Twentieth Century American Poets: Readers Reply

In a post at “One Poet’s Notes” a couple of days ago I presented a list of 100 poets that might be a representative sampling of Twentieth Century American Poetry. Since I composed the roster quickly as I was preparing a course syllabus on the subject, I was certain there could be some oversights, and I invited visitors to recommend additional names of poets they thought should be included as well. In the brief time since that article appeared, I have received from readers numerous responses, containing the names of more than 100 other poets, in the blog’s comments section, at my facebook page, and through personal emails.

I also appreciated the comments accompanying many of the suggestions. At first I was hesitant about sharing this list, thinking along the line that Robin Kemp stated in her comment, “Boy, you’re really asking for it, aren’t you?!” Nevertheless, I believe readers’ replies exhibited something expressed in John Guzlowski’s comment: “I think that what this list and the comments adding more names to the list suggest is that poetry isn’t dead. It's alive as you or I.” On the other hand, Daniel E. Pritchard at The Wooden Spoon offered a contrary view as he observed: “I’m struck by how sparse the century was in terms of really obviously great poetry. This list probably could have been 50 titles and some of them still would’ve been in dispute.”

Those individuals suggested by readers as additions to the Twentieth Century American Poetry list include the following (in alphabetical order): Anya Achtenberg, Kim Addonizio, Floyce Alexander, Sherman Alexie, Jack Anderson, Jenne Andrews, Maya Angelou, Zoe Anglesey, David Antin, David Baker, Amiri Baraka, Ted Berrigan, Frank Bidart, Besmilr Brigham, Lucie Brock-Broido, William Bronk, Olga Broumas, Christopher Buckley, Charles Bukowski, Kathryn Stripling Byers, Olga Cabral, Jared Carter, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Fred Chappell, Sandra Cisneros, Clark Coolidge, Alfred Corn, Gregory Corso, Edward Dorn, Sharon Doubiago, Alan Dugan, Denise Duhamel, Stephen Dunn, Cornelius Eady, Russell Edson, Claudia Emerson, Martin Espada, Kenneth Fearing, Gene Frumkin, Tess Gallagher, Reginald Gibbons, Jack Gilbert, Madeline Gins, David Gitin, Don Gordon, Linda Gregg, Thom Gunn, Marilyn Hacker, Donald Hall, Michael Harper, Lyn Hejinian, Edward Hirsch, George Hitchcock, H.L. Hix, Linda Hogan, Garrett Hongo, Susan Howe, Andrew Hudgins, Langston Hughes, Lynda Hull, T.R. Hummer, Dale Jacobson, Robinson Jeffers, Ronald Johnson, Jane Kenyon, Kenneth Koch, Ted Kooser, Dorianne Laux, Li-Young Lee, D.A. Levy, Thomas Lux, Jackson Maclow, David Mason, William Matthews, Heather McHugh, Michael McClure, Thomas McGrath, David Meltzer, William Meredith, Bernadette Meyer, Bert Meyers, Herbert Morris, Lorine Neidecker, Sheryl Noethe, Alice Notley, George Oppen, Gregory Orr, Alicia Ostriker, Michael Palmer, Dorothy Parker, Kenneth Patchen, Bob Perelman, Stanley Plumly, Carl Rakosi, Joan Retallack, Charles Reznikoff, Patiann Rogers, Kay Ryan, Sonia Sanchez, Sherod Santos, Leslie Scalapino, James Schuyler, Delmore Schwartz, Hugh Seidman, Dr. Seuss, Ron Silliman, Cathy Song, Gary Soto, Jack Spicer, Frank Stanford, Gerald Stern, James Tate, Natasha Trethewey, Diane Wakoski, Rosemarie Waldrop, Bruce Weigl, Philip Whalen, James Whitehead, Miller Williams, Keith Wilson, William Witherup, Franz Wright, Jay Wright, Robert Wrigley, Erika T. Wurth, Kevin Young, and Louis Zukofsky.

Some other figures recommended by readers would not qualify for a list of American poets: Margaret Atwood, Robin Blaser, Joseph Brodsky, Anne Carson, A.E. Housman, Ted Hughes, Federico Garcia Lorca, Czeslaw Milosz, Paul Muldoon, Pablo Neruda, Dylan Thomas, Derek Walcott, William Butler Yeats. W.H Auden became an American citizen about the age of 39, the same age T.S. Eliot became a British subject; yet, I usually have regarded Auden as a British poet just as I continue to consider Eliot as an American poet. Nevertheless, although Laure-Anne Bosselaar grew up in Belgium and Rosemarie Waldrop was born in Germany, I do regard the pair as American poets.

I thank all of you for the numerous replies, which I am passing along to students in my Twentieth Century American Poetry course for examination and further consideration. Certainly, my omission of Robinson Jeffers and Langston Hughes were inadvertent oversights. In addition, I was pleased to note readers also recommended many of my favorite poets, such as Donald Hall, William Matthews, Alfred Corn, Gregory Orr, Kay Ryan, and scores of others, some about whom I have written extensively and very positively elsewhere.

As I mentioned in the original post, “the artificial cutoff of 100 for myself necessitated painful decisions as a number of poets (more than a dozen) whose works I enjoy very much had to be left out. In fact, some of those poets are favorites of mine much more than others that were included; however, I reminded myself this is not meant merely to be a list of my personal preferences.” Indeed, if we were to strictly maintain a list of 100, perhaps the way a course syllabus must be limited, I now ask readers to consider the tough choices that would be involved in removing poets from the original list to make room for their many newly suggested individuals.

Again, my thanks for all the replies.

Lester Young and Billie Holiday

Lester Young was born in Woodville, Mississippi on this date (August 27) in 1909. From his participation as a featured member of Count Basie’s band in the late 1930s through his performances as an accompanist for Billie Holiday, Lester Young developed a sound and a style that influenced generations of jazz saxophonists. For many, his personal attitude and relaxed playing personified cool jazz, a term he supposedly initiated.

In addition, his complementary contributions on a number of Billie Holiday’s finest recordings were impressive. Ted Gioia, in The History of Jazz, describes the pair: “there was a magical chemistry between these two elements, Holiday’s voice and Lester’s sax, leading some to characterize the collaboration between these two platonic friends as a ‘musical romance.’” Moreover, Lester Young gave Holiday the title “Lady Day,” just as she had nicknamed him “Prez,” the president of jazz musicians.

In the video above, Billie Holiday’s facial expressions while Lester Young plays his solo (the second, after Ben Webster) display a little bit of the musical intimacy in the relationship between the two. Other musicians in this stellar gathering recorded at CBS in 1957 include Danny Barker, Doc Cheatham, Vic Dickenson, Roy Eldridge, Coleman Hawkins, Milt Hinton, O.C. Johnson, Gerry Mulligan, Mal Waldron, and Ben Webster.

In honor of Lester Young and Billie Holiday, I also offer the following poem, “Listening to Lester Young,” which first appeared in Crab Orchard Review and will be included in my forthcoming collection, Seeded Light, due out in January 2010 from Turning Point Books. I chose the title of the piece in homage to a poem with the same name by William Matthews, who identified with Lester Young, and as a nod toward his various poetic works about jazz figures.

LISTENING TO LESTER YOUNG

. . . regrets are always late, too late!
—John Ashbery


Late at night, I’m listening to one of Lester Young’s
slower solos again, and although I know he’s playing

those same notes I’ve heard over and over, as the tone
of his tenor saxophone turns toward a lower register,

even that patter of cold drizzle now pasting shadowy
leaves against my window seems to follow his lead.

I wonder what you would be doing tonight and I want
to write a few lines in my notebook about how blue

and ivory skies gave way to rain today after you left,
or how coming home from the train station, I thought

I saw something, a large and ominous animal suddenly
outlined by lightning on that sparsely wooded hillside

beside the deserted highway we always drive to save
a little bit of time. As you travel farther away, hurry

through the muted darkness still surrounding everything,
so that you cannot even see the land tilting at the sea

or the gulls slanting overhead when you approach
the coastline, I imagine you beginning a new book

in the dim light of that passenger car, reading another
long novel about characters not so unlike ourselves,

each chapter titled and numbered as if to indicate life’s
merely a neat progression of unpredictable episodes.

By tomorrow evening you will be at that old hotel
where we once stayed for days in a room overlooking

plaza monuments deformed and whitened like marble
by a winter storm, while its foot of snowfall closed

the city down as though no one there had ever known
such weather in their lives. If you were still here,

you’d be able to hear Lester backing Billie Holiday
on another ballad recorded more than six decades

ago, but years before the two of them finally knew
the truth about that high cost of living they would

have to pay. I’m beginning to believe their duets of lost
love, the ways they phrase each line of lyric or melody,

create images in the mind as vivid as any photo
or poem we might have seen, evoke those places

Prez and Lady Day played in their earlier days—
Harlem cabarets and late-night cafés downtown,

or those small neighborhood halls with bare walls
and a gray haze of smoke above the stage, the ebony

and violet glow of an angled piano lid under indigo
lights, and a congregation of friendly faces gradually

fading into the black background with a persistent
chatter and clatter of glasses that lets everyone know

they are not alone. In the half hour before your
departure, when we sat silently on that station

platform bench, as though any attempt at conversation
would be hopeless and in fear someone around us

might overhear what we had to say, I tried somehow
to take into account how far apart we already were:

even then, I felt regrets are all we had left in common.

—Edward Byrne

Twentieth Century American Poetry Reading List: 100 Plus

As I was preparing for the start of the fall term, which begins with my Twentieth Century American Poetry class this afternoon, I considered what works to include in the syllabus this semester. Admittedly, I always feel limited in the amount of coverage possible during the number of class periods between now and December. Indeed, I am frequently frustrated by the need to omit some poets while shaping the syllabus for about fourteen weeks of meetings. Therefore, I decided to create an additional tool for my students, an extended reading list of poets that includes many who will not fit into the class discussions.

Over the summer I encountered in print publications and online sites various “top 100” lists of books, films, recordings, etc. provided for enlightenment, entertainment, discussion, and debate. Consequently, I thought I’d attempt a list of 100 books that might present appropriate coverage of poets whose contributions represent a collective sampling of twentieth century American poetry.

As I developed the list, I adhered to some restrictions. I chose only one book from any American poet, which was simpler for those figures whose works can be found in a volume of “collected” or “selected” poetry. Still, for some poets I had to make a difficult choice between anthologies of “earlier” poems or “later” poems. Ideally, almost all the poems should have been written and originally published in the twentieth century. Some poets of the nineteenth century, who influenced twentieth century American poetry, and other younger poets, whose primary impact results from poems published after 2000, were not included.

In addition, the artificial cutoff of 100 for myself necessitated painful decisions as a number of poets (more than a dozen) whose works I enjoy very much had to be left out. In fact, some of those poets are favorites of mine much more than others that were included; however, I reminded myself this is not meant merely to be a list of my personal preferences. Moreover, to be honest, I must acknowledge that I would recommend to my students that some of the lengthy books included could be read selectively, browsing for specific significant examples by the poet, while other volumes should be more closely examined from cover to cover.

In any case, I concluded this list—valuable or not for students and readers of poetry as more than just another literary parlor game—easily could be expanded. Since I composed the following fairly quickly and spontaneously in between the fashioning of pages for my course syllabus, I am sure I will be dismayed to learn I inadvertently overlooked some worthy candidates. To avoid any further complications and questions, visitors will note the poets appear alphabetically rather than ranked in any manner. Indeed, I know such lists still often reveal themselves to contain what might seem to some as arbitrary or subjective entries.

Therefore, since I acknowledge this list is incomplete, I request readers recommend additional poets for my students and others interested, and I welcome all suggestions that might supplement this roster or offer alternate editions for the poets chosen. Thus, the “100 plus” title above refers to my invitation for added names of individuals you might provide as qualifying for inclusion on this list.

1. A.R. Ammons: Collected Poems 1951-1971 (1971)
2. Rae Armantrout: Veil: New and Selected Poems (2001)
3. John Ashbery: Selected Poems (1985)
4. John Berryman: Collected Poems 1937-1971 (1988)
5. Linda Bierds: Flight: New and Selected Poems (2008)
6. Elizabeth Bishop: The Complete Poems, 1929-1979 (1983)
7. Robert Bly: Selected Poems (1986)
8. Louise Bogan: The Blue Estuaries: Poems 1923-1968 (1968)
9. David Bottoms: Armored Hearts: Selected and New Poems (1995)
10. Gwendolyn Brooks: Selected Poems (1999)
11. Amy Clampett: The Collected Poems (1993)
12. Lucille Clifton: Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000 (2000)
13. Billy Collins: Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems (2001)
14. Hart Crane: The Poems of Hart Crane (1986)
15. Robert Creeley: Selected Poems (1991)
16. E.E. Cummings: Complete Poems: 1913-1962 (1972)
17. J.V. Cunningham: The Poems of J.V. Cunningham (1997)
18. James Dickey: The Whole Motion: Collected Poems, 1945-1992 (1992)
19. Mark Doty: Atlantis (1995)
20. Rita Dove: Selected Poems (1993)
21. Robert Duncan: Selected Poems (1997)
22. Stephen Dunn: New & Selected Poems: 1974-1994 (1994)
23. Richard Eberhart: Collected Poems, 1930-1986 (1988)
24. T.S. Eliot: Complete Poems and Plays (1952)
25. B.H. Fairchild: The Art of the Lathe (1998)
26. Lawrence Ferlinghetti: These Are My Rivers: New and Selected Poems, 1955-1993 (1993)
27. Edward Field: New and Selected Poems from the Book of My Life (1987)
28. Carolyn Forché: The Country Between Us (1981)
29. Robert Frost: Complete Poems of Robert Frost (1968)
30. Alice Fulton: Cascade Experiment: Selected Poems (2005)
31. Allen Ginsberg: Collected Poems: 1947-85 (1995)
32. Louise Glück: The First Four Books of Poems (1995)
33. Jorie Graham: The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994 (1995)
34. Barbara Guest: Selected Poems (1995)
35. R.S. Gwynn: No Word of Farewell: Poems 1970-2000 (2001)
36. H.D. [Hilda Doolittle]: Collected Poems, 1912-1944 (1983)
37. John Haines: The Owl in the Mask of the Dreamer: Collected Poems (1993)
38. Joy Harjo: How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975-2001 (2002)
39. Robert Hass: Field Guide (1973)
40. Robert Hayden: Collected Poems (1985)
41. Anthony Hecht: Collected Earlier Poems (1992)
42. Richard Hugo: Making Certain It Goes On: The Collected Poems of Richard Hugo (1984)
43. Mark Jarman: Unholy Sonnets (2000)
44. Randall Jarrell: Complete Poems (1968)
45. Donald Justice: New and Selected Poems (1995)
46. Weldon Kees: The Collected Poems of Weldon Kees (1975)
47. Galway Kinnell: A New Selected Poems (2000)
48. Carolyn Kizer: Cool, Calm and Collected: Poems 1960-2000 (2001)
49. Etheridge Knight: Born of a Woman: New and Selected Poems (1980)
50. Yusef Komunyakaa: Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems (2001)
51. Maxin Kumin: Selected Poems 1960-1990 (1997)
52. Denise Levertov: Selected Poems (2002)
53. Philip Levine: New Selected Poems (1992)
54. Larry Levis: The Selected Levis (2000)
55. Vachel Lindsay: Selected Poems of Vachel Lindsay (1963)
56. Audre Lorde: The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde (1997)
57. Amy Lowell: Complete Poetical Works (1955)
58. Robert Lowell: Collected Poems (2002)
59. Edgar Lee Masters: Spoon River Anthology (1916)
60. Walter McDonald: Blessings the Body Gave (1998)
61. Claude McKay: Selected Poems (1953)
62. James Merrill: Collected Poems (2001)
63. Thomas Merton: The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton (1979)
64. W.S. Merwin: Selected Poems (1988)
65. Edna St. Vincent Millay: The Selected Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay (2001)
66. Marianne Moore: The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore (1981)
67. Howard Nemerov: Trying Conclusions: New and Selected Poems, 1961-1991 (1991)
68. Frank O’Hara: The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara (1995)
69. Sharon Olds: Strike Sparks: Selected Poems (2004)
70. Mary Oliver: New and Selected Poems (1992)
71. Charles Olson: The Collected Poems of Charles Olson (1987)
72. Robert Pinsky: The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996 (1996)
73. Sylvia Plath: The Collected Poems (1981)
74. Ezra Pound: The Cantos of Ezra Pound (1996)
75. John Crowe Ransom: Selected Poems (1945)
76. Kenneth Rexroth: The Complete Poems of Kenneth Rexroth (2002)
77. Adrienne Rich: The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984 (1984)
78. Edwin Arlington Robinson: Collected Poems (1937)
79. Theodore Roethke: Collected Poems (1966)
80. Muriel Rukeyser: Collected Poems (1978)
81. Carl Sandburg: Complete Poems (1970)
82. Anne Sexton: Selected Poems of Anne Sexton (1988)
83. Charles Simic: Selected Poems 1963-2003 (2004)
84. Louis Simpson: Collected Poems (1988)
85. Dave Smith: The Wick of Memory: New and Selected Poems, 1970-2000 (2000)
86. W.D. Snodgrass: Selected Poems, 1957-1987 (1987)
87. Gary Snyder: No Nature: New and Selected Poems (1992)
88. William Stafford: The Darkness Around Us Is Deep: Selected Poems of William Stafford (1993)
89. Gertrude Stein: Tender Buttons (1914)
90. Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose (1997)
91. Mark Strand: Selected Poems (1990)
92. May Swenson: Nature: Poems Old and New (1994)
93. Allen Tate: Collected Poems, 1919-1976 (1977)
94. Mona Van Duyn: Selected Poems (2002)
95. Robert Penn Warren: The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren (1998)
96. Richard Wilbur: Collected Poems 1943-2004 (2004)
97. C.K. Williams: Selected Poems (1994)
98. William Carlos Williams: Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams (1986)
99. Charles Wright: Negative Blue: Selected Later Poems (2000)
100. James Wright: Above the River: The Complete Poems (1992)

Readers are encouraged to view an update concerning this list.

Barry Ballard: "The Re-invited"

The VPR Poem of the Week is Barry Ballard’s “The Re-invited,” which appeared in the Fall/Winter 2005-2006 issue (Volume VII, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Barry Ballard’s poetry has been published in American Literary Review, Chariton Review, Connecticut Review, Florida Review, Margie, Midwest Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, and elsewhere. His collections of poems include Green Tombs to Jupiter (Snail’s Pace Press), A Time to Reinvent (Creative Ash Press), Plowing to the End of the Road (Finishing Line Press), and A Body Speaks Through Fence Lines (Pudding House Press).

Tuesday of each week “One Poet’s Notes” highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the archives of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers revisit it. Please check the sidebar to view the list of poets and works that have been past “Poem of the Week” selections. Additionally, readers are reminded that VPR pages are best read with the browser font preference in which they were set, 12 pt. Times New Roman, in order to guarantee the stanza alignment and the breaks of longer lines are preserved.

Diane Lockward on Barbara Crooker's RADIANCE

One of Barbara Crooker’s poems, “Vegetable Love,” is featured today at Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Amanac, where visitors can hear Keillor’s excellent reading of the poem. “Vegetable Love” appeared in Crooker’s collection of poems titled Radiance (Word Press, 2005), which was reviewed by Diane Lockward in the Spring/Summer 2006 issue (Volume VII, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review. At the time, Lockward wrote about “Vegetable Love”:

“Vegetable Love,” a praise poem written in language as lush as the garden it describes, comes alive with its figures. Carrots become “gold mined from the earth’s tight purse,” zucchini are “green torpedoes,” beets are “the dark blood of the earth,” and peas rest “in their delicate slippers, / little green boats, a string of beads.” Personification infuses additional life into this garden. Basil is “nuzzled / by fumbling bees drunk on the sun,” while leaves are busy “passing secrets and gossip, making assignations.” All are “earth’s voluptuaries.”

Consequently, this also seems like a perfect time to remind readers of Lockward’s complete commentary on Barbara Crooker’s volume of poems.


Barbara Crooker: Radiance

While Radiance is Barbara Crooker’s first full-length book, it is clearly the work of a seasoned poet who has done the hard work of mastering her craft. Crooker writes in free verse that proves T. S. Eliot’s contention that vers libre is not free at all to the poet “who wants to do a good job.” This poet knows how to make poetry sing. And she knows how to arrange individual poems into a single work of art as unified and stunning as the painting that graces the cover of her book.


Crooker skillfully divides her fifty poems into six sections. In each of the first four sections, a season of the year serves as a subtle backdrop to the various themes which dance their way throughout the book. This structure creates an underlying tension between background and foreground; as the seasons, beginning with fall, move chronologically forward, the poet creates a counter-movement by shifting back and forth in time. The last two sections focus on the seasons of a woman’s life. Here, too, the poet moves back and forth between the past and present, mixing poems about adolescence with others about marriage, motherhood, and menopause. The collection gains an additional layer of complexity with the ongoing alternation between darkness and light, grief and joy.


Time functions not only as part of the structural plan but also as theme. Crooker keeps us constantly aware of the presence of Time. In “Quiscalus Quiscula” the speaker, observing grackles, asks, “Is the purpose for their darkness to fly against / the dogwoods, remind us that night is always / bearing down? Time beats its blueblack wings. . . .” A number of poems look backward to more carefree days of innocence. In “The Fifties” “Time was a jarful of pennies” as the speaker and her young friends cut out paper dolls. In “Junior High, Home Economics” these girls “couldn’t imagine a future that didn’t fit / the pattern, thought there was nothing / [they] couldn’t alter, darn, or patch, / somehow make right.” Interspersed among such poems are those in which the mature speaker confronts the hard times adulthood brings—the death of a daughter at birth, a son with autism, an aging and ailing mother. By strategically staggering the poems, the poet wisely sacrifices narrative development and gains dramatic irony. To the poems of innocence, the reader brings a knowledge the young speaker did not have: the mature speaker will experience childbirth and come to know that children are sometimes as fragile as those paper dolls she once played with. 


As Crooker plays past and present off each other, she also moves back and forth between two worlds. There’s the world of home with its domestic concerns of cooking, cleaning, raising children, loving her husband. While this is clearly a place of much joy, it is also a place of grief and restrictions . . . .

[Readers are urged to examine the rest of the review at Valparaiso Poetry Review, and all are invited to check the VPR Author Archives for a number of fine poems by both Barbara Crooker and Diane Lockward that have appeared in past issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review.]

Count Basie and Yusef Komunyakaa

I can hear Duke in the right hand
& Basie in the left
as the young piano player
nudges us into the past.

Count (William) Basie was born on this date (August 21) in 1904. He died in 1984 at the age of 79. One of my earliest memories involving learning to appreciate jazz includes evenings sitting in the family living room of our Brooklyn apartment as a small boy with my father listening to long-playing records on the large console stereo. My father preferred the sounds of swing bands that had gained popularity before the onset of bebop. I usually enjoyed a Count Basie album above the others in my father’s collection, probably because the music always made me want to tap my feet and keep the beat. Decades later I was pleased to discover one of Basie’s well-known mottos: “If you play a tune and a person don't tap their feet, don't play the tune.”

Count Basie’s style of play on the piano often has been described as clean or even minimal; however, as part of a big band, Basie seemed to acknowledge his role frequently needed to remain as merely an introduction to solo parts by other instruments or sometimes as a subtle invitation for listeners to consider the orchestra as a whole. As guitarist Freddie Green once explained: “Basie’s piano contributes, without any doubt, to the beat of the band. He stopped the gaps. I feel very at ease when I play with him, for he always seems to know what to play, from the point of view of rhythm. Count is also the best pianist I know for warming up an orchestra, and accompanying soloists.”

In The History of Jazz (Oxford University Press, 1997), Ted Gioia offers a perceptive comment about Basie’s piano playing: “One of the most singular keyboardists in the history of jazz, Basie refined a sparser, more open sounding approach than any of his predecessors. It was almost as though jazz piano, under Basie’s tutelage, stopped shouting and learned to talk, learned to banter and whisper, at times even hold its tongue in silence that said more than most high-flown oratory. One of the many delights of his music came from hearing how he could do so much with so little. Incisive, robust, energized—the ends achieved seemed at odds with the meager means employed.”

As a bandleader, Basie also influenced the direction of jazz by recruiting and developing some of the finest musicians or singers of his time, including Harry Edison, Chu Berry, Freddie Green, Buck Clayton, Buddy Tate, Thad Jones, Herschel Evans, Walter Page, Jo Jones, Lester Young, Jimmy Rushing, Billie Holiday, Helen Humes, and a number of others. Additionally, some suggest Basie’s spare style on the piano influenced the eventual rhythms later evident in various compositions by keyboardists of the bebop and cool jazz eras.

Basie, who’d always been called “Bill” as a young man, received the title of “Count” in the early 1930s when a radio announcer decided to rank him alongside Duke Ellington and other jazz royalty. In his fine poem, “Jasmine,” Yusef Komunyakaa also acknowledges Count Basie’s importance as an influential figure in the history of jazz piano alongside Duke Ellington—“I can hear Duke in the right hand / & Basie in the left”:

JASMINE

I sit beside two women, kitty-corner
to the stage, as Elvin’s sticks blur
the club into a blue fantasia.
I thought my body had forgotten the Deep
South, how I’d cross the street
if a woman like these two walked
towards me, as if a cat traversed
my path beneath the evening star.
Which one is wearing jasmine?
If my grandmothers saw me now
they’d say, Boy, the devil never sleeps.
My mind is lost among November
cotton flowers, a soft rain on my face
as Richard Davis plucks the fat notes
of chance on his upright
leaning into the future.
The blonde, the brunette—
which one is scented with jasmine?
I can hear Duke in the right hand
& Basie in the left
as the young piano player
nudges us into the past.
The trumpet’s almost kissed
by enough pain. Give him a few more years,
a few more ghosts to embrace—Clifford’s
shadow on the edge of the stage.
The sign says, No Talking.
Elvin’s guardian angel lingers
at the top of the stairs,
counting each drop of sweat
paid in tribute. The blonde
has her eyes closed, & the brunette
is looking at me. Our bodies
sway to each riff, the jasmine
rising from a valley somewhere
in Egypt, a white moon
opening countless false mouths
of laughter. The midnight
gatherers are boys & girls
with the headlights of trucks
aimed at their backs, because
their small hands refuse to wound
the knowing scent hidden in each bloom.

—Yusef Komunyakaa

Visitors are invited to read more about “Jazz Poetry as a Literary Genre” at An Author's Assemblage.

Crossing John Ashbery's Bridge

Last year, in an essay titled “Landscape and Lyricism,” which I had written as the featured author for issue 7 of Segue, I discussed the inspirations and associations often existing between poetry and place in my work and others' creations. Indeed, this subject is one many writers have examined in the past and concluded important connections between poetry and place frequently contribute to imaginative or innovative language. I also opened a post on the topic in September at “One Poet’s Notes” with a comment concerning this relationship: “For many poets a sense of place plays an important role in the initiation of images or offers a contribution to the establishment of tone during the composition of a poem.”

Perhaps that observation is never truer and more obvious than when a poet has been commissioned to compose lyrics about a specific piece of landscape or a particular landmark. Such was the case in Minneapolis in 1988 when John Ashbery was enlisted to write lines of a poem that would be printed across the span of the Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge, which connects the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden with Loring Park. The bridge extends nearly 400 feet and was designed by artist Siah Armajani.

On Monday a slide show of photos appeared at the “Been Thinking” blog that marvelously captures the experience of a pedestrian reading Ashbery’s words while crossing the bridge. I recommend readers view the lovely photographs. In addition, I urge readers visit the ArtsNet Minnesota web page on "Designing Spaces and Places" where one can hear John Ashbery reciting the poem at the Walker Arts Center nearby the bridge in 1990. The text of the poetry follows:

And now I cannot remember how I would
have had it. It is not a conduit (confluence?) but a place.
The place, of movement and an order.
The place of old order.
But the tail end of the movement is new.
Driving us to say what we are thinking.
It is so much like a beach after all, where you stand
and think of going no further.
And it is good when you get to no further.
It is like a reason that picks you up and
places you where you always wanted to be.
This far, it is fair to be crossing, to have crossed.
Then there is no promise in the other.
Here it is. Steel and air, a mottled presence,
small panacea
and lucky for us.
And then it got very cool.

—John Ashbery

An Author's Assemblage: Notes and Notices

Some readers of “One Poet’s Notes” might have observed this week an additional link has been placed low in the page’s sidebar alongside links to personal publications. With the beginning of a new academic year upon us, I have decided to establish a separate blog, “An Author’s Assemblage: Notes and Notices,” for brief bits of material that could interest or be useful to students in my literature and creative writing courses. As a description at the opening of the blog states: “The accumulation of posts to this web page serves merely as an author’s assemblage of brief notes and notices: the collection of informal bits of information, quotations, and observations gathered as one way to display a personal reflection of perceptions on poetry, publication, and related selections of material drawn from my perspectives as a poet or professor of literature and creative writing.”

Also, this new blog will contain a number of items relating to my own poetry and publication of my work; therefore, the separate location permits such posts without intruding upon the purpose of the editor’s blog here at “One Poet’s Notes,” which has been primarily intended to complement Valparaiso Poetry Review and focus upon authors or topics pertaining to the literary journal. Indeed, since my latest collection of poetry, Seeded Light, is scheduled to be published this October, the same month that a special expanded issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review will be released to mark ten years since appearance of the initial issue, the supplementary personal blog will make it easier for me to inform readers about both events without any conflict.

Obviously, there will be times when writings in one place would be directly relevant to readers of the other blog. On those occasions, I will provide specific links from one to the other. Furthermore, subjects covered in each of the blogs usually will be noted in the twitter feed for those followers on twitter (http://twitter.com/valpopoetry), as well as in the “Twitter Updates” at the top of the sidebar on this page. Nevertheless, I take this opportunity to invite readers who subscribe to “One Poet’s Notes” for notification of future entries to add a subscription to the new blog as well.

Ned Balbo: "On Goodbyes"

The VPR Poem of the Week is Ned Balbo’s “On Goodbyes,” which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2006 issue (Volume VII, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Ned Balbo’s first book of poetry, Galileo's Banquet, received the Towson University Prize for Literature. A second collection, Lives of the Sleepers, won the Ernest Sandeen Prize in 2005 and was published by the University of Notre Dame Press. Lives of the Sleepers was the ForeWord magazine poetry book of the year, and it also was a finalist for the Arlin G. Meyer Prize. A chapbook of poems, Something Must Happen, is forthcoming in October from Finishing Line Press. Ned Balbo’s poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Antioch Review, Crab Orchard Review, Dogwood, Pleiades and many other journals. He teaches at Loyola College in Baltimore.

Tuesday of each week “One Poet’s Notes” highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the archives of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers revisit it. Please check the sidebar to view the list of poets and works that have been past “Poem of the Week” selections. Additionally, readers are reminded that VPR pages are best read with the browser font preference in which they were set, 12 pt. Times New Roman, in order to guarantee the stanza alignment and the breaks of longer lines are preserved.

Woodstock: "A Long Time Gone"

Tomorrow, August 15, marks the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock’s opening day in 1969. On Father’s Day this year my wife (whose birthday also happens to be today—Happy Birthday, Pam!) gave me a copy of the new remastered edition DVD of Woodstock so that I could enjoy the music and atmosphere once more. Recently, I watched the concert footage with my son, who is now 17, exactly the same age I was during Woodstock, and I realized how distant that time now seems, as if it were another lifetime. Indeed, as stated among the words sung by Crosby, Stills, and Nash in the video above, the era now seems “A Long Time Gone.”

When my son and I viewed the musical acts and the activities of attendees at the festival on my DVD as it was shown on the HD screen in our entertainment room, he decided this song was his favorite. I was pleased he did not ask for explanations or clarifications from me. I concluded that like most who attended the festival, my friends and I at the time exhibited a blend of characteristics: looking back now, I see how we were young, certainly energetic, surely naïve, a little immature, somewhat idealistic, and admittedly a bit foolish. Nevertheless, four decades later, even if many of the fashions and behavior today appear silly and embarrassing, much of the music and lyrics still seems to stand up fairly well.

In any case, on this date four decades ago hundreds of thousands of young people were on the road to a small farming community in upstate New York where the stage was still being prepared for the numerous bands who would perform, all unaware they would create a memorable chapter of musical and cultural history in the few days ahead.

VALPARAISO POETRY REVIEW: The Editorial Process

During the past three months Nic Sebastian has conducted a series of interviews at her blog, Very Like a Whale, questioning about a dozen editors of literary journals on specifics about their publications and their perceptions of the role an editor assumes. Once a week, Sebastian posed the same ten questions to each editor. I was pleased by a request to participate, and my interview has been posted this week as the final entry in the series.

The issues raised during the dialogues are intended to examine each individual’s interest in editing and history of involvement as an editor with literary magazines. Additionally, some questions address particulars in the process of publication at each editor’s journal. Below, readers will find an example (number 7 from the 10 questions) of the comments I contributed to the series. The web page with my complete interview, as well as a link to full interviews with the other editors, can be viewed at Nic Sebastian’s blog.


7. Is your publication online, print or hybrid? Share your thoughts on the differences between these formats from an editorial point of view. Does your publication accept both snail mail and email submissions? Explain your policy in this regard.


. . . Valparaiso Poetry Review was begun as an online journal for economic reasons. Since my background consisted of editorial experience with print publications, I have adopted similar attitudes in point of view with my approach as editor of VPR. In addition to the economic advantages of an online journal, readers benefit by having easy access to the current issue, as well as all past issues, anywhere in the world. As a result, the readership and the potential audience for the works in VPR could never be matched if it were a print journal. Indeed, writing about this in an article at “One Poet’s Notes,” I once stated that I am pleased readers can click onto so many journals online, more than even any library could ever afford in individual subscriptions.

As I have written in another VPR blog entry, when the journal was initiated reputations of existing electronic literary magazines among authors and readers were spotty at best. In the past decade, opinions have changed as the quality of work in online journals has proven deserving of respect. For most, the stature of online journals is no longer questioned by authors to the extent it once was, nor does it continue to be an issue of concern for readers. Valparaiso Poetry Review today displays a wide range of well-known poets among its pages whose presence was limited to print journals only a few years ago. Nowadays, acknowledgments pages of prominent new books of poetry display many titles of online journals, including Valparaiso Poetry Review, alongside those titles of traditional print periodicals.

Also, when VPR was begun most poets submitted by postal mail. In the past decade that situation has shifted, and the vast majority of submissions received are sent by email. Other editors will confirm that handling email submissions is much more convenient for us, and writers will verify that email submissions are simpler and inexpensive. Therefore, many newer online journals now restrict submissions to email. However, VPR still accepts submissions in both formats. In fact, some of the best poems from a number of the well-known poets included in VPR have been presented only because snail mail submissions are acceptable. I know some poets we have published, usually older and more established figures, who will not send submissions by email.

In a recent informational piece on the VPR blog, I reported the following: the majority of submissions received in the first few years were sent by postal mail; however, a bit more than three-fourths of the nearly 7,500 poems received in the last year were sent by email. Curious about the relationship of submissions to acceptances, I have examined the results and discovered that a little more than three-fourths of the works appearing in the most recent issues of VPR were submitted electronically, indicating there is no subconscious editorial bias toward either form of submission . . . .


[Readers also are invited to view previous posts at “One Poet’s Notes” relating to this topic: “Online Literary Journals: Coming of Age,” “Poetry News and the New Media,” and “Celebrating Literary Journals and Small Presses.”]

Jen Karetnick: "Millipedes in the Wet Season"

The VPR Poem of the Week is Jen Karetnick’s “Millipedes in the Wet Season,” which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2007 issue (Volume VIII, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Jen Karetnick has had poems published in various literary journals, including Barrow Street, Gulf Stream Magazine, Georgetown Review, Greensboro Review, Nebraska Review, North American Review, Sou'wester, and Spoon River Poetry Review, among others. She is a restaurant critic for SO.Florida, Living Real Miami, Las Olas Magazine, and Gayot. She also is the co-author of Raw Food/Real World: 100 Recipes to Get the Glow (Regan Books / HarperCollins, 2005). Her chapbook of poetry is Necessary Salt (Pudding House Publications, 2007).

Tuesday of each week “One Poet’s Notes” highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the archives of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers revisit it. Please check the sidebar to view the list of poets and works that have been past “Poem of the Week” selections. Additionally, readers are reminded that VPR pages are best read with the browser font preference in which they were set, 12 pt. Times New Roman, in order to guarantee the stanza alignment and the breaks of longer lines are preserved.

An Introduction of Robert Winner: "Premonition"

Yesterday morning as I visited the daily entry for August 8 at The Writer’s Almanac, Garrison Keillor’s web site, I noticed the day’s featured poem was “Passing the Spot,” written by an old friend, Robert Winner, and published in his posthumous collection, The Sanity of Earth and Grass (Tilbury House, 1994). I was reminded once more of Bob, an incredible individual whose compelling personality and extraordinary example influenced all who knew him.

My first meeting with Bob occurred while I was still a student with an initial interest in writing poetry, absorbing every book of poems I read and seeking to learn more about the craft of writing. During one semester when I wasn’t taking any creative writing course I decided to apply for admission into a poetry seminar at New York City’s famous 92nd Street Y in the Unterberg Poetry Center Writing Program. I was young, unpublished, and had barely written any poems at the time; therefore, I did not hold a high expectation for acceptance into the limited enrollment of the seminar. The competitive application process required submission of a manuscript portfolio, so I simply gathered all the poems I had into a folder and mailed them.

When I received a letter informing that I had been selected for the workshop seminar, I was pleasantly surprised. However, the letter also included a curious addendum instructing that the location for the class had been moved from the Y to a private apartment where one of my future classmates lived. The letter explained that a workshop participant, Robert Winner, was a quadriplegic, and he hoped others wouldn’t mind meeting at his nearby home rather than at the 92nd Street site.

As I remember it, Bob’s Manhattan apartment was in an upscale building. His large and lovely living room had been organized with an arrangement of about a dozen chairs forming a circle ideal for discussion, while his wife, Sylvia, served as a welcoming hostess presenting a friendly greeting at the door to each of those who arrived for every evening meeting. Indeed, the comfortable and casual environment proved most suitable for more relaxed discussions of our particular poems and invited elaborate dialogue about poetry that lasted far longer than would have happened in a normal classroom situation. Although the sessions often went overtime, Bob always seemed pleased by our lingering for further conversation, and Sylvia tirelessly provided additional snacks or beverages.

Barely twenty years old, I had the distinction of being the youngest student in the workshop and Bob, who was in his mid-forties, represented the oldest member, which oddly enough established a bond between the two of us from the moment we introduced ourselves to one another and attempted to fit in with the other participants.

Through a few conversations with Bob and Sylvia, I learned some details about their history. Bob’s disability resulted from an accident at the time he was sixteen when he dove into a river. Doctors considered his mere survival of the incident to be miraculous; however, they were certain the sort of damage suffered by his spinal cord would significantly shorten his life span. In fact, Bob and his physicians apparently regarded each year he lived after the accident as a bonus.

Despite his condition, Bob achieved his education goals and became a very successful businessman. Moreover, he met and married the love of his life, Sylvia. Overcoming the limitations presented by his situation and the physical stress created by his busy schedule, one that I know continually sapped Bob’s strength, he always appeared energetic and engaged during workshop discussions and in subsequent informal conversations. Furthermore, Bob’s poems clearly surpassed those of any others in the class, and a number of us wondered what benefit we possibly could be offering him in our workshop comments. Still, Bob listened carefully to every observation or suggestion concerning his work.

In the years after the poetry writing course, I moved from New York City to different parts of the country, including Utah and Indiana, and lost touch with Bob, although I did follow his poetry—when it began to appear in various literary journals, such as American Poetry Review and The New Yorker, and as a couple of his individual volumes were published (Green in the Body in 1979 by Slow Loris Press and Flogging the Czar in 1983 by Sheep Meadow Press)—until his death in 1986. However, a fortunate series of events in the 1990s allowed me to reconnect with Sylvia.

In 1992 Helen Frost, a friend and fellow participant in an Internet literary listserv group we had both just joined, posted a note to the online discussion reporting she had been selected by that year’s judge, my former University of Utah teacher Dave Smith, to receive the 1993 prize from the Poetry Society of America entitled the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award. Bob’s first book was published when he was 49; thus, the annual prize, which carries a significant cash award, is appropriately described by the PSA in the following manner: Established by the family and friends of Robert H. Winner, whose first book of poems appeared when he was almost fifty years old. This award acknowledges original work being done in mid-career by a poet who has not had substantial recognition, and it is open to poets over forty who have published no more than one book.

In a congratulatory email response to Helen Frost, I remarked how pleased I was to hear about her honor and that her work had been chosen by Dave. Additionally, I mentioned some of my fond memories of Bob and how having his name attached to Helen’s award further enhanced its stature in my eyes.

Upon receiving the award, Helen had engaged in a correspondence with Sylvia Winner and mentioned to her my comments recollecting Bob. As a consequence, Sylvia contacted me and shared the good news that Tilbury House would soon publish a collection of Bob’s complete poems, including work from a pair of previously published books and a manuscript of unpublished pieces, a copy of which she would forward to me.

That volume, The Sanity of Earth and Grass, appeared in 1994 and, in addition to Sylvia, was co-edited by poets Thomas Lux and Jane Cooper, each of whom had been Bob’s teacher when he took classes in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Lux and Cooper contributed to the collection two forewords in which they wrote of their admiration for Bob and also explained some of the qualities readers would discover in his poems.

Jane Cooper observed about Bob’s character: “Not only did he confound all the doctors’ predictions, but he lived longer as a quadriplegic than anyone else of his generation with his particular kind of spinal cord injury. Yet this fact was never allowed into the biographical matter in either of his books. Instead, his nineteen years as a stockbroker, his presidency of a small but demanding family company, the names of magazines that had printed his poems were scrupulously chronicled.”

Among his comments, Thomas Lux stated: “If asked to define the central aesthetic of Robert Winner’s poetry, I would say it was a dedication to absolute clarity and honesty. He had neither time for nor interest in the opaque, oblique, fuzzy, or decorative qualities of so much verse. Joy, celebration, sometimes lamentation (though never lugubrious), true mystery or pure wonder, and an unending and unconquerable passion for living—these were the things that did interest him and informed his work.”

In memory of that evening long ago when Robert Winner and I introduced ourselves to one another, and as an introduction to many of today’s readers who might not be familiar with his work, I offer below one of my favorites, “Premonition,” from Bob’s collection of complete poems, The Sanity of Earth and Grass:

PREMONITION

I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet, yet trouble came.
—Job 3 25-26


My face on someone else’s body
smiles from a wheelchair
in the glossy bulletin from
Beth Abraham Home for the Incurables.
I’m sixteen like him, baffled—
his hair combed the same preoccupied way—
how can he live like that and smile
(even this weak upward twist of his lips
cajoled by the photographer)?

I know nothing yet about the consequence
of striking, neck-breaking hard,
the sandy bottom of the Little Pigeon River,
East Tennessee.
Like Job’s three comforters, I know nothing
about the difficulty of understanding
anyone else’s position,
or that I can see myself that moment
in my own future, as I shortly would be,
pinned down flat in Life, Life’s smile on my face
in a “photographic essay” on the incurable.

I was not in safety.
I put the photograph of my double
down, I think forever,
going out to look for birds in the woods,
green myself that day, green as God
before the experience of suffering.

I was not in safety, neither had I rest.
It was a cry I couldn’t hear,
an outburst of crouched grief
at what could not be undone,
a darkness shoving daylight aside
to howl at God for making
my unlucky double in a magazine
constantly glide down a corridor
towards me, wearing my face—
crashing into me every time
but noiselessly,
with the impact of shadow.


—Robert Winner

Listening to Elizabeth Bishop

The current issue of Poetry (July/August 2009) contains a remembrance of Elizabeth Bishop by Katha Pollitt, who first encountered the poet when Pollitt audited one of her courses as a student at Harvard in the early 1970s. Pollitt recalls Bishop with fondness and appreciation for her generosity towards students: “What strikes me, having taught a bit myself, is how kind she was. We can’t all have been budding poets, yet she talked about our work as if we were.” Additionally, Pollitt’s recollection of Elizabeth Bishop includes a memory of attending the poet’s appearance at the Guggenheim Museum in the late seventies, a reading I also experienced as a student and about which I wrote thirty years later in a piece previously posted on “One Poet’s Notes” in 2007, “Elizabeth Bishop: The Poet’s Voice.”

Although details in our accounts of Elizabeth Bishop’s 1977 reading are somewhat similar, our reactions to the poet’s performance differ a bit; yet, our conclusions about the importance of listening to Elizabeth Bishop seem to coincide.

Katha Pollitt recounts Bishop’s Guggenheim Museum reading: “Bishop is sometimes described as a notoriously poor reader of her own work—flat, low-key, lacking in presence. After all, she was a short, gray-haired woman who wore nondescript wool skirts that fell below the knee, the antithesis of what a poet was supposed to look like. I thought she was a good reader—I dislike theatricality in poetry readings, and that super-sensitive breathy chanting thing poets get into where every line ends with an upward lilt like a question. But more than that, her reading was a kind of gift; it made me see that whatever way a poet reads his or her own work is fine, is, in fact, perfect, because the way they read is part of their sensibility, their own personal expression of their poem.”

As I wrote at the time of my post: “I was a student who thoroughly admired Bishop’s poetry, and I still do. However, I remember my disappointment at the presentation, in which Bishop’s voice seemed weak and without much inflection or enthusiasm, appearing almost as if she believed she had been compelled to endure an unpleasant experience.” Nevertheless, in my 2007 article I also link to a few recordings available online of Elizabeth Bishop reading her poetry, “a more youthful voice in ‘The Fish,’ recorded in 1947, and a bit more invigorated voice in the other poems (‘In the Waiting Room’ and ‘The Moose’) than I had witnessed.”

Like Pollitt, in my article I concluded students in poetry courses would find value if they “listen to Elizabeth Bishop’s readings and hear the poet’s voice.” I recommend readers of “One Poet’s Notes” do the same as well, noting the importance of each carefully chosen word in Bishop’s wonderful poetry.

James Rioux: "Possum"

The VPR Poem of the Week is James Rioux’s “Possum,” which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2005 issue (Volume VI, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

James Rioux has had poems published in various literary journals, including Five Points, North American Review, and Prairie Schooner. “Possum” is part of a collection of faux-sonnets, Fistfuls of the Invisible, published by Penhallow Press of Franklin Pierce College.

Tuesday of each week “One Poet’s Notes” highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the archives of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers revisit it. Please check the sidebar to view the list of poets and works that have been past “Poem of the Week” selections. Additionally, readers are reminded that VPR pages are best read with the browser font preference in which they were set, 12 pt. Times New Roman, in order to guarantee the stanza alignment and the breaks of longer lines are preserved.