An Incomplete Education - 3,684 Things You Should Have Learned but Probably Didn't

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WASHINGTON IR

Washington Irvings house

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RICAN STUDIES

e was a member of the Constitutional Conven­
ion; that he was the most famous American of
he eighteenth century (after George Washing­
on) and the closest thing we've ever had to a
Renaissance man.

hat Franklin had as many detractors as ad­
mirers, for whom his shrewdness, pettiness,

ypocrisy, and nonstop philandering embodied
ll the worst traits of the American character, of
American capitalism, and of the Protestant ethic.

RVING (1783-1859)

e. Tarrytown, New York

New York City and Tarrytown, New York.

Writer; also, briefly, a diplomat.

Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow," both contained in The Sketch Book
1820).

Other more or less interchangeable selections
rom The Sketch Book, Bracebridge Hall (1822),
Tales of a Traveller (1824), or The Legends of the

8 AN I N C O M P L E T E

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JAMES FENIMORE C

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E EDUCATION

hambra (1832), none of which stuck in any­
ne's memory for more than ten minutes.

hat Irving was the first to prove that Ameri­
ns could write as well as Europeans; that
habod Crane and Rip Van Winkle's wife both
ot what they deserved.

hat living's grace as a stylist didn't quite make
p for his utter lack of originality, insight, or

pth.

COOPER (1789-1851)

ooperstown, New York.

entleman farmer.

obably none; The Leatherstocking Tales, i.e.,
he Pioneers (1823), The Last of the Mohicans
826), The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder
840), and The Deerslayer (1841) are considered
ade-school material.

ocial criticism, such as Notions of the Americans
828), a defense of America against the sniping
foreign visitors; or "Letter to his Countrymen"
834), a diatribe written in response to bad re­
ews of his latest novel.

h a t Cooper was America's first successful nov­
ist and that Natty Bumppo was one of the all-
me most popular characters in world literature.
so that The Leatherstocking Tales portrayed the
nflicting values of the vanishing wilderness
d encroaching civilization.

hat the closest Cooper ever got to the vanish­
g wilderness was Scarsdale, and that, in his day,

was considered an insufferable snob, a reac-

AMER

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RALPH WALDO EM

Product of: Co

Earned a Living as a: Un

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RICAN STUDIES 9

onary, a grouch, and a troublemaker known for
efending slavery and opposing suffrage for
veryone but male landowners. That eventually,
veryone decided the writing in The Leatherstock­
g Tales was abominable, but that during the
920s Cooper's social criticism began to seem
mportant and his thinking pretty much repre­
entative of American conservatism.

MERSON (1803-1882)

oncord, Massachusetts.

nitarian minister, lecturer.

few passages from Nature (1836), Emerson's
aean to individualism, and a couple o f the Es­
ays (1841), one of which was undoubtedly the
arly, optimistic "Self-Reliance." I f you were
pending a few days on Transcendentalism, you
robably also had to read "The Over-Soul." If,
n the other hand, your English teacher swung
ward an essay like "The Poet," it was, no doubt,
ccompanied by a snatch of Emersonian verse—
ost likely "Brahma" or "Days." (You already
new Emerson's "Concord Hymn" from grade-
chool history lessons, although you probably
idn't know who wrote it.)

ssays and more essays, including "Experience,"
tough one. Also the lecture "The American
cholar," in which Emerson called for a proper
merican literature, freed from European domi­
ation.

hat Emerson was the most important figure of
e Transcendentalist movement, whatever that
as, the friend and benefactor of Thoreau, and a
gend in his own time; also, that he was a great
hinker, a staunch individualist, an unshakable

IO AN I N C O M P L E T E

What You Didn't Find Out Until op
College: yo

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NATHANIEL HAWT

Nathaniel Hawthorne Hawt
Product of:
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E EDUCATION
ptimist, and a first-class human being, even if
ou wouldn't have wanted to know him yourself.
hat you'd probably be a better person if you
ad known him yourself and that almost any one

his essays could see you through an identity
isis, if not a nervous breakdown.

THORNE (1804-1864)

thorne's house, Concord, Massachusetts

alem and Concord, Massachusetts.
riter, surveyor, American consul in Liverpool.
he Scarlet Letter (1850) or The House of the Seven
ables (1851); plus one or two tales, among
hich was probably "Young Goodman Brown"
846) because your teacher hoped a story about
tchcraft would hold your attention long
nough to get you through it.
one, since you were expected to have done the
ading back in high school. One possible excep­
on: The Blithedale Romance (1852) if your prof
as into Brook Farm and the Transcendentalists;

AMER

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What You Were Supposed to Have W
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EDGAR ALLAN

Edgar Allan Poe s cottag

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RICAN STUDIES II

nother: The Marble Faun (1860) for its explicit
ll of-man philosophizing.

What the letter A embroidered on someone's
ress means.

hat Hawthorne marked a turning point in
merican morality and a break from our Puritan
ast, despite the fact that he, like his ancestors,
ever stopped obsessing about sin and guilt.
lso, that he's considered something of an un-
erachiever.

POE (1809-1849)

ge. New York City

ichmond, Virginia; New York City; Baltimore,
Maryland.

ack journalist and reviewer.

The Raven" (1845), "Ulalume" (1847), "Anna­
el Lee" (1848), and a few other poems,
robably read aloud in class; a detective
ory: "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"
1841) or "The Purloined Letter" (1845), either
f which you could skip if you'd seen the movie;
ne or two of the supernatural-death stories, say,
The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) or
The Masque of the Red Death" (1842), either

12 A N I N C O M P L E T E

College Reading List: of
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What You Were Supposed to Have Te
Learned in High School: eit
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What You Didn't Find Out Until and
College: you
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HARRIET BEECHER

Product of: Lit
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Earned a Living as a: Ho

High-School Reading List: Un

E EDUCATION

which you could skip if you'd seen the movie; a
uple of the psychotic-murderer stories, e.g., "The
ll-Tale Heart" or "The Black Cat" (both 1843),
ther of which you could skip if you'd seen the
ovie; and a pure Poe horror number like "The Pit
d the Pendulum" (1842), which you could skip if
u'd seen the movie. Sorry, but as far as we know,
ey still haven't made a movie of "The Cask of
montillado" (1846), although somebody once
ote to us, claiming to have seen it.

one; remedial reading only, unless you chose to
ite your dissertation on "The Gothic Element
American Fiction."

hat Poe invented the detective story and for­
ulated the short story more or less as we know

That maybe poetry wasn't so bad, after all.
so, that Poe was a poverty-stricken alcoholic
ho did drugs and who married his thirteen-
ar-old cousin, just like Jerry Lee Lewis did.

hat once you're over seventeen, you don't ever
mit to liking Poe's poetry, except maybe to
ur closest friend who's a math major; that
hile Poe seemed puerile to American critics, he
as a cult hero to European writers from Baude­
re to Shaw; and that, in spite of his subject
atter, Poe still gets credit—even in America—
r being a great technician.

STOWE (1811-1896)

tchfield and Hartford, Connecticut; Cincin­
ti, Ohio; Brunswick, Maine.

ousewife.

ncle Toms Cabin (1851-1852).

AMER

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HENRY DAVID TH

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RICAN STUDIES

Harriet Beecher Stowe

The Pearl of Orr's Island (1862) and Old Town
olks (1869), if your professor was determined to

make a case for Stowe as a novelist. Both are
onsidered superior to Uncle Toms Cabin.

What happened to Uncle Tom, Topsy, and Lit­
e Eva. That the novel was one of the catalysts of
he Civil War.

hat you'd have done better to spend your time
eading the real story of slavery in My Life and
Times by Frederick Douglass. T h a t the fact that
ou didn't was just one more proof, dammit, of
he racism rampant in our educational system.

OREAU (1817-1862)

Concord, Massachusetts, and nearby Walden
ond.

choolteacher, pencil maker, surveyor, handy­
man, naturalist.

AN I N C O M P L E T E

High-School Reading List: W
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College: Ri
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E EDUCATION

Walden (1854), inspired by the two years he spent
ommuning with himself and Nature in a log
abin on Walden Pond.

Civil Disobedience" (1849), the essay inspired
y the night he spent in jail for refusing to pay a
oll tax; A Week on the Concord and Merrimack
ivers (1849), inspired by a few weeks spent on
ame with his brother John, and considered a lit­
ary warm-up for Wa/den; parts of the Journal,
spired by virtually everything, which Thoreau
ot only kept but polished and rewrote for al­
ost twenty-five years—you had fourteen vol­
mes to choose from, including the famous "lost
urnal" which was rediscovered in 1958.

hat Thoreau was one of the great American
ccentrics and the farthest out of the Transcen-
entalists, and that he believed you should spend
our life breaking bread with the birds and the
oodchucks instead of going for a killing in the
tures market like your old man.

h a t Walden was not j u s t a spiritualized Boy
cout Handbook but, according to twentieth-
entury authorities, a carefully composed literary
asterpiece. That, according to these same au­
orities, Thoreau did have a sense of humor.
hat Tolstoy was mightily impressed with "Civil
isobedience" and Gandhi used it as the inspira­
on for his satyagraha. T h a t despite his reputa­
on as a loner and pacifist, Thoreau became the
iend and defender of the radical abolitionist
hn Brown. And that, heavy as you were into
horeau's principles of purity, simplicity, and
pirituality, you still had to figure out how to hit
our parents up for plane fare to Goa.

enry David Thoreau's house, Concord,
assachusetts

AMER

HERMAN MELVI

Product of: Ne
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Earned a Living as a: Sc
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Herman Melville s house, Albany, New

RICAN STUDIES

ILLE (1819-1891)

ew York City; Albany and Troy, New York;
arious South Sea islands.

choolteacher, bank clerk, sailor, harpooner, cus­
ms inspector.

oby-Dick ( 1 8 5 1 ; abridged version, or you
st skipped the parts about the whaling indus­
y); Typee (1846), the early bestseller, which
as, your teacher hoped, sufficiently exotic and
ction-packed to get you hooked on Melville.
or extra credit, the novella Billy Budd (pub­
shed posthumously, 1924).

oby-Dick (unabridged version), The Piazza
ales (1856), especially "Bartleby the Scrivener"
nd "Benito Cereno"; and the much-discussed,
xtremely tedious The Confidence Man (1857).

h a t Moby-Dick is a l l e g o r i c a l (the w h a l e =
ature/God/the Implacable Universe; Ahab =
an's Conflicted Identity/Civilization/Human
ill; Ishmael = the Poet/Philosopher) and
hould be read as a debate between Ahab and
hmael.

York

i6 A N I N C O M P L E T E

What You Didn't Find Out Until Th
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MARK TWAIN

Product of: The Clemensfamily

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Earned a Living as a: Pr
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E EDUCATION

hat Melville didn't know Moby-Dick was allegori­
l until somebody pointed it out to him. That
s work prefigured some of Freud's theories of
e unconscious. That, like Lord Byron, Nor­
an Mailer, and Bob Dylan, Melville spent most
his life struggling to keep up with the name
e'd made for himself (with the bestselling Typee)
efore he turned thirty. And that if, historically,
e was caught between nineteenth-century Ro­
anticism and modern alienation, personally he
as pretty unbalanced as well. H e may or may
ot have been gay, as some biographers assert (if
e was, he almost certainly didn't know it), but
hatever he was, Nathaniel Hawthorne eventu­
ly stopped taking his calls.

N (1835-1910)

annibal, Missouri; various Nevada mining
wns; Hartford, Connecticut.
inter, river pilot, newspaper reporter, lecturer,
oryteller.
he Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Also,
you took remedial English, The Adventures of
om Sawyer (1876).
he short story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog

Calaveras County" (1865), as an example of

AMER

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The Beat Goes

A HUNDRED YEARS' W
MODERN AMERICAN

So much of what we've all been committing to m
or so—the words to "Help M e , Rhonda" typify
paying the same dividends. Sure, the beat's as catc
gang's less worried about what to do on Saturda

RICAN STUDIES

wain's frontier humor; the essays "Fenimore
ooper's Literary Offenses" (1895, 1897) and
The United States of Lyncherdom" (1901), as
xamples of his scathing wit and increasing disil­
sionment with America; and the short novel,
he Mysterious Stranger (published posthumously,
916), for the late, bleak, embittered Twain.

h a t Huckleberry Finn is the great mock-epic of
merican democracy, marking the beginning of
caste-free literature that owed nothing to E u ­
pean tradition. That this was the first time the
merican vernacular had made it into a serious
erary work. That the book profoundly influ­
nced the development of the modern American
ose style. And that you should have been pay­
g more attention to Twain's brilliant manipula­
on of language and less to whether or not
uck, Tom, and Jim made it out of the lean-to
ive. Also, that Mark Twain, which was river
arlance for "two fathoms deep," was the pseu­
onym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

hat Twain grew more and more pessimistic
bout America—and about humanity in general—

he, and the country, grew older, eventually turn­
g into a bona fide misanthrope. And that
e was stylistically tone-deaf, producing equal
mounts of brilliant prose and overwritten trash
ithout ever seeming to notice the difference.

s On

WORTH OF
POETRY

memory over the past lifetime
y the genre—eventually stops
chy as ever. But once the old
ay night than about meeting

i8 A N I N C O M P L E T E

child-support payments and
something more in the way of
Good news: All the time you
tle more foresight were writi
which is as about as Zeitgeisty

It is, however, a little tricki
ern, which means you're up a
poetry, which means nobody
mind. Put them together and
got modern poetry's brightes
categories for those pressed
own.

THE F

EZRA P

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E EDUCATION

stemming periodontal disease, it's nice to have
f consolation, perspective, and uplift to fall back on.
were glued to the car radio, a few people with a lit­
ing—and what's more, printing—poetry, some of
y as things get.
ier than the Beach Boys. For one thing, it's mod­
against alienation and artificiality. For another, it's
y's just going to come out and say what's on his
d you've got modern poetry. Read on and you've
st lights and biggest guns, arranged in convenient

for time and/or an ordering principle of their

FIVE BIG DEALS

POUND (1885-1972)

ofile: O l d Granddad . . . most influential figure
(and most headline-making career) in modern po­
etry . . . made poets write modern, editors publish
modern, and readers read modern . . . part archae­
ologist, part refugee, he scavenged past eras (me­
dieval Provence, Confucian China) with a mind to
overhauling his own . . . in so doing, master­
minded a cultural revolution, complete with doc­
trines, ideology, and propaganda . . . though
expatriated to London and Italy, remained at heart
an American, rough-and-ready, even vulgar, as he
put it, "a plymouth-rock conscience landed on a
predilection for the arts" . . . responsive and rigor­
ous: helped Eliot (whose The Waste Land he pared
down to half its original length), Yeats, Joyce,
Frost, and plenty of lesser poets and writers . . .
reputation colored by his anti-Semitism, his
hookup with Mussolini, the ensuing charges of
treason brought by the U.S. government, and the
years in a mental institution.

AMER

Motto: "Make it new."
A colleague begs to differ: "Mr. Pound is a village ex

a village, but, if you were not, not."—Gertrude S
Favorite colors: Purple, ivory, jade.
Latest Books read: Confucius, Stendhal, the songs o

oirs of Thomas Jefferson.
The easy (and eminently quotable) Pound:

There died a myriad,
And of the best, among them
For an old bitch gone in the
For a botched civilization,

Charm, smiling at the good
Quick eyes gone under earth

For two gross of broken statu
For a few thousand battered

from Hugh Selwyn Ma

The prestige Pound (for extra credit):

Zeus lies in Ceres' bosom
Taishan is attended of loves

under Cythera, before
and he said: "Hay aqui mucho catolicismo—

y muy poco reliHiôn"
and he said: "Yo creo que los reyes desaparec
(Kings will, I think, disappear)
That was Padre José Elizondo

in 1906 and 191
or about 1917

and Dolores said "Come pan, nifio,
Sargent had painted her

before he descen
(i.e., if he descended)

but in those days he did thumb ske
impressions of the Velasquez in the Museo d
and books cost a peseta,

brass candlesticks in proport
hot wind came from the marshes

and death-chill from the mountains. . . .

from Cantos, L X X X I (one of the Pisan Cantos, wri
Pound was on display in a cage in Pisa)

RICAN STUDIES 19

xplainer—excellent if you were
Stein

of the troubadours, the mem­

m,
teeth,

mouth,
h's lid,
ues,

books.
auberley

sunrise
—(sounded catoli/^ismo)
cen"

7
," (eat bread, me lad)
nded
etches,
del Prado
tion,
.

itten after World War II while

20 A N I N C O M P L E T E

T. S. ( T
ELI

Prof
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(see page 1 9 0 ) . . . his later po
in the meantime, found God
Cathedral, his plays . . . had a h
poetry in terms not of traditio
Motto: "Genuine poetry can c
A colleague begs to differ: "A s

Williams, who called The W
Favorite colors: Eggplant, sabl
Latest books read: Dante, Hes

Chaos, St. Augustine, Jessie
Golden Bough, Baudelaire, t
Ecclesiastes, Joyce's Ulysses
and that's just this week.
The easy (and eminently quotab
J. Alfred Prufrock," the let-
a-table, women-talking-of-
seems as faux-melodramat
Waters movie. (We'd have
tate has a thing about exce
The prestige Eliot (for extra cre
Land, just to show you've m
ple, the second stanza of the
which a rat scurries along a
king my father," Mrs. Swe
water," and Eliot's own foo

E EDUCATION

THOMAS STERNS)
IOT (1888-1965)

file: T i e d with Yeats for most famous poet of the
entury . . . his masterpiece The Waste Land (1922),
which gets at the fragmentation, horror, and ennui
f modern times through a collage of literary, reli­
ious, and pop allusions . . . erudition for days: a
age of Eliot's poetry can consist of more footnotes
nd scholarly references than text . . . born in Mis­
ouri, educated at Harvard, but from the late 1910s
during which he worked as a bank clerk) on, lived
n London and adopted the ways of an Englishman
. . tried in his early poetry to reunite wit and pas­
ion, which, in English poetry, had been going their
eparate ways since Donne and the Metaphysicals
oetry usually put down for its religiosity (Eliot had,
d ) ; likewise, with the exception of Murder in the
history of nervous breakdowns; some critics see his
n and classicism, but of compulsion and craziness.
ommunicate before it is understood."
subtle conformist," according to William Carlos
Waste Land "the great catastrophe."
le, mustard.
siod, the Bhagavad Gita, Hesse's A Glimpse into

L . Weston's From Ritual to Romance, Frazer's The
the Old Testament books of Ezekiel, Isaiah, and
s, Antony and Cleopatra, "The Rape of the Lock,"

ble) Eliot: The. opening lines of " T h e Love Song of
-us-go-then-you-and-I, patient-etherised-upon-
-Michelangelo lead-in to a poem that these days
tic and faggy—and as unforgettable—as a John
printed these lines for you here, but the Eliot es­
erpting.)
edit): Something from the middle of the The Waste
made it through the whole 434 lines. Try, for exam­
e third book ("The Fire Sermon"), in the course of
river bank, the narrator muses on the death of "the
eeney and her daughter "wash their feet in soda
otnotes refer you to The Tempest, an Elizabethan

AMER

poem called Parliament ofBees, the World War I b
makes her first appearance (ditto her daughter),

WILLIAM CARLOS W
(1883-1963)

Profile: Uncle B i l l . . . at the center of postwar poetr
the man whom younger poets used to look to f
direction and inspiration . . . smack-dab in t
American grain . . . determined to write poet
based on the language as spoken here, the langua
he heard "in the mouths of Polish mothers" .
avoided traditional stanza, rhyme, and line pa
terns, preferring a jumble of images and rhythm
. . . spent his entire life in New Jersey, a small-tow
doctor, specializing in pediatrics . . . played hom
body to Pound's and Eliot's gadabouts, regular gu
to their artistes—the former a lifelong friend, wi
whom he disagreed loudly and often . . . wanted
make "contact," which he took to mean "man wi
nothing but the thing and the feeling of that thin
. . . not taken seriously by critics and intellectual
who tended, until the Fifties, to treat him like a li
erary Grandma Moses . . . Paterson is his The Was
Land.

Motto: "No ideas but in things."
A colleague begs to differ: "A poet of some local inte

poetic."—Wallace Stevens.
Favorite colors: Blue, yellow, tan.
Latest books read: Keats, Pound's Cantos, Allen Gin

RICAN STUDIES 2J.

ballad in which Mrs. Sweeney
and a sonnet by Verlaine.

ILLIAMS

ry,
for
he
try
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ls,
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erest, perhaps."—Eliot. "Anti-

nsberg's Howl.

22 AN I N C O M P L E T E
The easy {and eminently quotab

The prestige Williams (for extra

The descent becko
as t

of accomplishmen
a so

an initiation, since
places

inh

of new kinds—
sin

(even though form

N o defeat is made
the world it opens

for

world lost,

aw

and no whiteness
of whiteness

from

E EDUCATION

ble) Williams:

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.

"The Red Wheelbarrow"

a credit):

ons
the ascent beckoned

Memory is a kind
nt
ort of renewal

even
e the spaces it opens are new

habited by hordes
heretofore unrealized,

nce their movements
are towards new objectives

merly they were abandoned)
e up entirely of defeat—since
s is always a place
rmerly

unsuspected. A

world unsuspected
beckons to new places

(lost) is so white as the memory

Paterson, Book 2 ("Sunday in the Park"), Section 2

AMER

ROBERT FROST (187

Profile: T h e one who got stuck being popular w
readers outside college English departments . . .
not just the "miles-to-go-before-I-sleep" poet;
one critic said, "sees the skull beneath the flesh"
born in California, where he spent his boyho
The New England accent just a bit of a fraud
re-created, in his poems, the rhythms of act
speech, the actions of ordinary men . . . "got"
ture, tradition, and anxiety . . . his tone sad, w
and a little narcissistic . . . eventually carved out
elder-statesman role for himself in officiai Ame
can culture . . . isolation, limitation, and extinct
were favorite themes . . . said to have been a creep
his wife and son (who committed suicide) . . .
better or worse, hard not to memorize.

Motto: "We play the words as we find them."
A colleague begs to differ: "His work is full (or said t

lace Stevens.
Favorite colors: Teal blue, slate gray, blood red.
Latest books read: T h e King James Bible, Thoreau

D'Urbervilles.
The easy (and eminently quotable) Frost:

Nature's first green is go
Her hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to lea
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to d
Nothing gold can stay.

"Nothing Go

The prestige Frost (for extra credit):

. . . Make yourself up a cheering so
Someone's road home from work t
Who may be just ahead of you on
Or creaking with a buggy load of g
The height of the adventure is the
O f country where two village cultu
Into each other. Both of them are

RICAN STUDIES 23

74-1963)

with
but
; as
...

ood:
. ..
tual
na­

wry,
t an
eri­
tion
p to

for

o be full) of humanity."—Wal­

u's Walden, Hardy's Tess of the

old,
d.
;

af.

day.

old Can Stay"

ong of how
this once was,
foot
grain.

height
ures faded
lost.

24 AN I N C O M P L E T E

And if you're lost
By now, pull in y
And put a sign up
Then make yours
Now left's no big
First there's the c
Some shattered d
The playthings in
Weep for what li

WALLACE

Pro
in
s
H
in
li
a
g
w
e
m
g
tr
h
lo

the sensuousness and brillia
"Wordsworthian plainness").
Motto: "Poetry is the supreme
A colleague begs to differ: "A br
Favorite colors: Vermilion, cha
Latest books read: A Midsumme

and Yeats, Henri Bergson's
The easy (and eminently quotab

I plac
And
It ma
Surro

E EDUCATION

t enough to find yourself
your ladder road behind you
p C L O S E D to all but me.
self at home. The only field
gger than a harness gall.
children's house of make-believe,
dishes underneath a pine,
n the playhouse of the children.
ittle things could make them glad. . . .

from "Directive"

STEVENS (1879-1955)

ofile: With Yeats and Eliot, billed as a great "imag­
native force" in modern poetry. . . self-effacing in­
surance executive who spent a lifetime at the
Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, writ­
ng poetry nights and weekends . . . didn't travel in
iterary circles (and was on a first-name basis with
almost no other writers); did, however, manage to
get into a famous fistfight with Ernest Hemingway
while vacationing in Key W e s t . . . believed in "the
essential gaudiness of poetry" . . . his own verse
marked by flair, self-mockery, virtuoso touches, ag­
gressive art-for-art's-sakeishness . . . in it, he por­
rayed himself as the aesthete, the dandy, the
hedonist . . . held that, since religion could no
onger satisfy people, poetry would have to . . . had
ance of a Keats (cf., as the critics do, Frost's

fiction, madame."
ric-a-brac poet."—Robert Frost.
artreuse, wine.
er Night s Dream, the poetry of Verlaine, Mallarmé,
On Laughter.
ble) Stevens:

ced ajar in Tennessee,
round it was, upon a hill.
ade the slovenly wilderness
ound that hill.

AMER

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no long
The jar was round upon the g
And tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennesse

"Anecdote o

The prestige Stevens (for extra credit):

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you
Why, when the singing ended and
Toward the town, tell why the gla
The lights in the fishing boats at a
As the night descended, tilting in
Mastered the night and portioned
Fixing emblazoned zones and fier
Arranging, deepening, enchanting
Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale R
The maker's rage to order words o
Words of the fragrant portals, dim
And of ourselves and our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener

from "The Idea of Order a

THE FIVE RUNNE

MARIANNE MOORE (

If "compression is the first grace
you have it.
from "T

Has been called "the poet's poet" and compared to
certo" in which all other American poets are the
called, by Hart Crane, "a hysterical virgin" . . . in e
staring at animals (pangolins, frigate pelicans, arcti
Brooklyn Dodgers, then holding forth on what she

RICAN STUDIES

ger wild.
round.

,
e.

f the Jar"

know,
d we turned
ssy lights,
anchor there,

the air,
out the sea,
y poles,
g night.

Ramon,
of the sea,
mly-starred,

sounds.

at Key West"

ERS-UP

1887-1972)

e of style,"

To a Snail"

"a solo harpsichord in a con­
e orchestra . . . has also been
either case, was notorious for
ic oxen), steamrollers, and the

saw. . . believed in "predilec-

26 AN I N C O M P L E T E

tion" rather than "passion" an
"precision" that had both "imp
her quotes from history books
alert, and neat . . . appealed
matter-of-fact tone, her abilit

JOHN CROW

—I am a gent
To make you
And listen to

Finest of the Southern poets (
and the center of the literary
agrarianism, and the New Crit
. . . liked the mythic, the cour
small poetic output: only thre
founder and editor, for over tw
American literary magazine of
tle sentimental; at his best, d
worth reading on mortality an

E. E. (EDWAR

. . . the Camb
Cambridge if
sky lavender
moon rattles
from "[the Cambridge la

Innovative in a small and sub
punctuation, and convention
helped him convince a consid
wisdom . . . the son of a mini
through dooms of love"), he si

E EDUCATION

nd wanted to achieve an "unbearable accuracy," a
pact and exactitude, as with surgery" . . . watch for
s, encyclopedias, and travel brochures . . . original,
to fellow poets, including young ones, with her
ty to make poetry read as easily as prose.

WE RANSOM (1888-1974)

tleman in a dustcoat trying
hear. Your ears are soft and small
an old man not at all. . . .

from "Piazza Piece"

(he beats out Allen Tate and Robert Penn Warren),
y group called the Fugitives (mention tradition,
ticism and they'll read you some of their own verse)
rtly, the antique, and flirted with the pedantic . . .
ee books, all written between 1919 and 1927 . . .
wenty years, of the Kenyon Review, arguably the top
f its d a y . . . at his worst, can be a little stilted, a lit­
devastatingly stilted and wonderfully ironical . . .
nd the mind/body dichotomy.

RD ESTLIN) CUMMINGS
(1894-1962)

bridge ladies do not care, above
f sometimes in its box of
and cornerless, the
like a fragment of angry candy
adies who live in furnished souls]"

bversive way . . . the one who used capital letters,
al typography only when he felt like it, which
derable readership that what they were getting was
ister (about whom he'd write "my father / moved
ided with the little guy, the fellow down on his luck,

AMER

the protester . . . has been likened to Robin H
Spillane (the tough guy), and Peter Pan (the boy
wrote love poems marked by childlike wonder and

HART CRANE (189

The photographs of hades in the
Are tunnels that re-wind themsel
A burnt match skating in a urinal

from The Bridge ("T

Wanted, like Whitman, to embrace the whole coun
the fact that he couldn't get his arms around it . .
(that's the Brooklyn Bridge, a symbol of the heigh
pires), an epic about, as Crane put it, "a mystical syn
can hear not just Whitman, but Woody Guthrie
apocalypse under rocks and in bureau drawers . . .
and quest," Crane claims he hears "a kitten crying
mosexual who, at thirty-three, committed suicide b
Gulf of Mexico.

ROBERT LOWELL (1

The Aquarium is gone. Everyw
giant-finned cars move forward
a savage servility
slides by on grease.

from "For the Uni

One of the New England Lowells (like James Ru
the intricacies of the Puritan conscience, then con
principle subject the flux, struggle, and agony of ex
"the dark and against the grain" . . . lived a high-p
stress, marital strain, organized protest, mental illn
outlive and outwork such equally troubled colleagu
Schwartz, Randall Jarrell, Theodore Roethke, and
etry a new autobiographical aspect and a renewed
. . . aroused greater admiration and jealousy, for th
any other contemporary American poet.

RICAN STUDIES

ood (the anarchist), Mickey
y who wouldn't grow up) . . .
d great good humor.

9-1932)

brain
lves, and love
l.

The Tunnel")

ntry, and was only egged on by
. . his major poem The Bridge
hts to which modern man as­
nthesis of America' "; in it you
. . . as somebody said, found
. "through all sounds of gaiety
g in the wilderness" . . . a ho­
by jumping overboard into the

917-1977)

where
d like fish;

on Dead"

ussell and Amy) . . . discussed
nverted to Catholicism . . . his
xperience . . . was interested in
profile personal life (political
ness) . . . even so, managed to
ues and intimates as Delmore
d John Berryman . . . gave po­

sense of social responsibility
he space of twenty years, than

28 AN I N C O M P L E T E

ROOTS: FOUR

T H E R O M A N T I C S : Word
195-96). The line of descent s
of the imagination and the self
they probably follow Yeats and
and would rather date things f

T H E S Y M B O L I S T S : Rimba
plus the young Yeats. (Poe and
another world beyond the vis
references, all of which just m
some kind. Thus drunken boa
Gets a little lugubrious, but d
an affair of the senses than the

WALT W H I T M A N : Found
poetic mission ("I speak the p
modern poetry is about: exper
self; the assumption that the
room together and that a poem
a lot, but people on the side of

E M I L Y D I C K I N S O N : Fou
Carlos Williams put it, "patro
spoken where Whitman is agg
ones, microcosm to his macro
to see how infinity can mean i

HOOTS: FOUR
POETS NO
TEN-F

First, Edna St. Vincent Milla
out—with three slender volum
T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land fo
former boyfriend Edmund Wi
foes, and oh, my friends," ver

E EDUCATION

R PRIMARY INFLUENCES

dsworth, Shelley, et al. (see pages 192-93 and
starts here, with all that talk about the importance
f. Don't tell your modern-poet friends this, though;
d Eliot in repudiating the early nineteenth century
from Whitman and/or the Symbolists.

aud, Verlaine, Mallarmé, and the rest of the Frogs,
d Baudelaire were forerunners.) Believed there was
ual one, a world of secret connections and private
might, if you gave them a shove, form a pattern of
ats and "fragrances fresh as the flesh of children."
don't we all? Anyway, they made poetry even more
e Romantics had done.

ding father of American poetry. Charged with the
password primeval"), he raised all the issues that
rimentation with language and form; revelation of
poet, the reader, and the idea are all in the same
m could make something happen. Hyperventilated
f freedom and variety are like that.

unding mother of American poetry; as William
on saint" and "a real good guy." Reticent and soft-
gressive and amped. Short lines to Whitman's long
ocosm: "The brain is wider than the sea." Gets you
infinitely small as well as infinitely big.

R TWENTIETH-CENTURY
T TO TOUCH WITH A
FOOT STROPHE

ay, Our Lady of the Sonnets, who, in 1923, beat
mes, including one titled A Few Figsfrom Thistles—
or the Pulitzer Prize; but who, subsequently, despite

ilson's efforts to save her, began to seem, "ah, my
y silly. Also, A m y Lowell, dragon to Millay's

AMER

sylph, whom Eliot called "the demon saleswoman
accused of reducing the tenets of Imagism to "Am
from tenth-grade English, her musings on squills a
Now she doesn't even make the anthologies.

RICAN STUDIES 29

Clockwisefrom top
left: Edna St.
Vincent Millay,
Amy Lowell,
Edwin Arlington
Robinson, Carl
Sandburg

n of poetry" and whom Pound
my-gism"; you may remember,
and ribbons and garden walks.

3° AN I N C O M P L E T E

Then, Carl Sandburg, wh
Chicago, his hometown ("City
certainly liked ketchup on his
Robert Frost, hardly an inno
Rogers here, or Whitman (
Edwin Arlington Robinson, w
can recite whole stanzas of, to
in a room full of well-groome
swing into "Miniver loved th
would have sinned incessantly

OFFSHOOTS

Five poets, no longer young (o
theless as edgy, angry, and/or s

A L L E N G I N S B E R G : Drop
in that order. "America I'm pu
famous works, Howl (about t
which was written during a pey
this one written on amphetam
William Blake: A spiritual ad
difference between religion an
intro to Howl, "Hold back the
hell."

F R A N K O'HARA: Cool—bu
York School of poets (others w
Koch), and a bridge between
straction and philosophy in po
he called "personism." Had a th
general; his poems prefigure p
"I go on to the bank / and M
doesn't even look up my balanc
on Fire Island when he was on

R O B E R T CREELEY: One
mental backwoods college in N
of a "counterculture" got starte
such as "For N o Clear Reason
"Form is never more than an

EDUCATION

ho catalogued so memorably the pleasures of
y of the Big Shoulders," and so forth), who almost
s eggs, but who was, even back then, accused—by
ocent himself—of fraud; better to go with Will
(whom Sandburg consciously imitated). Finally,
whose "Richard Cory" and "Miniver Cheevy" we
oo, which is precisely the problem. Picture yourself
ed young adults, all of whom, if they chose, could
e Medici, / Albeit he had never seen one; / He
y / Could he have been one."

S: FIVE CULT FIGURES

or even, in a couple of cases, alive), who are never­
stoned as you are.

out, prophet, and "Buddhist Jew," not necessarily
utting my queer shoulder to the wheel." His most
he beat culture of the Fifties, the second part of
yote vision) and "Kaddish" (about his dead mother,
mines). Some critics see him in the tradition of
dventurer with a taste for apocalypse, who saw no
nd poetry. As William Carlos Williams said in his
edges of your gowns, Ladies, we are going through

ut approachable, also gay. At the center of the New
were John Ashbery, James Schuyler, and Kenneth
artists and writers of the Sixties. Objected to ab­
oetry, preferring a spur-of-the-moment specificity
hing about the movies, James Dean, pop culture in
pop art. Thus, in "The Day Lady Died," lines like,
Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard) /
ce for once in her l i f e . . . . " Killed by a dune buggy
nly forty.

of the Black Mountain poets, out of the experi­
North Carolina where, back in the Fifties, the idea
ed. Kept his poems short and intimate, with titles
n" and "Somewhere." His most famous utterance:
extension of content." (Stay away from the prose,

AMER

though, which reads like Justice Department dou
dropout: from Harvard—twice, once to India, onc
tional stints in Majorca, Guatemala, and, of cour
were going to get a pet / what kind of animal woul

SYLVIA P L A T H : Her past is your past: report ca
to Smith), summers at the beach. In short, banali
she goes to town. May tell you more about herse
(along with Robert Lowell, she s the model of the
pecially for references to her father ("marble-heavy,
statue with one grey toe / Big as a Frisco seal. . .")
ographical—and satirical—novel of an adolescent
suicide. Married to English poet Ted Hughes, she
self. The new style of woman poet (along with Anne
a cross between victim and rebel.

I M A M U A M I R I B A R A K A (The poet and activ
Jones): Started off mellow, doing graduate work a
with his first wife (who, as it happened, was white)
sequently turned from bohemian to militant: "We
man, our own world, and we can not do this unless
get together and kill him, my man, let s get to ga
Moved first to Harlem, then back to Newark, wh
wearing dashikis and speaking Swahili. Likewise to
Dutchman (1964); his most famous coinages, "tok
wall." In 2002 he was named poet laureate of New
proved he was still capable of raising hackles with th
"Somebody Blew Up America," in which he sided w
suggested that the Israeli and U.S. governments kn
tember 11 attacks were going to take place: "Who
the Twin Towers / To stay home that day / Why
New Jersey's last poet laureate.

American Intellectual
and Stop That S

EIGHT AMERICAN IN

The French have them, the Germans have th
them, so by God why shouldn't we? Admitted

RICAN STUDIES 3?

ublespeak.) The consummate
ce to Cape Cod—with addi­
rse, Black Mountain. "If you
d you get."

ards, scholarships (in her case,
ity American-style, on which
elf than you wanted to know
confessional poet); watch es­
, a bag full of G o d , / Ghastly
). Wrote The Bell Jar, autobi­
t s breakdown and attempted

later committed suicide her­
e Sexton and Adrienne Rich),

vist formerly known as Leroi
at Columbia and hanging out
) in Greenwich Village. Sub­
must make our own / World,
the white man / is dead. Let s
ather the fruit / of the sun."
here he'd grown up; took up

be noted: his plays, especially
kenism" and "up against the
w Jersey—stop laughing—and
he public reading of his poem
with conspiracy theorists who
new in advance that the Sep­
o told 4000 Israeli workers at
did Sharon stay away?" Was

History,
Snickering

NTELLECTUALS

em, even the Russians have
dly, in a country that defines