too hahd —

 

Whuh folks, whuh folks; don’ wuk muh brown too hahd!
 Who’s practisin’ de Chahlston in yo’ big backyahd.

 

The next one is not in dialect, but is equally fascinating and profound. Do later generations forget how hard-won their freedoms were? Do they truly understand the suffering it took to break the evil of enslavement? And, come to think of it, is this what Brown’s father said to him, the young whippersnapper who grew up free? 

 

Children’s Children

 

When they hear

These songs, born of the travail of their sires,

Diamonds of song, deep buried beneath the weight 

Of dark and heavy years;

They laugh.

 

When they hear

Saccharine melodies of loving and its fevers, 

Soft-flowing lies of love everlasting;

Conjuring divinity out of gross flesh itch;

They sigh

And look goggle-eyed

At one another.

 

They have forgotten, they have never known, 

Long days beneath the torrid Dixie sun

In miasma’d riceswamps;

The chopping of dried grass, on the third go round

In strangling cotton;

Wintry nights in mud-daubed makeshift huts,

With these songs, sole comfort.

 

They have forgotten

What had to be endured -

 

That they, babbling young ones,

With their paled faces, coppered lips,

And sleek hair cajoled to Caucasian straightness,

Might drown the quiet voice of beauty

With sensuous stridency; 

 

And might, on hearing these memoirs of their sires,

Giggle,

And nudge each other’s satin clad

Sleek sides….

 

The next poet I want to discuss is Robert Francis, whose biography is almost as interesting as his poetry. 

 

He was a pacifist and a vegetarian in an era when neither position was common. He built his own house, grew his own vegetables, and lived on a tiny income from his writing. Yet unlike many who live a similar lifestyle, he wasn’t snobbish about it, having rather a reputation as a kind and gentle person. 

 

Francis was also gay, although in a somewhat unusual way. His first sexual experience didn’t come until his late 50s, with another man. Despite the risk, and despite his tendency to live a private life, he revealed this in his autobiography. 

 

His poetry shows some influence from Robert Frost, but it is also uniquely his, and beautiful. I picked a pair of poems that are representative of his different styles.

 

A Broken View

 

Newcomers on the hill have cut the trees

That broke their view. Now they have all the west

From north in an unbroken sweep to south.

Outdoors or out of windows looking westward

Anywhere there is the west, the view.

An afternoon ago we stood with them

And saw their view. Hills beyond hills shading

From green to blue and clouds from white to blue.

Open places of pasture on the hills

And sky among the clouds. It was enough

For anyone to love for all a lifetime.

 

Yet we were thinking (though we didn’t say so

And wouldn’t of course have said so ever to them

Or even wished to) how we loved a broken

View better, a view broken by trees,

Under and over and through the branches of trees.

A view that didn’t give you everything

At once or anything too easily.

One that changed as you went from window to window

And changed again as you went from month to month,

Closing in in spring and opening

In fall.

 

What we felt was not regret.

We had no sighs for trees that were not there.

Trees grow again in time or others grow

To take their places, more slowly than a house 

Is built, but still they grow. Young trees were growing

Among the stumps there even while we looked 

Over their heads,

            Perhaps we had a view

Through time, like a view trembling through leaves, of a time

When not these newcomers but a child of theirs

Or a child of that child living on the hill,

Growing up with trees upon the hill

Might see as we had seen, loving both trees 

And view, loving them more each for the other. 

 

And this one:

 

Waxwings

 

Four Tao philosophers as cedar waxwings

chat on a February berrybush

in sun, and I am one. 

 

Such merriment and such sobriety - 

the small wild fruit on the tall stalk -

was this not always my true style?

 

Above an elegance of snow, beneath

a silk-blue sky a brotherhood of four

birds. Can you mistake us?

 

To sun, to feast, and to converse

and all together - for this I have abandoned

my other lives.

 

The next poet, Lindley Williams Hubbell, also had a significant life event in his 50s. He left his position at the Randell School and move to Japan, becoming a Japanese citizen and taking a Japanese name. 

 

In this case, I picked two poems, one more typically American, and the other with a decidedly Japanese flavor, a concentrated image like a haiku. 

 

Ordovician Fossil Algae

 

This is the oldest book

That I can read with pleasure.

The Cambrian trilobite

Is an unpleasant sight,

As for Pre-Cambrian algae I look and look

And cannot see them, though I’m told they’re there.

 

But these

Exquisite fern-like forms

Printed upon the rock,

These fragile plants that have survived the storms

Of some odd billion years

Move me almost to tears.

 

So I come here often

To see these delicate stems

Breathed on the rock like frost crystals on a window,

But permanently,

But forever.

This rock is my favorite book, my favorite picture,

My dependable scripture, 

My sense of wholeness, a billion years at my elbow.

 

I suspect my geology kid will appreciate that one, although we both know that trilobites are actually super cool. 

 

The second poem is a real gem, and one of my new favorites.

 

Waka

 

I am not a person.

I am a succession of persons

Held together by memory.

 

When the string breaks,

The beads are scattered. 

 

This particular era of poets was filled with so many memorable characters. The next one I wanted to talk about was Laura Riding. 

 

She was married to historian and writer, Louis Gottschalk, for five years, and after the divorce went on to have a series of affairs with married men, attempt and survive suicide, live a rather unconventional life, and write poetry that was controversial in its time, with critics and poets on opposing sides as to whether her works were any good. 

 

I am on the side of finding her original and interesting. Here is my favorite of the poems in this collection:

 

Prisms

 

What is beheld through glass seems glass.

 

The quality of what I am

Encases what I am not,

Smooths the strange world.

I perceive it slowly,

In my time,

In my material,

As my pride,

As my possession:

The vision is love.

 

When life crashes like a cracked pane,

Still shall I love

Even the strange dead as the living once.

Death also sees, though distantly,

And I must trust then as now

A prism - of another kind,

Through which one may not put one’s hands to touch. 

 

There are several Harlem Renaissance poets born around the turn of the century. The next one in this collection is Arna Bontemps, who I knew mostly through his fiction. His ancestors were free people of color rather than enslaved persons, so his perspective was often unique. 

 

As a college professor, writer, and activist, his legacy is not merely through his writing, but through the many younger men and women that he aided and inspired to seek better opportunities and make the most of them. 

 

I picked the following as my example of his poetry:

 

Southern Mansion

 

Poplars are standing there still as death

and ghosts of dead men

meet their ladies walking

two by two beneath the shade

and standing on the marble steps.

 

There is a sound of music echoing

through the open door

and in the field there is 

another sound tinkling in the cotton:

chains of bondmen dragging on the ground.

 

The years go back with an iron clank,

a hand is on the gate,

a dry leaf trembles on the wall. 

Ghosts are walking.

They have broken roses down

and poplars stand there still as death.

 

In an era when there is a weird trend among certain white conservatives to hold lavish weddings at the old historic plantations, it is good to be reminded of the real meaning of the Southern mansions, their genesis in the blood and toil of the enslaved. 

 

Kenneth Fearing is most associated with the Great Depression, as a leftist poet who spoke out against the injustices that ground the poor during this era. His poetry is pretty modernist, and reminds me not a little of the prose-poetry of John Dos Passos. I could have picked any of his poems from this collection, but this one was my favorite, in part because of the wonderful ways of describing music:

 

American Rhapsody(4)

 

First you bite your fingernails. And then you comb your hair again. And then you wait. And wait.

(They say, you know, that first you lie. And then you steak, they say. And then, they say, you kill.)

 

Then the doorbell rings. Then Peg drops in. And Bill. And Jane. And Doc.

And first you talk, and smoke, and hear the news and have a drink. Then you walk down the stairs.

And you dine, then, and go to a show after that, perhaps, and after that a night spot, and after that come home again, and climb the stairs again, and again go to bed.

 

But first Peg argues, and Doc replies. First you dance the same dance and you drink the same drink you always drank before.

And the piano builds a roof of notes above the world.

And the trumpet weaves a dome of music through space. And the drum makes a ceiling over space and time and night.

And then the table-wit. And then the check. Then home again to bed.

But first, the stairs.

And do you know, baby, as you climb the stairs, do you still feel as you felt back there?

Do you feel again as you felt this morning? And the night before? And then the night before that?

 

(They say, you know, that first you hear voices. And then you have visions, they say. Then, they say, you kick and scream and rave.)

Or do you feel: What is one more night in a lifetime of nights?

What is one more death, or friendship, or divorce out of two, or three? Or four? Or Five?

One more face among so many, many faces, one more life among so many million lives?

 

But first, baby, as you climb and count the stairs (and they total the same) did you, sometime or somewhere, have a different idea?

Is this, baby, what you were born to feel, and do, and be?

 

Langston Hughes has long been one of my favorite poets. He is, perhaps, the author that first comes to mind when many of us think of the Harlem Renaissance, and for good reason. His poem “Let American Be America Again” is perhaps the most profound musing on the disconnect between the aspirational America and the lived reality of a majority of its citizens. 

 

I have already written about two decades of Hughes’ poetry, that of the 1920s and the 1930s. For this post, I have avoided the poems I featured in previous posts. That said, I wrote down so many more poems by Hughes than any of the others, and this is both because they are short and because they are so very good. Also, I will mostly be quoting portions of poems, not entire ones, particularly for the epic long work from 1951, Montage of a Dream Deferred. 

 

I want to start, however, with one section of “A House in Taos.” This poem is from the 1920s, but I didn’t quote anything from it when I previously wrote about that decade. 

 

Wind

 

Touch our bodies, wind.

Our bodies are separate, individual things.

Touch our bodies, wind,

But blow quickly

Through the red, white, yellow skins

Of our bodies

To the terrible snarl,

Not mine,

Not yours, 

Not hers,

But all one snarl of souls.

Blow quickly, wind,

Before we run back

Into the windlessness -

With our bodies - 

Into the windlessness

Of our house in Taos.

 

The next sections are all from Montage of a Dream Deferred.

 

College Formal: Renaissance Casino

 

Golden girl

in a golden gown

in a melody night

in Harlem town

lad tall and brown

tall and wise

college boy smart

eye in eyes

the music wraps

them both around

in mellow magic

of dancing sound

till they’re the heart

of the whole big town

gold and brown

 

Passing

 

On sunny summer Sunday afternoons in Harlem

when the air is one interminable ball game

and grandma cannot get her gospel hymns

from the Saints of God in Christ

on account of the Dodgers on the radio,

on sunny Sunday afternoons

when the kids look all new

and far too clean to stay that way,

and Harlem has its

washed-and-ironed-and-cleaned-best out,

the ones who’ve crossed the line

to live downtown

miss you,

Harlem of the bitter dream,

since their dream has 

come true.

 

And this one is probably the most famous of the sections, in part because it is the source of the title and the opening quote for Lorainne Hansberry's iconic play, A Raisin in the Sun. 

 

Harlem(2)

 

What happens to a dream deferred?

 

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore -

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over - 

like a syrupy sweet?

 

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

 

Or does it explode?

 

And one final passage:

 

Same in Blues

 

I said to my baby,

Baby, take it slow.

I can’t, she said, I can’t

I got to go!

 

There’s a certain 

amount of traveling

in a dream deferred.

 

Lulu said to Leonard,

I want a diamond ring.

Leonard said to Lulu,

You won’t get a goddamn thing!

 

A certain 

amount of nothing

in a dream deferred.

 

Daddy, daddy, daddy,

All I want is you.

You can have me, baby - 

but my lovin’ days is through.

 

A certain

amount of impotence

in a dream deferred.

 

Three parties

On my party line - 

But that third party, 

Lord, ain’t mine!

 

There’s liable

to be confusion

in a dream deferred.

 

From river to river,

Uptown and down,

There’s liable to be confusion

when a dream gets kicked around. 

 

The final poet I want to feature in this post is Ogden Nash. I have been disappointed at how few people these days seem to be familiar with him. He was, after all, one of the great humorists of the 20th Century, and many of his poems hold up really well today, even the more serious ones. 

 

For this collection, the editors appear to have focused mostly on the serious ones, which is a bit of a shame, as there is so much humor they could have added. Oh well, I guess this means I am due to read one of my several Ogden Nash books. 

 

I will note that there are a couple of longer poems in there that assert that if you are going to sin, you should stick with “sins of commission,” because they are at least fun at the time, while “sins of omission” lack any associated pleasure. 

 

I did decide to highlight one of his more serious poems for this post, although even it has a solid dose of wry and dry humor. Enjoy. 

 

A Necessary Dirge

 

Sometimes it’s difficult, isn’t it, not to grow grim and rancorous

Because man’s fate is so counter-clockwise and cantankerous.

Look at all the noble projects that die a-borning,

Look how hard it is to get to sleep at night and then how hard it is to wake up in the morning!

How easy to be unselfish in the big things that never come up and how hard in the little things that come up daily and hourly, oh yes,

Such as what heroic pleasure to give up the last seat in a lifeboat to a mother and babe, and what an irritation to give some housewife your seat on the Lexington Avenue Express!

How easy for those who do not bulge

To not overindulge!

O universe perverse, why and whence your perverseness?

Why do you not teem with betterness instead of worseness?

Do you get your only enjoyment

Out of humanity’s annoyment?

Because a point I would like to discuss

Is, why wouldn’t it be just as easy for you to make things easy for us?

But no, you will not listen, expostulation is useless,

Home is the fisherman empty-handed, home is the hunter caribouless and mooseless.

Humanity must continue to follow the sun around

And accept the eternal run-around.

Well, and if that be the case, why come on humanity!

So long as it is our fate to be irked all our life let us just keep our heads up and take our irking with insouciant urbanity. 

 

I hope this post introduced my readers to some new poets and worthy poems. I believe poetry is a human necessity, connecting the power of words to the power of sound and music. Whatever I can do to encourage people to read poetry - particularly aloud - and experience its magic, will be something that makes my life worthwhile.