The 612 Project Youth-in Asia Say Stop Da War Now!

The poet as prophet

As usual, I'm dealing with the unraveling of my own consciousness. Where does poetry fit into my life? What about academia? Activism? Religion? These questions led me to look back at Naked Heart, William Everson's book of interviews and essays edited by my father, Lee Bartlett. I am just going to quote a few passages. The first of which is an excerpt from Nathanial Tarn in an interview with Bartlett and Everson. This was conducted at Kingfisher Flat in 1986 (the year that I was 16).

Tarn: Of course, Erza Pound had this same kind of regard for the poet, and it seems to me that one of the primary reasons he was so tragically disappointed in life was that his vision really was beginning to encounter the wall of silence he had not wanted to perceive before. So, my question here would be rather brutal. Do you think that the coming generations are going to have all that elevated notion of the poet? My sense of what younger poets are doing today does not imply that prophetic idea of the poet at all.

Bartlett: I'd agree with that. Certainly I think Michael Palmer would deny a prophetic vocation, as would a poet coming out of Iowa's MFA Program.

Everson: Poetry goes through changes from primitivism to decadence: we happen to be in a decadent period right now. However, mythic possibilities will always be there.

I would like to invite poets to revisit this discussion. I realize that calling the poet (i.e. oneself) is problematic. It stinks of idealism. Still, I think it's an important question. I read somewhere a few days ago about poets being 'forced' to take jobs outside of academia, but when did poets become so tied into academia to begin with?

I would define the poet as prophet in, perhaps, more benign terms: one who writes out of pure desperation. Twenty years later after Tarn and Bartlett made this assessment, I have to say that I believe there is hope in the pure poet. If I had to name names, I might name Andrea Baker, Reb Livingston, Kate Greenstreet, Jill Essbaum, Lisa Jarnot, and Maryrose Larkin. Poets who have virtually nothing to gain (or lose by writing). I would also think back to Nathaniel himself, who, all these years later is purely dedicated to the venture. Also, Fanny Howe, who I think most closely approaches the tradition of our dear monk, Bill.

Turning at an academic for a moment, I'd like to quote Marjorie Perloff from Belladonna's new Elder series book 'Emma Bee Bernstein.'

In an interview with Emma and Nona Willis Aronowitz, Perloff questions,

'There are too many artists, too many poets. Sometimes, I think if I hear about another poet, I'll shoot myself, even though I'm the one who writes on poetry. What does this glut of so-called poets and artists do for society? I'd be much happier if the women in question became social workers or teachers or medical workers...... Seriously, whatever happened to improving society? If someone really has a vocation, she will make her art no matter what......At best, they're going to end up teaching at art schools, and the process just perpetuates itself. And there are a lot of things this society needs. We need good elementary school teachers....Nobody wants to do that now - it's considered declasse' - but that's what we need."

However harsh Perloff's words, I know she knows the issue is not without complexities. Some poets have been our country's best advocates: Ginsberg, Rukeyser, Levertov. The two vocations, advocacy and poetry are not at all mutually exclusive. And yet, is the poet hiding behind her academic job in order to build the fortress for her other vocation?

Everson states, 'Find the archetype of what you are, and then if you are a poet, you'd better not compromise what you can't be.'

I think academia and poetry have become so tied in the culture that these are questions every young - and not so young - poet has to face.

My 20 favorite things about my father

1. He loves his cats.

2. He can quote most of Eliot's 'Wasteland' and when I'm mad at my child he tells me 'why did you get married if you didn't want children?'

3. He says, 'You are the best poem I have ever written.'

4. He is an intellectual who loves sports and bad television.

5. He babysits a dog on Thursdays and takes it very seriously.

6. He makes excellent burritos and salads.

7. When I ask him for coffee money he gives me $60.

8. He believes in omens, signs, and conspiracy theories.

9. He says, 'We speak in a kind of shorthand you and I.'

10. He is a great collage artist.

11. He introduced me to Liz Phair and Antony.

12. Jennifer's book and Nathaniel's book.

13. He taught me to say 'Indian' not 'Native American.'

14. He is good to AF.

15. He says,' Well, you saved money on your airline ticket, so now you have more money for books!'

16. When Andy Warhol died and I cried hysterically, he surprised me with a can of Campbell's soup.

17. When I tell him poets are mean to me, he gets it.

18. He owns all the Smiths 12 inches, even though Thomas inherits them, not me.

19. He says, 'Well, Emily Post believes 'bad boys' grow up and rule the world. So, don't worry about Jeff.

20. He met Seamus Heaney at McDonalds.

And, Finally

Today is Dad's birthday! What age? Your secret is safe with me! Email birthday messages to saintlizstreet@hotmail.com  They will be passed on. I promise!

Stotts 'review' of 'In Company'

A rebuttal to Stotts review of 'In Company: New Mexican Poets After 1960' appears at galatea resurrects. Before you start singing nepotism, hear me out.

If you are looking for my father, he has no online presence. He is hiding in the mountain in a cave in Las Cruces with a spledid woman and three splendid cats. He writes poems, makes art, watches a Indian's dog on Mondays. That's about all the information I am at liberty to provide.

I'm happy to pass on messages, but only if you are willing to stop and say hello to me! Preuse awhile, read a poem, buy a book! After all, the great man's talents have been passed down!

Which Books could Poetry not Live Without?

I have been following Ron Silliman's writings about the Williams Carlos Williams award. Silliman says he wanted to pick a book that would "was a book that would change poetry itself, deeply & permanently." This led me to some thinking. What does this mean exactly and which books do I hold dear accomplish this?

First, one could argue that every poem (with a captured reader) changes poetry deeply. They may only change an audience of one (which in the poetry business is not uncommon) but a change occurs none-the-less.

This is what led me to differenciate between my 'personal' list and my 'global' list. Some poems I credit with 'altering my life' are (titles may be off, as I am writing from memory) Akhmatova's Monday Night, Michael Palmer's Dearest Reader, Mary Oliver's Wild Geese, Rachel Zucker and others poems on motherhood, Robert Hass' poems from "Human Wishes," parts of Patterson, Before the War, and Maximus poems, Howl AND Kaddish, From this Condensary by Lorine Niedecker, The Greenhouse Effect by Lee Bartlett (and his biography of Bill Everson), any number of Jorie Graham's poems, everything by Muriel Rukeyser, and the lines (close to them)
I don't know how the hip hop kids do it
but I love it.
By Fanny Howe.

This, of course, is a beginning list. However, have any of my little poets 'changed' the course of poetry history? If not, who has? Ironically, Sillman, as he knows!, is a good place to start with changing poetic history. He pretty much 'invented' the poetry blog and has been sucessful at being the best source, although I see Reginald Shepard inching in. Sillman also, of course, did "In the American Tree." Need I say more.

However, he can't be entirely credited in this 'changing.' There are, of course, all the poets in the anthology and my father who wrote the seminal 'What is Language Poetry?'

Onward, I'm not sure if Mary Oliver's poetry, as much as I love it, can "change poetry itself, deeply & permanently." But, she has done something miraculous in the culture. In 2008, Oliver has convinced over 500 people at any given time that they will go to a poetry reading and pay $25 to do so. Now, that's a miracle. Is she getting advice from Mick Jagger? Even Michael Palmer who, in my small opinion, is the best looking, smartest, nearly most talented poet alive, only got a hundred or so people at the New School.

I know many people might argue, but the only possible answer to the question did Ginsberg, Olson, and Duncan change poetry history is Well, Yes. I know this may not seem feminism enough, but the fact that they were men (and in Olson's case, an asshole) does not make their talent less. Rukeyser, Dickinson, and Stein all had their influence as well. One might even ask, would there be LP if there were no Stein? Would there be Graham or Oliver if there were Dickinson?

This brings us to the 'heavy social' hitters. The guys with Ecco Press and big jobs. Jorie Graham. I think she's a fucking genius -- also very good looking. But, where does she fit? What about Robert Pinsky? Stanley Kunitz? Billy Collins? They all write (or did in Kunitz's case) solid, good books. But, will they "change poetry itself, deeply & permanently." I'm not sure, and perhaps it's too soon to tell.

I think some one like Mei Mei Berssenbrugge might have a better chance.

Perhaps poetry is like The Bible. You get to have it good in this life or the next.
You get to work at Iowa or Harvard OR toil in obscurity.

What poets have changed your life -- globally or personally?

Lee Bartlett

Today I am thinking about my father, Lee Bartlett. Last night, I read sections my father's magazine, American Poetry. I was looking at Fall, 1988, the issue which is posthumously dedicated to Robert Duncan. The issue includes an interview with Bill Everson, who was friends with Duncan for forty years. Mary Fabily (whose name I am surely misspelling) was a lover/wife? of Everson and one of Duncan's closest friends. Note: Duncan, while gay, seemed to have some funky stuff going on with the ladies that is unclear to me. Everson speaks of jealous tensions surrounding the Mary -- and I have been reading simuliar stories about our beloved Ms. Levertov.

But, I don't mean to write about these guys & gals. The point is: ah, my daddy!

The deeper I get into his work, the more I realize how seminal it is/was to the world of poetry. As I have mentioned before, Talking Poetry, for example, is probably the best book of interviews with poets that I have run across. Where else is there one collection with interviews with Michael Palmer, Anne Waldman, Thom Gunn, and Clayton Eshleman? Just to name a few. In addition to a stack of books on Everson, including his biography, my father also edited/wrote/worked on DisemBodied Poetics for Naropa, a book of James Laughlin's letters, an Anthology of New Mexican poets, The Sun is But a Morning Star (which I now know comes from Duncan), the American Poetry Series (which includes books by Everson, McClure, and Tarn), his own book of poetry -- the Greenhouse Effect, the letters of Stephen Spender, a bibliography of Beat poetry, and the first essay on the Language Poets called "What is Language Poetry?" which arguably may be where the term LP derives from. & these are just a few.

It is amazing to grow up and find that something to which you never quite paid attention is so valuable to your work life. It's like growing up to be a filmmaker and finding out your mother had an affair with Woody Allen.

It frustrates me that this great work has been pushed aside. I so want to share it, not out of nepotism, not for the money or glory, but simply because IT'S REALLY GOOD. My father's work is just as important as Silliman's and Perloff's. And the older folks know and regard him well. But, I can't help but feel he's been shrugged off by the younger generation -- unless they are poetry fanatics who read EVERYTHING (Matt Hendrickson).

I think this loss is because many of the books are out of print. Also, my dad is not an internet guy. He's not even in Google! I can't help but also suspect that it's the old paranoid West-East Coast poetry thing. (Sometimes I feel like we are rappers -- oh! by the way, he wrote one of the first essays on that too!)