Charles Legere 7/10/13 Accidents, Locks of Hair, Cigars, Vinyl Records, Tone, Poetry + History, Life In the proposal

l I wrote up for this fellowship (which is all the way at the bottom, the first entry of this tumblr), I begin by quoting one of the Woodberry Poetry Rooms head librarians at mid-century, John L. Sweeney. He writes, Along one wall [of the WPR] some of the books from Amy Lowells library were kept until their transfer to Houghton Library in 1949. They were a fascinating mixture of literary essences and accidents. The Houghton Library now has, among other things, a lock of Fanny Brawnes hair that Amy Lowell collected for her Keats collection, as well as one of Lowells cigars. These are, of course, ephemera, and one might set aside a whole range of such items, like whats on the cover of a book of poetry, the typeface the poems are set in, the number of copies of that edition of the book, where those copies ended upwhich libraries, which bookstoresas peripheral to the central issue, the essence of the poem. Or: the crickets and flowers that Emily Dickinson pressed into the pages of her fascicles, along with the handwriting that was transcribed, and became her lyric poetry. (Cf. Virginia Jacksons Dickinsons Misery.) Or: how much a poet might have had to drink before he gave a reading, the media formatbe it vinyl or an MP3that that poets reading is then preserved in, and where its stored, and how much it does or doesnt degrade over time, and how much its listened to and by whom, and where, and what he or she made of it. Yesterday, I was listening to Wallace Stevens 1952 reading on The Listening Booth, and Richard Wilburs introduction for Stevens, where Wilbur says, One usually perceptive critic called [Stevens Sea Surface Full of Clouds] an example of pure poetry. Lately however people have come to notice an admirable impurity in that poem. Here, Wilburs trying to wrest Stevens from the kinds of readings that would emphasize abstractness, and press those kinds of readings to account for the strident particularity of the poetry. That is to say, Wilburs trying to re-situate our reading of Stevens in the middle of that parlay between essences and accidents.

And you could draw a parallel between Wilburs introduction and the mid-century poetry and history debate that I wrote about a few days ago. Im listening, right now, to Helen Vendlers marvelous talk on Wallace Stevens, which is also on The Listening Booth: she begins by explaining that even though she didnt have access to the WPR as an undergraduate, because Lamont was then the mens undergraduate library, she was able to get into it during the summer, when there were co-ed summer classes in session. Its so interesting, I think, just how much these accidents matter. Tomorrow, Id like to listen to the audio of Wallace Stevens, so that I can get a sense of what Ashbery might have had exposure to in his time at Harvard: as Wikipedia tells me, Ashbery graduated from Harvard in 1949, wrote a thesis on Auden, and was friends or acquaintances with such people as Kenneth Koch, Frank OHara, Barbara Epstein, V.R. Lang, and Edward Gorey; he also was there at the same time as Creeley, Robert Bly, and Peter Davidson. Im looking in the Chronology in the back of the Library of Americas Collected Stevens, and I read that Ashbery attended a reading by Auden, and took a class on the poetry of Wallace Stevens with F.O. MatthiessenId be very curious to look up that latter, if theres any record of the syllabus or if Harvard has Matthiessens notes or something. Im thinking about such deliberate accidents as Stevens tonehow ponderous he might be, and how Ashbery, in his milieu, as an undergraduate, with his friendswhether he actually hung out with Koch and OHara and Lang, I dont knowmight have heard that tone. Ashberys influences are germane here, and theres this crazy website hosted by Bard College, which does some of this workhttp://www.flowchartfoundation.org/arc/home/ What Id like to do, I think, is think about Stevens and Ashberys tone, and think about the WPR as a contact zone between the tone of the former and the latter. Also, think about not just tone, but a shift Ashbery enacts in topic, feel, subject. I do suspect that you can track a break in American poetry from Ashberys colloquial tone back through Stevens ponderousness. Im not entirely sure which poem to begin with, but lets just try As One Put Drunk into the Packet-Boat, which was the first poem in his 1975 Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. The title is a line from Marvells Tom Mays Death, which begins, As one put drunk into the packet-boat, Tom May was hurried hence and did not knowt. But was amazed on the Elysian side, And with an eye uncertain, gazing wide, Could not determine in what place he was,

For whence in Stevens ally Trees or Grass. Nor where the Popes head, nor the Mitre lay, Signs by which still he found and lost his way. First of all, Cleanth Brooks refers to Tom May and Tom Mays Death in his own 1946 reading of the Horation Ode, which Brooks then transmuted to incorporate into the 1950 edition of Understanding Poetry. In fact, Brooks observes that Marvells Horation Ode is full of echoes of the poetry of Tom May, and goes on to say I find the parallels [between Marvell and May] quite convincing For one is tempted to suppose that in the year or so that followed the execution of Charles, Marvell was obsessed with the problem of the poets function in such a crisis; that the poet May was frequently in his mind through a double connectionthrough the parallels between the English and the Roman civil war, Lucans poem on which May had translated, and through Mays conduct as partisan of the Commonwealth; and that the Horation Ode and Tom Mays Death, though so different in tone, are closely related and come out of the same general state of mind. (131-2) Id say, maybe Ashberys also taking up the topic of the problem of the poets function in crisis in As One Put Drunk into the Packet-Boat. And maybe, as well, Ashberys taking up the subject of poetry and history, which is, if were willing to let ourselves drift a bit, a way of taking up the such tandem terms as essences and accidents, and poetry and life. Second, we also know that Eliot had written an influential essay that had rejuvenated Marvells reputation, by trumpeting his wit and urbanity, which was first published in the Times Literary Supplement in 1921; we can imagine Brooks had been influenced by Eliots intervention. And so, as regards the problem of the poets function in the crisis of poetry and history, we might be able to conjecture that we have to consider wit and urbanity as we think about As One Put Drunk into the Packet-Boat.