[Tim Murphy]

Dear Spherians, Alan and I are off to the West Chester conference and thence to a sloop on the Chesapeake. For the next two weeks, Alicia Stallings has graciously agreed to serve as our Poeta Lariata. To kick things off, I've queried her about some of the things that came to my mind as I marveled over her first collection, Archaic Smile.

Questions for Aliki

Q: What led you to the writing of verse?

A: I am of the "poeta nascitur" rather than "fit" school. I was always around books (my father was a professor and my mother a librarian), and I always knew I wanted to write them. But why poetry particularly, I'm not sure.
Certain moments stand out. I remember being about eight or so and reading Blake's "Tyger, Tyger" and suffering a sort of physical pang of... well, almost jealousy. I wanted to have written that poem.

Q: As a classicist you have witnessed the evolution (or
devolution?) of poetry for three thousand years. What
think you of the state of the art?

A: Nobody has ever eclipsed Homer. (I find this strangely comforting--the pressure is off.) Classics pretty much teaches that there is no progress in literature. I don't believe in evolution or devolution. Cycles perhaps. I
think poetry is in a good place in its cycling. There are not that many giant oaks standing in the forest blocking the light to the seedlings.
Also, it is to poetry's advantage that it is the least prestigious of the
literary arts right now. The obscurity is a kind of freedom.

Q: We have only ourselves and our immediate forbears to blame for the
disrepute in which our art is held. I place myself in the generation
between Wilbur’s and yours, and give thanks that I’m not competing in a
contemporaneous sense with either of you. What are your thoughts on us
fifty-year-olds?

A: I am really only just becoming acquainted with much of the
50-somethings' work. I have been delighted to be introduced in the past few
years to your own work, and Dick Davis'. Dana's is quite fine. Gwynn and
Cope are delicious. I'd have to say my "first impressions," though, of the
"formal" generation preceeding mine were probably from the _Rebel Angels_
anthology, which, despite moments of excellence, I found disappointing as a
whole. And a bit political for my tastes. I think there are a lot of
excellent poets, though, I am not familiar with. I am not as well read in
contemporaries as I should be.

Q: Who are your favorite classical poets?

A: My three main loves are Homer, Virgil and Lucretius. I guess it is kind
of
ironic that they are all epic poets--I have a hard time writing a poem over
30 lines.

Q: In ‘Archaic Smile’ you take considerable liberties with
both meter and rhyme, yet by no means could you be
classified as a free verse poet. For the benefit of our
many members who are drawn simultaneously to freedom and
form, how do you judge what is permissible from what is
not?

A: My ear. I think there is a danger involved, at least for the poet, in
overintellectualizing meter and form. It should be visceral. And some
poems just seem to want to be strict accentual/syllabic, and others seem to
want to be loose and rangy. I let the poem dictate that. I work in a
variety of modes, and don't find them mutually exclusive. I go back and
forth.

Q: My list of great woman poets is depressingly short:
Sappho, Dickenson, Rosalia de Castro. Whom would you
add, and how do you propose to join them?

A: Yes, it is depressingly short. My list isn't any longer. This is a
topic
of endless fascination for me. There are a number of women whose work I
enjoy, even love, but who do not quite make the "great" cut. There are
probably a number of women poets in languages I don't have access to that
would qualify.

What is interesting, though, is that in fiction, the number and quality of
great women writers is right up there with men--Austen, Eliot, the Brontes,
Woolf, O'Conner, to name just a few. I have my theories about this.

I don't think men aspire to join the ranks of great "men poets." Surely we
all aspire, if we aspire to greatness at all, to be "great poets."

Q: I too have my theories, not all of them grounded in the oppression of
women by the patriarchy. Prose, for instance, requires linear reasoning,
and poetry, spatial reasoning, the only area in the IQ tests in which boys
still outperform girls. Anyone reading your shapely poems would have to
agree that you excel in spatial reasoning, but what, in brief, are your
theories?

A: Well, I certainly wouldn't buy that it was to do with anything
physically different in the female brain, or female thinking. Historically,
women have lagged behind in all the celebrated arts. I think the obvious
external pressures are sufficient to explain this.

But in the late 18th and 19th century, there is this sort of explosion of
success for women in literature, particularly in the novel. Why the novel
and not poetry? Both would seem to merely require paper and ink and leisure
time.

Jane Austen writes both about the novel and about the state of poetry in her
works. She felt she lived in a great time for poetry (_Persuasion_). On
the other hand, she was acutely aware that novels were still considered by
many hack work, not a serious art form (_Northanger Abbey_, et al.), and in
fact the lowest sort of trashy reading. (Though great strides had already
been made in the novel by this time.) She of course took it as a serious
art form, or even made it a serious art form. But I think something about
the status of the novel made it less intimidating, a back-door entrance to
the arts. Indeed, early novels were often epistolary (as the seminal
17th-century _La Princesse de Cleves_ by the Comtesse de La Fayette), and
women of course were masters of that art form already, it being one area of
self expression that was not only encouraged, but a positive duty.

Also, novelists do not require the kind of education presumed of poets.
(Dickens, for example, had only the most cursory formal education.) It is
sufficient to be literate, to have read some novels, to be a close observer
of life. Having French would have been helpful, at least in reading novels.
This was exactly the education women did have access to. An 18th or 19th
century poet, on the other hand, was expected to have Latin and
Greek--largely, if not exclusively, an upper class male education. (Keats'
of course, was famously deficient in the latter--indeed not really of the
right "class" to be a poet--hence his ode to Chapman's Homer, which he could
not read in the original.)

Poetry also requires an arrogance, a huge self esteem at least on some level
(though this may go hand in hand with self doubt, etc.). The novelist, at
least in the early days, is, in theory, producing hack work for the
consumption of contemporary novel readers (women mostly). The poet is
writing for All Time. I don't think women were brought up to think of
themselves in such grand terms. The censorship, if you will, was often
self-censorship. And perhaps not even censorship--but a diversion to
another genre. Novels, of course, later became considered a legitimate
literary art form, even perhaps the highest literary art form, but by that
time there were sufficient women novelist role models to encourage women
that this was something they could not only pursue, but excel at. The 19th
century woman poet was confronted with poor fragmentary Sappho, at a far
remove.

Another theory, though, I have is that women who did write poetry were faced
with, if anything, too much easy--or else damningly faint--praise, not held
to the standards of their male contemporaries. It was considered surprising
that they were capable of writing competent verse at all. Elizabeth Barrett
Browning is such a case. And Edna St. Vincent Millay, also, I think
suffered somewhat from too much praise, too early.

Q: I trust you'll remain accutely aware of that risk as laurels are showered on your youthful brow. You are only thirty-three; where do you see yourself at
sixty-six?

A: Actually, 32 for a few more weeks yet! well, assuming I will be alive,
I
would like to have published 5 or 6 really solid collections--hopefully
improving and growing, exploring. I do not want to outlive my creative
life.

Conclusion: John Fowles years ago published a truly fatuous essay in the
NYT Book Review arguing that lyric poetry is the exclusive province of the
young. He focussed on Shelley, Keats, etc., and conveniently ignored
Pindar, Horace, Hardy and countless others. If you publish five collections
in which you “grow,” your life expectancy will be irrelevant, for you will
be immortal. Thanks for submitting to these questions, and may they provoke
many others during your tenure here.

[graywyvern]

>Q: My list of great woman poets is depressingly short:
>Sappho, Dickenson, Rosalia de Castro. Whom would you
>add, and how do you propose to join them?

>A: Yes, it is depressingly short. My list isn't any >longer.

may i suggest adding: Edna St Vincent Millay, Leonie Adams, Adelaide Crapsey, Mina Loy, May Swenson, H.D., Elinor Wylie, Lenore Kandel, Diane DiPrima, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sylvia Plath, Laura Riding, Gwendolyn Macewen, & in other languages Louise Labe, Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, Delmira Agustini, Gertrud Kolmar, Nelly Sachs, Ono no Komachi, Izumi & Murasaki for starters?

what's depressing is the level of awareness of what's been accomplished in this venerable art of ours.

(this is not an admonishment to you personally but i just couldn't let that chestnut go unchallenged.)

[A. E. Stallings]

I absolutely agree there are many, many wonderful and excellent women poets, as your list suggests. I was not trying to disparage their contributions. The question as Tim phrased it is a little thorny--what, after all, is entailed by "Great"? Scope, ambition, originality, density, later influence, perfection in execution, some combination of the above? My list of truly Great with a capital G male poets isn't that long either. And I am hesitant to put anyone recent in that category principally because there is still the test of time to pass. One of my favorite poets in English, Housman, is certainly a minor poet, if, to my mind, a Great Minor poet. Many Major poets bore me to tears. Indeed, a number of my favorite poems--perfect poems--are not the work of Major or Great poets (as Ransom's "Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter.") I am probably more interested in individual poems than in poets. The "ranking" game is not ultimately very productive.

[Tim Murphy]

What Alicia said, although my omission of Akhmatova is a lapse of memory. The great thing about Alzheimer's is you get to hide your own Easter basket. If we are to progress, we must make value judgments, even though there is no competition among the crowned saints of heaven. I too am very chary of great with a capital G: I'd say there are only five English-speaking candidates from the late century. But I only mentally awarded the Beowulf poet "G" when Alan and I finished our translation into alliterative tetrameters. And I think Aliki's criteria for a "G" are just. I agree that Housman and Ransom are great Minor Poets, company in which I would die happy.

[Michael Juster]

I have to take issue with graywyvern's list of "great poets". Greatness is a term to be used sparingly--if you're not comfortable saying "enduring", then "great" is excessive. In this century, you have a handful of great poets--Auden, Eliot, Frost, Rilke, Akhmatova, Montale, Borges, Wilbur. I would add Larkin, though most critics wouldn't. Most critics would add Stevens, though I wouldn't. I'm unsure about some foreign poets due to language barriers. H.D.? Swenson? I don't think so...H.D. and Pound will have a place in the history books as influential figures, but not as great poets. Very accomplished poets--Roethke, Berryman, Wolcott, Heaney, Brooks, Van Duyn, Parker-wouldn't make my cut. No New Formalist is even close, as much as I love many of them. Go back and read who 19th century critics thought was great, and your list will contract.

[Tony]

Your Lariatness,

I'm glad you mentioned "Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter"; I just read it for the first time a few days ago, and it blew me away. Michael, I'd have to disagree on Borges, though I'd definitely put him among the great short story writers. Lorca, perhaps, would make my cut. I'd be tempted to put Vicente Huidobro on my list.

Tony

[A. E. Stallings]

Actually, I had originally added Ahkmatova to my list, but then hesitated and made a more general statement, since I've read very little by her, and of course, Russian is out of my ken. I am attracted by the idea of a sort of binomial nomenclature of greatness--Great Major poets, Lesser Major poets (Ovid, for instance, for me, would be a Major poet of the second rank), Great Minor poets, Lesser Minor poets... (Minor and Major in the Auden sense). A fairly large number of my favorite poems are by the beloved Great Minors. And of course, even Great has its gradations.

[Tim Murphy]

Mike, your list's too short. Yeats and Hardy in our language, each of whom is infinitely greater than Eliot. Your own beloved Larkin thought Hardy the greatest lyric poet in our language. In Spanish, Lorca; and in Greek, Cavafy, whom my old teacher Richard Howard thought the greatest of the moderns. With the possible exception of St. John Perse and that other French guy, Paul Valery. Tony, I think Borges is probably the greatest modern poet, and I suggest you scroll back about six months in the Mastery board to see the many Mezey translations of Borges and the spirited discussion that arose. Click on show topics, and back you can go. But Aliki's right, if we lack the language, who are we to judge? I guess my feeling is that if a foreign poet is fortunate in his translators, and those translations rip my head off, yeah, that's Great.

[Tony]

Thanks for the pointer, Tim. I have Borges's Selected Poems (the one that came out a couple of years ago), and although I've jumped around in it, I think I'll try it from cover to cover--as well as looking at other translations: it's amazing how much difference a translation can make, and how much variation there sometimes is between translations. (My own Spanish is good enough to generally follow things, but I often get lost in some of the details and nuances.) Regardless of whether he ends up making my list of greats in one or two genres, he's a remarkable talent with a most amazing mind. I recently saw a new Argentine film about him, "Los Libros y La Noche", which apart from being a biographical sketch also had brief enactments of a few of his short stories and several other surreal tidbits.

[Alan Sullivan]

Interesting discussion, which I have just surveyed for the first time. I find gray's proposed list risible. Adelade Crapsey? Lived up to her name. Plath? The yawps of an oven-bird.

Fine, measured comments from Alicia, and from the sometimes immoderate Tim.

I sympathize with Mike's desire to elevate Larkin, whose Collected is the most substantial body of poetry I have read since Wilbur's New and Collected. But I'm not a prolific reader. I fear that if I read as widely as gray, I might lose rather than gain perspective, as he evidently has.

A.S.