20th Century American Poetry (DOB 1897-1899)

Source of book: I own this

 

This particular book is volume two of the set of 20th Century American Poetry. So far, there are only two volumes, but clearly at least two more will be needed to fill out the eventual collection. I own the first as well, but decided to read a portion of this one first. 

The books are laid out in an interesting manner. Rather than alphabetically by author, or in the order the poems were written or published, LoA decided to organize them by the year of the author’s birth. This volume begins with 1894 and e e cummings. These are large books, in this case containing nearly 900 pages of poems, followed by more than a hundred pages of short biographies and notes. I arbitrarily decided to read a bit more than one hundred pages, and end with a particular year. 

This is my second post regarding this collection. You can read the first here. 

 

While I will not discuss every single poet, here is the list of who was included in the section I read:

 

Louise Bogan, Emanuel Carnevali, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Walter Lowenfels, David McCord, John Wheelwright, Stephen Vincent Benet, Malcolm Crowley, Harry Crosby, Horace Gregory, Melvin B. Tolson, Leonie Adams, Hart Crane, Thomas A. Dorsey, Hildegard Flanner, Janet Lewis, Joseph Moncure March, Vladimir Nabokov, Lynn Riggs, and Allen Tate.

 

These were all born between 1897 and 1899. As with the previous selection, this one includes both well known and readily available poets, and some that are more obscure and even unavailable in print. 

 

Three names dominated this particular selection, in terms of the number of pages dedicated to their work: Louise Bogan, Stephen Vincent Benet, and Hart Crane. 

 

I’ll start with Louise Bogan, as she was the first in this selection. I was not that familiar with her, although she was a Poet Laureate and part of the literary circle of her time. As usual, there is probably a significant degree of sexism involved here. Female artists of all sorts tend to be underappreciated during their lifetimes, and forgotten after their death unless someone with influence works to preserve their legacy. 

 

In the case of Bogan, I think her work equals any man of her era, and I found it to be more to my taste than Ezra Pound, with whom her style is often compared. In fact, I liked it enough to add her collected poems to my library. 

 

It was very difficult to choose which of her poems to feature, as I really could have gone with any of them. 

 

Here are the ones I liked the most this time through, starting with some more traditional forms:

 

Knowledge

 

Now that I know

How passion warms little

Of flesh in the mould,

And treasure is brittle, -

 

I’ll lie here and learn

How, over their ground,

Trees make a long shadow

And a light sound.

 

And this one:

 

The Alchemist

 

I burned my life, that I might find

A passion wholly of the mind,

Thought divorced from eye and bone,

Ecstasy come to breath alone

I broke my life, to seek relief

From the flawed light of love and grief.

 

With mounting beat the utter fire

Charred existence and desire.

It died low, ceased its sudden thresh.

I had found unmysterious flesh - 

Not the mind’s avid substance - still

Passionate beyond the will. 

 

And this, one, which I think is gorgeous:

 

Late

 

The cormorant still screams

Over cave and promontory.

Stony wings and bleak glory

Battle in your dreams.

Now sullen and deranged,

Not simply, as a child,

You look upon the earth

And find it harrowed and wild.

Now, only to mock

At the sterile cliff laid bare,

At the cold pure sky unchanged,

You look upon the rock,

You look upon the air. 

 

And finally, one with a more modernist form:

 

The Dragonfly

 

You are made of almost nothing

But of enough

To be great eyes

And diaphanous double vans;

To be ceaseless movement,

Unending hunger

Grappling love.

 

Link between water and air,

Earth repels you.

Light touches you only to shift into iridescence

Upon your body and wings.

 

Twice-born, predator,

You split into the heat.

Swift beyond calculation or capture

You dart into the shadow

Which consumes you.

 

You rocket into the day.

But at last, when the wind flattens the grasses,

For you, the design and purpose stop.

 

And you fall

With the other husks of summer.

 

Yep, Louise Bogan is a keeper - I definitely plan to explore her work more. 

 

Another poet that I rather liked - although only a handful of his poems are in this collection - is Emanuel Carnevali. In particular, he wrote some truly striking lines. 

 

Sermon

 

Chao-Mong-Mu freely laid his hands over the sky:

You do not know how to lay your hands over the breasts of your beloved.

 

Chao-Mong-Mu made the tree dance at his will:

You do not know how to hug a rough tree and say “darling” to it.

 

Chao-Mong-Mu magnificently ran a shaft of sunlight to smash against the treetops:

You walk carefully, carefully, and fend off the sunlight with your grey clothes, although you’re very poor. 

 

Chao-Mong-Mu painted a sky that was a pink-fleshed vase; then he became a very small thing and hid in the vase:

You build yourselves immense houses to live in, and you are afraid even there. 

 

I was unable to find any information on “Chao-Mong-Mu” - he may be made up, or the reference may be too obscure for my search skills. In any case, the images in this poem are incredible. I particularly like the idea of building immense houses, yet remaining afraid. In general, this is how the love of money works. You build what you think will be your safety and security, and yet it is never enough. 

 

Here is another rather philosophical poem that I liked:

 

Almost a God

 

I am dying under this heat

but there may be worse.

 

I love my wife

but I should love her more.

 

I love my sweetheart but her love should be more universal.

One word describes her but I do not know which word.

 

All shorter than something else:

All is more God-like than something else.

 

There is competition in the chaos,

which is very foolish.

 

I am in doubt as a bent willow branch

nodding to the water.

 

I admire the devil for he leaves things unfinished.

I admire God for he finishes everything. 

 

There aren’t as many song lyrics in this particular section of the book, but there is one that I did want to mention. But just typing the lyrics out won’t really capture the essence. Bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson is best heard in his own voice. 

 

Long Distance Moan

 

I’ll also quote a short bit of doggerel from David McCord that made me smile.

 

History of Education

 

The decent docent doesn’t doze:

He teaches standing on his toes.

His student dassn’t doze - and does,

And that’s what teaching is and was. 

 

Next up is John Wheelwright, perhaps known as much for his founding of the Trotskyite party in America these days, but he did write some interesting poetry. I selected a few that I liked the most. 

 

Would You Think?

 

Does the sound or the silence make 

music? When no ripples pass

over watery trees; like painted glass

lying beneath a quiet lake;

            would you think the real forest lay

            only in the reflected 

            trees, which are protected

            by non-existence from the air of day?

Our blood gives voice to earth and shell,

they speak but in refracted sounds.

The silence of the dead resounds,

but what they say we cannot tell.

            Only echoes of what they taught

            are heard by living ears.

            The tongue tells what it hears

            and drowns the silence which the dead besought.

The questioning, circumambient light

the answering, luminiferous doubt

listen, and whisper it about

until the mocking stars turn bright.

            Tardy flowers have bloomed long

            but they have long been dead.

            Now on the ice, like lead

            hailstones drop loud, with a rattlesnake’s song.

 

It is a haunting poem, and is multivalent as so many great poems are. 

 

This next one is expressly political, and in an unusual format. It seems relevant in our own time, nearly 100 years later. 

 

Come Over and Help Us

A Rhapsody

 

I.

Our masks are gauze / and screen our faces for those unlike us only,

Who are easily deceived. / Pierce through these masks to our unhidden tongues

And watch us scold, / scold with intellectual lust; / scold

Ourselves, our foes, our friends; / Europe, America, Boston; and all that is not

Boston; / till we reach a purity, fierce as the love of God; - / Hate.

Hate, still fed by the shadowed source; / but fallen, stagnant fallen;

Sunk low between thin channels; rises, rises; / swells to burst

Its walls; and rolls out deep and wide. / Hate rules our drowning Race.

Any freed from our Tyrant; / abandon their farms, forsake their Country, become American.

 

We, the least subtle of Peoples, / lead each only one life at a time, -

Being never, never anything but sincere; / yet we trust our honesty

So little that we dare not depart from it, - / knowing it to need habitual stimulation.

And living amid a world of Spooks, / we summon another to us

Who is (in some sort) our Clown, - / as he affords us amusement.

O! sweet tormentor, Doubt! longed-for and human, / leave us some plausible

Evil motive, however incredible. / The Hate in the World outside our World

(Envious, malicious, vindictive) / makes our Hate gleam in the splendor

Of a Castrate / who with tongue plucked out; / arms, legs sawed off;

Eyes and ears, pierced through; / still thinks / thinks

By means of all his nutriment, / with intense, exacting Energy, terrible, consuming.

Madness, we so politely placate / as an every-day inconvenience

We shun in secret. / Madness is sumptuous; Hate, ascetic.

Those only who remain sane, / taste the flavor of Hate.

Strong Joy, we forbid ourselves / and deny large pleasurable objects,

But, too shrewd to forego amusement, / we enjoy all joys which, dying, leave us teased.

So spare us, sweet Doubt, our tormentor, / the Arts, our concerts, and novels;

The theater, sports, the exotic past; / to use to stave off Madness,

To use as breathing spells, / that our drug's tang may not die.

If with less conviction, / with some result, some end, -

So pure ourselves; so clear our passion; / pure, clear, alone.

 

II.

The New Englander leaves New England / to flaunt his drab person

Before Latin decors / and Asiatic back-drops.

Wearies. / Returns to life, -life tried for a little while.

A poor sort of thing / (filling the stomach; emptying the bowels;

Bothering to speak to friends on the street; / filling the stomach again;

Dancing, drinking, whoring) / forms the tissue of this fabric.-

(Marriage; society; business; charity; - / Life, and life refused.)

 

The New Englander appraises sins, / and finds them beyond his means, and hoards

Likewise, he seldom spends his goodness / on someone ignoble as he,

But, to make an occasion, he proves himself / that he is equally ignoble.

Then he breaks his fast! / Then he ends his thirsting!

He censors the Judge. / He passes judgment on the Censor. / No language is left.

His lone faculty, Condemnation, -condemned. / Nothing is left to say.

Proclaim an Armistice. / Through Existence, livid, void, / let silence flood.

 

Ask the Silent One your question. / (He is stupid in misery

No more than the talkative man, who talks through his hat.) / Ask the question.

If he replied at all, / it would be to remark that he never could despise

Anyone so much as himself / should he once give way to Self-pity.

A different act of faith is his, - / the white gesture of Humility.

He knows his weakness. / He is well-schooled / and he never forgets the shortest

Title of his Knowledge. / The jailer of his Soul sees Pride. / He sees

Tears, never. / The Silent One is so eaten away

He cannot make that little effort / which surrender to external Fact

Requires, / but looks out always with one wish, - / to realize he exists.

 

Lo! a Desire! / A Faint motive! / A motive (however faint) beyond disinterestedness.

Faint. / It is faint. / But the boundary is clear. / Desire, oh desire further!

Past that boundary lies Annihilation / where the Soul

Breaks the monotonous-familiar / and man wakes to the shocking

Unastounded company of other men. / But the Silent One would not pass

Where the Redmen have gone. / He would live without end. That, - / the ultimate nature of Hell.

                                                           

Seriously: read that in light of the MAGA movement and its ass-clown king. 

 

The final one by Wheelwright is essentially a sonnet, although it is unrhymed. I’m a sucker for a good sonnet, and this one caught my eye. 

 

Esprit d’Escalier

 

That drop of sweat which is sliding down my mount

tastes like a tear. Is my lip cut? was her cheek?

It was a tear, fool. Fool, you did not see

once through empty freight train conversation

her Jack and Jill tears fall down to defer

breaking that telegram her pulse was ticking

to her ears. They were, then, sweat and blood? Her tears

taste, in my mouth, of death and birth and salt.

 

I, when she ask me a question or make reply

think only what I think; while she is thinking

our future, past, our present one dimension.

O! everything I’d say cuts with primal woe;

nor shall I ever tell the taste of my own sweat

from the tang of tears or blood, or taste of that spit. 

 

The next poet I want to talk about is Melvin B. Tolson, one of the lesser-known of the Harlem Renaissance poets. A lot of his poems are apparently in a longer form. This book chooses excerpts from some of those longer works. Even the excerpts are a bit too long to quote, but I will mention Harlem Gallery as an excellent free-form poem, with some great lines. Here is one I jotted down:

 

Listen, Black Boy.

Did the High Priestess at 27 rue de Fleurus

assert, “The Negro suffers from nothingness”?

Hideho confided like a neophyte on The Walk,

“Jazz is the marijuana of the Blacks.”

In the tribulum of dialecticts, I juggleed the idea;

then I observed,

“Jazz is the philosopher’s egg of the Whites.” 

 

Next up is another poet laureate, Leonie Adams. She ran in the same circles as Bogan, and also had a long academic career. 

 

The Moon and Spectator

 

In the dead of the night

I got up from my bed;

The air stretched hollow,

A theatre of the dead.

 

The night was half sunk and the wind gone,

The passions of the wind had gone down;

But the boughs shaken a little, blanched a little,

Spectrally, by the moon.

 

The moon performed her march fantastic,

The harrier of clouds, a flame half seen,

Or full in the high sky, the royal sables being spread,

A withered queen.

 

The moon, that chill frame, I saw enact

Her rite commemorative of a bound ghost,

And thought of a night wildly born, outliving storm,

And its tears lost.

 

Almost without pulse, a spectator to the moon,

A dream of some fashion set the body awake,

But called to the heart in the deeps of sleep how rising

From sleep again it would break.

 

Hart Crane is one of those poets I think that people have heard of, but never really read. Perhaps his dramatic life and early death gave him that extra glow, but really, his poetry is excellent as well.

 

Crane was born gay in an era when the permissiveness of the 19th Century was giving way to a wave of persecutions, from the declaration that any sexual orientation other than strict heterosexuality was a mental illness (leading to things such as Alan Turing being tortured, despite his crucial role in winning a war), to the outright criminalization of relations that had, at least in America, been left mostly as a moral and religious issue. 

 

Two incidents appear to have been instrumental in Crane’s dramatic suicide. First, he came out to his mother. It did not go well. They fought, she cut him off, and they never saw each other again. Second, Crane attempted a heterosexual with Peggy Crowley, the ex-wife of a friend. It did not go well either - it did not “cure” him of homosexuality, and he fell into a despair. Enroute back to New York from Cuba, he stepped off the boat into the Gulf, saying, “Goodbye, everybody.”

 

One wonders if, in a less bigoted era, he could have survived and thrived. 

 

In any case, the poetry he left behind is impressive, and I enjoyed it. Here is one of his shorter and best known poems. 

 

Repose of Rivers

 

The willows carried a slow sound,

A sarabande the wind mowed on the mead.

I could never remember

That seething, steady leveling of the marshes

Till age had brought me to the sea.

 

Flags, weeds. And remembrance of steep alcoves

Where cypresses shared the noon’s

Tyranny; they drew me into hades almost.

And mammoth turtles climbing sulpher dreams

Yielded, while sun-silt rippled them

Assunder…

 

How much I would have bartered! the black gorge

And all the singular nestings in the hills

Where beavers learn stitch and tooth.

The pond I entered once and quickly fled -

I remember now its singing willow rim.

 

And finally, in that memory all things nurse;

After the city that I finally passed 

With scalding unguents spread and smoking darts

The monsoon cut across the delta

At gulf gates … there, beyond the dykes

 

I heard wind flaking sapphire, like this summer, 

And willows could not hold more steady sound. 

 

The poem that some consider to be Crane’s masterpiece is in one long poem, “The Bridge.” It can be seen either as a collection of lyrics bound together by a theme, or as a long epic. It is dedicated to the Brooklyn Bridge (which I got to walk across this year!) and is a bit of an ode to America, in all its aspirational goodness and practical messiness. 

 

While I thought there were some weaker sections, overall, the poem is pretty badass, and worth reading. Just to give a taste, here is a bit of the third part, “Cutty Sark,” a reference to the famous clipper ship, but it goes…a few different directions. The poetry is pretty nifty. 

 

I met a man in South Street, tall - 

a nervous shark tooth swung on his chain.

His eyes pressed through green glass

- green glasses, or bar lights made them

so -

            shine -

                        GREEN -

                                    eyes -

stepped out - forgot to look at you

or left you several blocks away - 

 

in the nickel-in-the-slot piano jogged

“Stamboul Nights” - weaving somebody’s nickel - sang -

            O Stamboul Rose - dreams weave the rose!

                       

                        Murmurs of Leviathan he spoke,

                        and rum was Plato in our heads…

 

Part of the fun of “The Bridge” is that the form and style changes between sections, giving a completely different experience. 

 

Next up is one by Hildegarde Flanner, who I had never heard of. Although maybe I should have, because in addition to her poetry and essays, she was an influential conservationist. Maybe I have seen her name in that context? Anyway, here is one of her poems. 

 

Dumb

 

Silence braided her fingers in my hair

And put her ankles close to mine in bed.

She hushed a silver sparrow in his song

And laid against my throat her fragile head.

 

“I conquered today,” she said, “as yesterday,

And now we two shall rest as one tonight.

A girl with silence in her arms,

(Lie quietly!) is a lovely sight.”

 

And so I rest with silence in my arms,

Her hair across my breath when I would weep.

I cannot even force my tongue to pray

That she will leave me in my sleep.

 

I appreciate that Library of America makes sure to highlight women and minorities in its collections. There are a number of female poets whose name recognition - or its lack - might lead to them being overlooked. 

 

Another one of these is Janet Lewis. She made it to age 99, was married to Yvor Winters, but should also be remembered for her poetry and novels. The most famous of the latter was The Wife of Martin Guerre. I could have picked any of her poems, but two were my favorites. 

 

The Reader

 

Sun creeps under the eaves,

And shines on the bare floor

While he forgets the earth.

 

Cool ashes on the hearth,

And all so still save for

The soft turning of leaves.

 

A creature fresh from birth

Clings to the screen door,

Heaving damp heavy wings.

 

 And, in a very different vein, this one. I am reminded in a way of C. S. Lewis’ unfinished story about the older years of Helen of Troy - although the two Lewises go very different directions. 

 

Helen Grows Old

 

We have forgotten Paris, and his fate.

We have not much inquired 

If Menelaus from the Trojan gate

Returning found the long desired

Immortal beauty by his hearth. Then late,

 

Late, long past the morning hour,

Could even she recapture from the dawn

The young delightful love? When the dread power

That forced her will was gone,

When fell the last charred tower,

 

When the last flame had faded from the cloud,

And by the darkening sea

The plain lay empty of the armed crowd,

Then was she free

Who had been ruled by passion blind and proud?

 

Then did she find with him who first she chose 

Before the desperate flight,

At last, repose

In love still radiant at the edge of night,

As fair as in the morning? No one knows. 

 

No one has cared to say. The story clings

To the tempestuous years, by passion bound, 

Like Helen. No one brings 

A tale of quiet love. The fading sound

Is blent of falling embers, weeping kings. 

 

I’ll end with a poem by Allen Tate. I have mixed feelings about Tate generally. It is pretty clear that he held typical Southern White Guy of his time, both praising Langston Hughes as an artist, while refusing to socialize with him across the color line. 

 

On the other hand, particularly later in life, he supported voting rights for African Americans - although in a weird twist, he opined that he thought the Supreme Court got it backwards, integrating schools by court ruling rather than opening voting so that black voters could vote for integration. A bit complicated, I suppose. 

 

Some of the poems in this collection were from the Southern perspective, although hardly a hagiography. For the most part, I felt they were okay, but not great. With the exception of this one poem that re-read a few times, because it really made an impression. 

 

Tate captures the frustration many of us feel about the awkward blindness of upper-class white liberalism. So, while I tend to agree with many of the more leftist (by US standards at least) approaches to tackling social problems, I wince at the lack of actual understanding of the complexities that require actual social interaction with those you wish to help. 

 

This poem in part irritates me because it sounds like the disingenuous right-wing criticism of liberalism. But if you let it sink in, and sit with the nuance, it is far more complicated. There is a good kernel of truth in this poem. 

 

The Ivory Tower

 

Let us begin to understand the argument.

There is a solution to everything: Science.

Separate those evils strictly social

From other evils that are eventually social,

It ends in all evils being social: Deduction.

Is not marriage a social institution,

(un contrat social) Is not prostitution 

An institution? Abolish (1) marriage, (2) poverty.

We understand everything: Dialectic.

We who get plenty to eat and get it 

Advertising the starvation of others

Understand everything not including

Ourselves: we have enough to eat. Oedipus

Was necessarily an example - everything

Is an example - of capitalism pooped

By decay; King Lear, of neurotic senility

Bred of tyrannous escape from reality;

Cleopatra, of the unadjusted girl.

Everybody but us is an example of capitalism.

We are understanding the argument 

That we have got to make men slaves 

Of their bellies in order to get them fed.

The sole problem is the problem of hunger

(Or the distribution of commodities)

And a beast came out of the sea

And a fire came out of the night

To them that were not hungry

The commodities being well distributed

And the prostate thrives a little, then delays,

The hour of light is brief, then decays;

But light must be a social institution

Even if we are not sure what the other

Is (pro, forth; stare, to stand).

We know everything to know on sea or land.

And on the mountains by the sea

There was enacted tragedy

(Or maybe in a hollow by a tree),

Both man and woman were well-fed

When he had brought her hot to bed

But he was largely make-believe

And she no better than a sieve;

Soon the uneconomic woe

That love engenders crushed them, so

That every time they drank or ate

They cursed the board where food was set.

Axel’s Castle, the text they took,

Was a most remarkable book

But yet in spite of Mr. Wilson

Beef and cheese washed down by Pilsen

Did not adjust the sexual act

To truths of economic fact,

So was produced this tragedy

In a far tower of ivory

Where, O young men, late in the night

All you who drink light and stroke the air

Come back, seeking the night, and cry

To strict Rapunzel to let down her hair. 

 

In some ways, it is fascinating to see how many different styles were used by poets all born within three years of each other. This whole period was a time of ferment and experimentation, which is why the classic exists alongside the avant garde. 

 

I am enjoying working my way through this sampler, adding additional poets to my own collection. Stay tuned for future installments.