Jonathan Williams

I was saddened to hear about Jonathan Williams, a friend I began to know in the late Seventies, when I was living in New Haven. Ted Wilentz, a great book man, was then the head of the Yale Co-op, and he gave a party at his place for Jonanthan and Tom Meyer when they visited. I remember, too, that the three princesses of American poetry were guests: Mary de Rachewiltz, daughter of Ezra Pound, Perdita Schaffner, daughter of H.D., and Holly Stevens, daughter of Wallace S. Everyone got along very well, and it was the beginning of a friendship with Jonathan and Tom. I recall visits both to Highlands, NC, where they had their principal residence, and to their cottage in Cumbria, an attraction in itself, quite apart from the Dales setting, which is one of England's beauty spots. To offset possible imputations of grandiosity, Jonathan had set up near the house entrance a cardboard effigy of Colonel Sanders, acquired from some KFC establishment or other, I guess. Besides being the eminent publisher of the Black Mountain School (and Basil Bunting), Jonathan was an aficionado of homegrown Americana, witness his huge collection of American photographers celebrated and otherwise--not to mention publishing ventures like The White Trash Cookbook, which a regular tradebook house picked up and made a success of after Jonathan first brought it out. He had a sense of humor it's too mild to describe as irreverent. One of his favorite snapshots showed a little storefront somewhere in the South with the sign ONAN'S AUTO SHOP. His poems often as not are raucously funny, though I think it's fair to say that Tom is the better poet. A great original: if I close my eyes I see him big as life, over six feet tall, puffing on a panatela. What a delight to have known him. I spoke to Tom, who is bearing up very well, surrounded by friends, no doubt pausing at their big picture window from time to time, perfect for contemplating the misty peaks of Appalachia that Jonathan loved so well.

Back from New York

Home again, home again. A wonderful couple of days in the city, seeing friends, art shows, and meeting the public at the Stella Adler Gallery.

The editor, poet and translator Jonathan Galassi joined Philip and me for a drink on Wednesday, a chance to catch up on what we’ve been doing. Jonathan tells me a new book of poems is nearing completion and also that he will be following up on his excellent translation of Montale with new collection of versions of Leopardi. Something to look forward to.

We stayed a night with friends Karen Clark and Jonathan Bernstein, kind and generous hosts. And had time to fit in a visit to the Whitney Biennial in the afternoon. Too many thoughts about that to record here, though I sensed that there was a slight preponderance of women artists and an unusually high percentage of artists now living in Los Angeles, which is something to think about, especially given the cool, enigmatic, decontextualized feel of the show as a whole. Peter Schjeldahl of the New Yorker summed it up as “Lessness," a Beckettian term that handily describes many of the works, which do their damnedest to avoid overstatement.

The reading with my former student Ravi Shankar last night got a good turnout and was well received. Marie Ponsot had generously consented to introduce my part of the evening and what she said was in itself sufficient reason to bestir and transport oneself down to W. 27th Street. She is one of my heroes, personally and artistically, a touchstone of artistic commitment. Several close friends attended the evening, so that it felt very much like a family gathering. I opened my part of the proceedings by mentioning my one meeting with Stella Adler many years ago, when I attended a birthday party for a friend I used to see a bit in those days, the poet Kenward Elmslie (accompanied by another wonderful friend, the painter and poet Joe Brainard) at her place just opposite the Metropolitan Museum. I remember I was seated next to Ann Lauterbach, one of the most refreshing dinner partners ever—beautiful, smart, ironic. Lots of lively discussion around the dinner table because it was clear that Stella Adler didn’t care for polite chat and wanted real debate, sharp differences of opinion stated forthrightly. Was there a sense of theater? Yes, there was a sense of theater, and even the rooms felt larger than life, partly because the walls were covered with smoked mirrors, and glittering chandeliers hung from the ceiling. We all had to be “on,” and exerted ourselves to oblige.

As for last night, Ravi did a bang-up job, a reading that included a hiphop piece based on Whitman that brought down the house. And people said my part went well. Something for the scrapbook, except that I don’t have one. Well, maybe this is it.

New York

My partner and I drove down to New York today, putting up at the Penn Club on 44th St., where he is a member. As soon as we checked in I went up to the Met Museum to see the Courbet exhibition that has had such an enthusiastic reception. It's extraordinarily comprehensive, though, unfortunately, Courbet's two greatest paintings weren't allowed to participate. Luckily I've seen them both before--The Burial at Ornans and The Studio. Anyway, a brilliant series of canvases. He was always controversial, in fact, he said, "As soon as I cease to be controversial, I will cease to be important." Controversy centered around his choice of subject matter--portrayal of ordinary country people as though they counted as much as figures in history painting, portrayal of unidealized nudes (including a lesbian couple), and then his proto-Impressionist handling of paint, which clearly influenced Manet, Cezanne, and Van Gogh. Late in life he refused the order of the Legion of Honor, as few French artists have ever done. He was even imprisoned after the defeat of the Paris Commune. I was looking forward to this and the experience went beyond expectations.

I took a slow bus ride down from the Museum, enjoying the prospect of Central Park and surrounding city towers. I spent most of my adult life in New York, and I always say there's no such thing as an ex-New Yorker. I've spent time in all the world capitals except Tokyo and Moscow, but New York is in its own class, a staggering blend of high and low, beauty and the other thing. A homecoming!

Tomorrow evening I have my reading at the Stella Adler Studio.

Arts Center at Almassera Vella

People may or may not have heard about the arts center Almassera Vella in a mountain village called Relleu near Alicante in southern Spain. In this pastoral location, a farsighted and friendly man named Christopher North has set up an innovative colony for practitioners of several arts. Classes are being held throughout the spring and into the summer. The week-long course I’ll be teaching there begins in late May. See the website at:

www.oldolivepress.com.

No more sacrifices

A week from today marks the sixty-seventh anniversary of Virginia Woolf’s death by suicide. Maxine Kumin has reported that the suicide rate among dentists is higher than it is among writers, but I don’t know the source of her figures. I do know that authors who take their own lives are the object of a special reverence, a reverence not based on the quality of their work alone; and I wonder why. The most recent instance is Sarah Hannah whose posthumous book Inflorescence was published last year. Literary historians tell us that, during the year after the publication of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, hundreds of young men killed themselves. Apparently there is something like a literarily inspired suicide. In the United States, at the height of what has been called the “Confessional “ period, there was almost an epidemic of these: Sylvia Plath, Randall Jarrell (probably), John Berryman, Ann Sexton. A bit later, Thomas James, and then more recently the horrifying death of Reetika Vazirani. And I gather that many poetry students during the late sixties and early seventies took their lives before giving themselves to time to find out what they could do.

Why this morbidity? I don’t know the answer. But it disturbs me, and I wish it weren’t so. I don’t find suicide glamorous. No doubt there are cases of terminal and extraordinarily painful illness where choosing to put an end to suffering is in the best interests of the sufferer. Otherwise, a different solution should be sought. One contribution we could all make is to stop regarding suicide as proof of some extraordinary commitment or passion. Suicidal impulses are the result of mental illness and deserve sympathy and support; but not reverence.

In the period when Woolf died, there were no effective medications and psychotherapy was only rudimentary. We can understand why someone with a history of sexual abuse and recurrent schizophrenic episodes might decide late in life that she could no longer bear to continue, especially when the country that she loved was subject to constant bombing. But the present-day medical and psychotherapeutic climate is not what hers was; we have options that Woolf did not have. Intense emotional pain is treatable, it is not a death sentence.

This blog began with a mention of a new book of critical essays to be published later in the year. One of the essays is about Woolf’s suicide (and I’d like to say the piece was published several years before Michael Cunningham’s The Hours). Here is the concluding paragraph:

“It’s as painful as useless to speculate what Woolf might have gone on to write if the psychological difficulties she struggled with had been better understood in her day so that she could have regained her health and lived. What we can do is at least respect her difficult choice, go with her on that last walk to the river, try to see some of the beauty that she surely saw even then in the landscape, a sky beginning to cloud over, the black silhouette of a bird in the distance. We return accompanied not by her, alas, but by the gritty determination she left for us to take up when she could carry it no longer—to defy, to offer witness. Since her death, new avenues of freedom and well-being have been opened and are readily available. If hers was a sacrifice, it has been made: we need no others.”

Purim and Women

Spring comes a day earlier in a Leap Year, even though the weather in upstate New York isn’t playing along so far.

Thought: one form of poesis not usually recognized as such is the development of holidays and rituals based on sacred writings. In the Judaic calendar for this year today (beginning at sunset) is Purim, a holiday constructed around the narrative told in the book of Esther. It’s the most playful of the Jewish holidays, but it has serious content, specifically, around the intrinsic power of women. Without political or military power, without unusual physical strength, Esther nevertheless saves her captive nation from destruction. The story reminds us that women have always had, even when deprived of institutional or civic appointments, an uncanny ability to sway opinion and shape events. It is a power based on moral intelligence, access to emotion, the ability conferred thereby to inspire emotion in others, and a keen gift for communication. Which helps explain women’s success in literary art. Also, a flair for sensory (and sensuous) experience. And let’s not forget beauty, of a variety and range that would include the appeal of stars like Rita Moreno, Cate Blanchett, or Selma Hayek as well as figures from the arts like Judith Jamison, Grace Paley, Louise Erdrich, Francine Prose, and Marie Ponsot.

Speaking of the brilliant poet Marie Ponsot, now in her eighties and soon to publish a new book, she will be introducing a reading I will be giving on March 27 at the Stella Adler Studio (31 West 27th Street, New York, at 6:30 or shortly thereafter). My fellow reader is Ravi Shankar, whom I’ve known since he was a student in the Graduate Writing Program at Columbia. He has published one book of poems, Instrumentality, and has edited an anthology of Asian poetry in translation, scheduled with Norton for next month. Also, he is an editor of the online magazine Drunken Boat, mentioned in yesterday’s entry.

To finish up, here’s a plug for a new collection of essays titled Poet’s Bookshelf II, edited by Peter Davis and Tom Koontz. It’s a follow-up to the earlier volume I, and the premise for both installments is that a wide range of poets should provide a list of books that shaped their writing. Pieces like those by Sandra Alcosser, Rane Arroyo, Dan Bourne, Forrest Gander, Sandra Gilbert, Grace Schulman, and Lloyd Schwartz more than justify the price of admission, sometimes leading you to books you might want to read, and at the very least giving a sense of who the essayist is.

The Hinterland

A blog isn’t the place to go into problems of this scope, but for some reason today I find myself annoyed again by the almost universal practice of hinting—not saying things directly but instead suggesting them, communicating through “masks,” using allegorical techniques to “send a message,” to “veil” what the speaker wants to say about a topic, a person, a work of art or a body of work. The most idiotic and cowardly form of this is the timed phone call, where the caller hangs up. There have been a lot of those lately. (I know, I know, I could get caller ID, but why should I have to?) Anyone intrigued by this subject might check out an essay I published in the online magazine Drunken Boat. Here’s the link:

http://www.drunkenboat.com/db8/

An earlier post took up the question of courage; and clearly the source of so much indirection is cowardice, the fear of standing out from the herd, of having negative things said about you, of not getting good treatment from the various dispensers of literary fame. But where’s the surprise in that, considering the quality of American life today? Practically no one nowadays ever risks doing or saying anything that might incur censure or even loss of a free lunch. We have a wimpy Congress that has taken the war in Iraq lying down, we have a public that quickly falls into step if anyone calls their objections to what is happening at the national and international level “un-American.” (Why should any citizen of a country that invented freedom of speech, and especially a presidential candidate, have to apologize for observing that our history is intimately entwined with racism--see the Constitution--and that the effects of that history are still with us?) We have religious denominations that actively foster hypocrisy about sexuality and a press that falls into line where the missionary position on so-called “family values” are concerned. The reality is a bit more complex, as New York Governor David Patterson’s recent disclosures demonstrate. I want America back. The nation of freedom fighters—Washington, John Paul Jones, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Whitman, Emma Goldman, Langston Hughes, Muriel Rukeyser—has been replaced by a swarm of company men and hinters. They have their reward, in the form of consumer goods and medals. But the palm goes to figures like Noam Chomsky, Adrienne Rich, Toni Morrison, Marilyn Hacker, and Gore Vidal.