As longtimers here know, I occasionally make provocative statements about New Formalism that are as welcome as a long slow belch after a beer at a family reunion. Perhaps the one that has gotten me into the most trouble over the years is one--regrettably--I still stand by almost three years later, which is that the two most underappreciated poets who deserved to be mentioned in the same breath with the usual suspects of New Formalism are Katherine McAlpine and Gail White. Since almost everyone writing formal poetry these days feels underappreciated, I periodically have to defend myself from fierce attacks on this one. In my own defense, I will only note that when I first started making this claim both Tim Murphy and Rhina Espaillat were starting to get their fair share of recognition.
Katherine McAlpine has become a mysterious case. She seems to have stopped published poetry (at least as far as I can tell), and one can only hope that she has not stopped writing it. There are rumors she is writing fiction in rural Maine, and if true I can only hope she returns to poetry soon. She is a poet with a sharp wit reminiscent of Dorothy Parker at her best, a broad range of interests, and a master of inventiveness within the formal tradition.
Gail White is a similar, yet distinctive, voice. Everything I have just said about McAlpine applies to White, but there are differences. Gail is also a master of free verse, and can range into subjects unlikely to yield to formal treatment. Gail is also a harder-edged voice, someone willing to push readers a little harder to make them both laugh and think harder.
McAlpine and White were linked in my mind before they were linked in others by being coeditors of the Story Line anthology The Muse Strikes Back. Gail is also coeditor a book that highlights four skilled female New Formalists, including OUR Rhina Espaillat. She has had published five chapbooks, and has her first full length book out from Mellen Poetry Press. It's called "The Price Of Everything" (taken from Oscar Wilde's famous one-liner), and it's a fine collection that should have been picked up from Story Line or an academic press a long time ago.
I will include here a couple of brief pieces to whet your appetite, and, I hope, to inspire you to run out and order it. (Mellen Poetry Press, PO Box 450 Lewiston NY 14092-0450 or (716) 754-2266 or
mellen@wzrd.com or
www.mellenpress.com)
For me, a quintessential Gail White poem is the sonnet "Rossetti's Wife":
He wants his poems, now: the ones he buried
with me, to be a sacrifice of love
forever. There you are: that's being married
to genius. That's what you're dreaming of,
you silly girls who think it was great luck
to rise from milliner to painter's model
to poet's wife. You marry and you're stuck.
Give me an artist for a man who'll coddle
himself. O, he's in love with his ideal
and thinks it's you, but it's his bag of tricks--
even when I was dying, he could feel
that I'd be his perfect Beatrix.
And then? They're all alike, poet or hack--
he digs you up and grabs his verses back.
I will pass over one of my favorite White epigrams because I can't space things here properly, so I will leave you with this bitter treat:
On Louisiana Politics
The politician, like the tabby's young,
Attempts to clean his backside with his tongue.
Buy one for yourself, and one for a friend who needs to stop wallowing in self-pity.
[This message has been edited by Michael Juster (edited December 27, 2001).]