[Tim Murphy]

We've been working our way up the food chain, folks, Murphy, Stallings, Steele, Gwynn. Now I have enlisted a senior poet at whose feet all of us can sit. Yes, Professor Mezey will shortly join us as guest lariat; and I urge everyone to preview the experience that awaits us by reading his learned disquisition on "the inverted iamb" over on Solan's thread.

[Alex Pepple]

Dear Tim,

Eratosphereans everywhere are grateful to your Lariatship for energizing the office of the Lariat & bringing us top-flight Guest Lariats one after the other. I'm especially pleased at the good news that Professor Mezey, the most distinguished Erastopherean, will be our next Guest Lariat.

I urge all Erastophereans to avail themselves of this chance to read his work & ask insightful questions thus making this a lively, enlightening & even entertaining Lariat fortnight.

So, everyone, please give an enthusiastic welcome to our next Guest Lariat, the Master of Memory, Professor Robert Mezey!

Cheers,
...Alex

[mandolin]

I'm really looking forward to this, O Master of Memory.

Tim Murphy mentioned somewhere, I think, that you studied with John Crowe Ransome. I lived down the street from him my second year at Kenyon, though I was too foolish and too intimidated by his reputation to ever introduce myself. On PoetryEtc, a mailing list I subscribe too, Ransome is sometimes mentioned as the formalist the New Formalists don't want to acknowledge -- a description I don't really understand. Then again, I don't remember his being mentioned here at Eratosphere except as your teacher, and, other than "Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter," I don't see his work anthologized much anymore.

Why has such a fine poet and critic been so neglected lately?

[robert mezey]

I'm glad to be subbing for Sam Gwynn for a
week or so, and there are several topics
(some from other threads) that I'd like to
comment on. And I want to talk a little
more about scansion and take up a couple of
the questions raised during Sam Gwynn's very
entertaining tenure.
But I'm especially delighted that Mandolin
has mentioned John Crowe Ransom, not only
because he was my beloved teacher but because
I think that of the many marvelous and now
neglected poets of the century, he was the
greatest, and his growing obscurity is a
deep mystery. I'd love to talk about a few
of his poems; I'll post one or two on the
Musing on Mastery board and invite comments.
(Glad to hear that you're a fellow Kenyon boy,
Mandolin. Being there for a couple of years
during the golden age was perhaps the luckiest
thing that ever happened to me.)

[Tim Murphy]

I don't think of Ransom as particularly obscure or neglected. I can think of nobody in 20th C. America who has had a greater or more salutary influence on poetry (maybe Winters out West?) Of course being Warren's pupil, I'd naturally feel that way. First at Vanderbilt, then at Kenyon, he taught a roster of writers that's a virtual Who's Who of American verse for two generations (Tate, Warren, Brooks, Lowell, Wright, Mezey, etc.) And most of us "new Formalists" studied with his students and regard him as our literary grandpa. We know and love his poetry, not just "Bells," but "Equilibrists," "Blue Girls," and many another. When I discuss him with a Sam Gwynn, a Tim Steele, a Dana Gioia, a reverential hush falls on the room, then someone begins, "Ah, Ransom." For someone who left us only 80 poems, I'd say his influence is enormous. The real giant who is neglected is E.A. Robinson, who never taught a class.

[mandolin]

I dunno, Tim. I know that in the academic world there's a fearsome prejudice against Robinson (or there was when I was teaching). Still, Ransom is completely out of print and there are at least two editions of Robinson readily available, Robert Mezey's excellent Modern Library edition being one of them. I spent some time at Border's today, going through anthologies. Neither is well-represented, but there are consistently more poems and longer poems by Robinson than Ransom. I counted a mere 12 different poems by Ransom in half a dozen collections.

Perhaps the most disturbing anthology I came across was the two volume University of California Book of Poetry for the Millennium, edited by Rothenberg and Joris, which has pages and pages of Gertrude Stein's "poetry" and not a line by Robinson, Ransom, Frost, or Wilbur.

[robert mezey]

Well, there's no point in comparing obscurities.
Both Robinson and Ransom are certainly known to
and loved by serious poets everywhere, but I do
doubt that they are read by many of the "poetry
lovers" who crowd round Rich, CK Williams, Levine,
or Clifton et al. Of course neither is forgotten,.
nor will be entirely; but the anthologies do tell
a sad story, and though I don't read much in the
journals or in current criticism, in what I do
read I rarely find their names mentioned. That
Ransom should be out of print is a scandal. That
Robinson's COLLECTED POEMS should be out of print
(and has been for a good many years) is an even
greater scandal. (I'd hate to tell you what the
sales have been for my Robinson and Hardy editions.)
There is the disadvantage of writing in meter and
rhyme, still regarded in many quarters as hopelessly
reactionary, not with it, dead white male, etc etc.
And there is the politics, Robinson's not having any
except for an unrelenting hostility to materialism
in all its forms, and Ransom still being regarded as
an elitist, Southern bumpkin, racist etc etc. When
someone asked Robert Graves, circa 1935 or so, what
he thought of modern American poetry, he said there
was not yet much to admire or learn from (or compare
to Hardy) except for the three great poets, as he called them, Robinson, Frost and Ransom.

More later, especially about Ransom.

[Len Krisak]

Mr. Mezey,

I hate to think that even your Penguin Hardy
has done poorly in sales. Yeessshhhh! I've taught
from it three times in the last four years and so
have personally accounted for some 70 copies. Surely
that should have been enough to alert the geniuses
at Penguin that a Hardy revival was afoot? Or do
you really mean to suggest that I haven't, all by
myself, been instrumental in affording you royalties
that financed your current lavish lifestyle?

Cheers,
Len

[Caleb Murdock]

As the local representative of the illiterate, I can tell you why Hardy, Robinson and Ransom are not better known. About 70% of Hardy's verse is awkward; Robinson is obscure and, at times, just plain odd; and Ransom is dry and intellectual. I hate to say it, but time seems to select out any poet whose poetry is not (1) currently in fashion and (2) accessible to the book-buying masses.

That's not to say that I don't like all three poets. I am fond of much of the 30% of Hardy's verse that isn't awkward. Robinson I find hard to swallow, except for a few poems. Ransom, however, represents to me metered verse at its very best -- crisp, witty, insightful, rhythmical and effortless. His most accessible poem, "Piazza Piece", is so perfect that I believe it will be anthologized forever, bringing him new audiences with each generation (I hope).

I have poems on my site from all three. Of Robinson's poems, the one that I love the most is "Dear Friends".

(Let me head off some criticism by saying that my comments in the first paragraph above are generalizations, and that there are, of course, exceptions. Anyone can understand "Miniver Cheevey".)

------------------
Caleb
www.poemtree.com



[This message has been edited by Caleb Murdock (edited August 06, 2001).]

[robert mezey]

Ah, Caleb, you have a genius for saying things
that I can't make heads nor tails out of. Ransom
dry? Robinson odd? Well, I guess Hardy is
awkward sometimes (though nowhere near 70%), but
much of the awkwardness is deliberate, and part of
his power, at least partly responsible for the
fact that so many readers find in his verse a
"sincerity"---a slippery word---let's say a sense
that the speaker of the poems is a soul of great
candor and purity and never out to impress the
reader or even himself. And at his best, where
he was a lot of the time, not even Mr. Frost was
better. No question that a great deal, maybe most,
of Robinson is very heavy going, and few of us would
read or reread the long poems unless we were forced
to, but we don't judge poets by batting averages.
(Dickinson never hit much higher than .220, if
that high, but most of her hits were game-winning
homeruns.) Robinson wrote a few dozen of the
best poems of the century, or so many of us would
insist. If you don't get it, well, it's not old
Robinson's fault.
About Ransom, more later.