The New American Poetry 1945-1960, features, with the bios and the actual poems, a short preface by Donald Allen, the editor, who was, as far as I can tell, a former English teacher from Iowa and a Grove Press suit.
Mr. Allen is the man.
He makes every American, Cold War-era, avant-garde, poetry, gesture one could expect: half-truths, name-dropping, geography, it’s like jazz! (No formal, literary, apology needed.) It is what it is, daddy-o!
In his preface, Mr. Allen tells his readers it is difficult for him to put his anthology together, since so little of the poetry he includes is actually published. He all but admits the project is a fraud.
Anthologies reflect established taste. This anthology attempted to impose it, simply by offering to the public poets—except for Allen Ginsberg due to an obscenity trial—the public had not seen.
This anthology was not the Zeitgeist but the ghost of the Zeitgeist, the most insidious type of propaganda there is. The poetry was not the poets’—but Donald Allen’s.
The poets compiled by Mr. Donald Allen did not need to be good. It would be odd if they were good. The avant-garde act was the anthology itself—and this would only make sense if the poets were bad. Genius.
The first 60 pages are devoted to Charles Olson and Robert Duncan: semi-learned lunatic raving, which sets the table wonderfully, because it makes the average poets who follow in the volume seem good. More genius.
The mad house which greets the reader in the opening 60 pages of New American Poetry 1945 – 1960 also provided a wonderful opportunity for cult followers: just pretend to understand the rants of Charles Olson—the Black Mountain/Gloucester cult figure—and you, a nobody college student, who thinks Pound is cool in a comic book sort of way, now achieves sudden, secret-handshake, superiority. Still more genius.
The Top Poet of the Cool New Poetry Cult, of course, was Pound. One cannot read of the poets who gained a bit of notoriety in the period which this classic of Modernist poetry anthology covers, 1945 (when Pound was in a cage and close to being shot by soldiers who risked their lives fighting the Nazis) to 1960 (Pound won the Bollingen Prize in 1949) without scenes of religious-type visits by young poets to the hospital of the insane to see Pound (whose life was saved by the official interventions of his politically reactionary friend, T.S. Eliot.)
Ezra Pound (b 1885) himself wrote (translated, stole?) a few good poems (and there are a handful of good poems in Allen’s anthology) but good poetry isn’t the point—the gist is that Pound’s long work, the Cantos, affirms that one only need put in a great deal of educated effort towards a poetry project in any sort of haphazard manner one pleases. This is to be “modern,” allowing one to escape the inhibiting accomplishments of the past and bring oneself into the 20th century world of letters (there must be such a “world” after all) which must have its figures who spread influence—these of course cannot exist abstractly.
What I have stated truthfully and clearly in a negative manner, can—by looking at it from a slightly different angle—be flipped on its head, and seen in a positive light. I completely understand this.
Scholarship places Dante in Florence. Scholarship names Dante’s contemporary associates. Likewise, scholarship places Ginsberg in San Francisco. You see immediately where this is going.
The million anecdotes of Ginsberg—his connected friends will scribble poetry—in and around San Francisco, or New York, or any locale deemed significant, becomes scholarship, which, like a Visiting Deity, connects all and makes sacred all which my factual description offends, making me an outcast more damned than any clown who might strip naked in public poetry readings.
But to pursue the negative just a little further:
And so the question naturally arises, “who are the young, new, avant-garde poets?” I’m glad you asked, says the Iowa, avant-garde, anthologist, car salesman, hoping one doesn’t wonder what the old avant-garde can possibly have to do with the new avant-garde—if, in fact, avant-garde is a real word. Was Shakespeare or Keats avant-garde before they were published? Hush, don’t ask these questions.
For here is the real nub of the matter. The “avant-garde” or “new writing” label is of no use to those who simply love poetry, who swoon and marvel at verses Keats wrote at 20 (“I Stood Tiptoe,” “Sleep and Poetry”) and look at a little prose poem by Denise Levertov at 40 which they really want to like—but think, “well, okay, I guess this is pretty good…”
The ancient poets used all the same strategies which the “new” poets claim for themselves as “new,” whether it is suggestive imagery, metrical deficiency, a baroque manner, or plain, rude speech. To place a line of poetry in front of one’s eyes and to judge it as pleasing or not, has as much to do with the city of San Francisco or the adventures of Ezra Pound, as it does with Britney Spears or yesterday’s ball scores.
The fame of Shakespeare does not belong the individual who was Shakespeare—who once upon a time also wrote in a “new” manner—Shakespeare is an excellence which the wider public knows and loves and understands as such. It has nothing at all to do with derobed individuals featured in Life magazine.
Here is how Donald Allen’s preface begins:
“In the years since the war American poetry has entered upon a singularly rich period. It is a period that has seen published many of the finest achievements of the older generation: William Carlos Williams’…Ezra Pound’s…H.D.’s later work culminating in her long poem…and the recent work of E.E. Cummings, Marianne Moore, and the late Wallace Stevens.”
Williams, Pound, H.D., Cummings, Moore, and Stevens all belonged to the same tiny, 1920s, circle of well-connected friends who met at the University of Pennsylvania, Bryn Mawr, or Harvard—all of them—except Stevens—“won” the annual “Dial Prize,” a large sum of money handed to them individually by a wealthy patron, Scofield Thayer, whom Eliot befriended at prep school (Eliot also “won” a “Dial Prize.”) Stevens and Williams belonged to a tinier group which included the poet Louis Ginsberg (Allen Ginsberg’s dad). They were only read by, and published by, each other, until they were turned into syllabus copy in universities by a few well-placed academic carpet-baggers from the South (the Fugitive/New Critics, as it turned out). The preface continues:
“A wide variety of poets of the second generation, who emerged in the thirties and forties, have achieved their maturity in this period: Elizabeth Bishop [she knew Dial editor, Moore; taught at Harvard]…Robert Lowell…[Lowell left Harvard to study with the influential New Critics; was friends with Bishop; Lowell taught for Paul Engle at Iowa]…”
“And we can now see that a strong third generation, long awaited but only slowly recognized, has at last emerged.”
The anthology editor finds a “history” angle to puff his offering. I’m sure this patter (he was smart enough not to go on at length) impressed the undergraduates—and even impressed the graduate students (creative writing) who picked up the book. (A college book, purporting, dishonestly, to be an anti-college book.)
Back to the preface:
“These new younger poets have written a large body of work, but most of what has been published so far has appeared only in a few little magazines, as broadsheets, pamphlets, and limited editions, or circulated in manuscript; a larger amount of it has reached its growing audience through poetry readings.”
Then we get from Mr. Donald Allen a writ-large, avant-garde falsehood:
“As it has emerged in Berkeley and San Francisco, Boston, Black Mountain, and New York City, it has shown one common characteristic: a total rejection of all those qualities typical of academic verse.”
This “one common characteristic” is not a characteristic at all.
The three generations of poetry to which Donald Allen refers in his preface lived and breathed academia and are known only because of academia; Pound and Williams were not read until they were put in a textbook, Understanding Poetry, edited by two New Critics, used everywhere in schools—four editions—from the 1930s to the 1970s. Were Shakespeare Keats, Poe, Byron, the Brownings, Tennyson, Dickinson, professors?
How can Donald Allen say the “one common characteristic” was a “total rejection” (“total”?) “of all (“all”?) those qualities typical of academic verse.”? What does this even mean? Which “qualities of academic verse?” Does he mean the use of words and their meanings?
I understand Donald Allen refers to “qualities” and not to plentiful associations within academia itself, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say this is what he wants to imply, as well—and neither implication holds any water. To be sexy, his new poets need to be (falsely) separated from academia. But alas. They were as academic as they could be. It was precisely like Charles Bernstein, a generation later, claiming to despise “Official Verse Culture” while constantly angling for it.
Did college students keep poetry afloat in the 19th century? No—that would be the 20th century.
Here is Peter Coyote remembering the Donald Allen anthology phenomenon:
“When I was in college, my friends and I (the black turtle-neck sweater, Camel cigarette crowd), were all fledgling writers and took writing and reading extremely seriously. Our “bible” was Don Allen’s New American Poetry 1945-60. We tore that book apart, reading everything, dog-earing pages, sharing quotes, and inhaling the works of Robert Creeley, Gary Snyder, Ed Dorn, Robert Duncan, Denise Levertov, Michael McClure and others. When I left college I came to San Francisco State to pursue a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing, largely because Robert Duncan was teaching there.”
Allen’s “the one characteristic” assertion of anti-academia is without merit. The “one common characteristic” of Allen’s poets was not the rejection, but the embracing, of academia—whether support, influence, milieu, or “types of verse.”
He is telling an untruth, even if Donald Allen means that the poets in his anthology rejected time-honored poems which happened to be taught in school long after their authors had passed away. If this is what Mr. Allen meant, he doesn’t quite say it this way—and it would certainly not be in his best interest to say it this way. He wants to give the impression that his anthology’s poets belong to the “open road.”
It’s a myth, of course. The 20th century “open road” leads straight to graduate degrees in creative writing.
But Donald Allen knew exactly how he wanted to present his book. In a thorough, but brilliantly understated manner, he did just that, and as an editor of these poets he deserves kudos, if not cooties.
Another brilliant move was to put an American flag on the cover. America was a big and sexy place, especially in 1960, so this didn’t hurt. Only American poets were allowed in the anthology.
Mr. Allen also divides his anthology into five parts: Black Mountain, Black Mountain, Black Mountain, Black Mountain, and Black Mountain.
The essence of the five groups is captured here in a nutshell (from the preface, again):
“While both publication and instruction at Black Mountain College align Robert Duncan with the first group, he actually emerged in 1947-1949 as a leading poet of the second group, the San Francisco Renaissance…”
Some of Mr. A’s unknown poets met at Harvard— before they drifted to New York. Some went to college together in the Pacific Northwest—before they migrated to San Francisco. Some hitchhiked to Black Mountain (when they weren’t hitchhiking to see Pound) and some thumbed it back to Black Mountain. We are really not talking about a large nation, so much as a small clique, with a few women and one black man.
Young poets will drift about, but Mr. Donald Allen is clever enough to give his Grove Press flock various geographical identities, so he can assign a “San Francisco Renaissance” here and a “New York School” there, to the poets who were writing the kinds of poems which no one, except Grove press—and their own cool cat companions—wanted to read or publish.
Unpublished poets—imagine the nerd factor!—drifting about, with a few magnetic, cult-leader, mentors, Ginsberg, Olson, Duncan, keeping the classroom in line. Donald Allen made this mess seem renowned and sexy. It led to polished publications and decent jobs in academia.
Pure genius.
Nice job, Mr. Allen!
And screw you, Donald Hall, Dana Gioia and David Lehman!*
Scarriet Editors
Salem, MA June 11, 2020
*Donald Hall, with Robert Pack and Louis Simpson, edited the “rival” anthology, The New Poets of England and America, 1957. Dana Gioia’s “Can Poetry Matter?” 1991, savaged the state of poetry in America as (just like Allen’s anthology) incestual, institutional, egotistical, and lacking critical vigor. David Lehman (BAP editor 1988 to present) is hated for those he leaves out. All are considered too mainstream.