SOME MODERN TRENDS IN POETRY

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32460, 21 November 1970, Page 10

SOME MODERN TRENDS IN POETRY

Modern Poetry In Translation 6. Edited by Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort. Cape Goliard. Pages unnumbered. Information Report. By Roberto Sanest. Translated by William Alexander. Cape Goliard. Pages Unnumbered. Introduction, Notes, Plates. The Maximus Poems. By Charles Olson. Cape Goliard. Pages Unnumbered. (Reviewed by H.D.McN.) The deservedly popular Modem Poetry in Translation (M.P.T.) series is well known to most readers of poetry, and its general characteristics will be familiar enough; the. present volume,however, introduces some innovations in editorial policy. More than half of M.P.T. 6 is devoted to the work of five Russian writers (Blok, Tsvetayeva, Zabolotsky, Esenin, and Kharms), none of whom are still alive: in fact, with the exception of Zabolotsky, none of them survived the Second World War. The rest of the volume consists of a heterogeneous assortment of German, Spanish, Yiddish, Hungarian, and Japanese work, mostly by contemporary writers. The first four Russian poets are very well known, but Daniil Kharms (pseudonym of D. I. Yuvachyov, 1905-1942) has been disregarded since his death and his work included in this volume has never been published in Russian. Admittedly, he is no neglected master —but the pieces dated 1937-38

—are remarkably well regulated, considering their technical boldness. One of them, a surrealist account of a housefire, moves through stark, but heavily dramatic, detail to achieve the almost melodramatic poignancy that was in vogue in Britain about 1960. Another, “Death of the wild warrior,” employs an adventurous system of immediate repetition of single lines within a monostrophic form: Four hundred warriors Four hundred warriors Blink and threaten the skies. In such a poem, Kharms’s technical audacity tends momentarily to dazzle the reader, and it is only on a second, reading that one appreciates the complex interrelation of the imagery. He himself acknowledged the influence of Edward Lear, and during the thirties he was most popular as a children’s • writer: the surface naivety of work like this comes close to contemporary taste, and it may be hoped that more of his work will appear in later M.P.T.s. The other writers are an uneven collection, ranging from the ponderous nature-studies of Peter Huchel and Sbinkichi Takahashi to the exciting, febrile lyrics of Malka Heifetz Tussman (a 72-year-old Yiddish poetess) and the wild, personal mode of Nicolas Bom and Miklos Radnoti. Although the M.P.T. series is characterised by sensitive translation and intelligent selection, it is inevitable that the necessarily small number of poems by each writer should often be frustrating. This feeling is intensified by the fact that the same publishers are prepared to allow a whole volume to a poet who is all but insignificant beside many of the writers in M.P.T.6. As so often happens, Sanesi has supported his work by profound theorising and this has obliged academics to recognise him as a contemporary poet who knows what he is doing. But the vindication of a poetic theory does not necessarily result in great poetry, and “Information Report,” though it has its memorable moments, fails in the primary requisite of a “report”—holding a reader. One does not need to be told that Sanesi admires the work of T. S. Eliot—the influence is unfortunately obvious. Unlike another Mediterranean poet who also translated Eliot, George Seferis, Sanfesi has been unable to integrate the formative influence into an idiosyncratic style, of his own. Seferis was able to move from Eliot to a purer surrealism, but Sanesi seems to have absorbed Eliot without realising what allows Eliot to get away with the enormous liberties he takes. Consequently, in place of Eliot’s structural vitality, Sanesi offers a determined exposition of .each element as he encounters it. Reading Sanesi’s theorising in isolation, one is surprised to find his ideas associated with Eliot. His opposition to poetry which has “a fixed concept of experience, form, or philosophy," and his approval of a mode of “dynamic realism” suggest that his sympathies should lie rather with Americans like Snyder and Olson, both of whom show remarkable versatility in their acceptance of the “changing disordered world” which Sanesi refers to in: the dissonant bitter music ot a multiform horizon of anticipations The Americans would hardly accept this as "dissonant,” and it is one of the most felicitous qualities of Olson’s . “Mayan Letters” and “The Maximus

Poems” that they insist on a consonance in all this apparent chaos. Charles Olson died in January this year. In his best poetry (which must include “The Maximus Poems”) he did not explicitly align himself with any fashionable cult; consequently, his popularity was not as hysterical as that of some politically committed poets like Robert Bly, but his work is not limited to an examination of contemporary mores. Olsen’s personal bias was towards what he termed "projective verse,” and he generally avoided prolonged lyric outbursts controlled by the poet’s acknowledged voice. Although it would be hazardous for a critic to make dogmatic assertions regarding what the Maximus poems are “about,” much of the subject material is drawn from the annals of voyagers and settlers in the early seventeenth century; direct authorial comment is often avoided completely in such passages. The exquisite beauty and seductive coyness of Olsen’s style lie in his avoidence of material which is inherently attractive. His poetic “school” has a strong affinity with the Alexandrian penchant for selecting the most uninteresting theme so that the stylistic achievement will be isolated and recognised in its own right. Olson does not seem to care what he writes about—he can find aesthetic stimulation in anything, and his circumvolutory treatment allows a very satisfactory translation of the most elusive experience into linguistic and pictorial terms. Although he avoids the’ extremes of concrete presentation, his words have a very definite relationship to the page-area, and the large format of this volume certainly shows this principle to advantage. . Olson’s objective referents are simple, natural forms like fish and birds: as fine as fins are * . as firm as as firm as a mackerel is (fresh out of water) as sure as sure as no owner is (or he'd be to sea) as vulnerable (as vulnerable as I am brought home to Main St in such negligible company) Passages like this seem intimately connected with Olson’s notions of communication through ideographic . symbolism, such as he alludes to in his comments on Mayan hieroglyphs. Like Snyder, he is often drawn to associations with the primitive to give his ideas perspective. In a letter dated 1959, he writes: Like hell. The Diesels shake the sky clean the earth of sentimental drifty dirty lazy man: bulldozer, lay open the sand some sea was all over the second third fourth meeting house, /once. The more one attempts to describe it, the more this book defies analysis. Although it will certainly not appeal to all readers, “The Maximus Poems” will provide a most rewarding and stimulating experience for all those in sympathy with modem trends in poetry: though it would be idle for the reviewer to attempt to disguise personal enthusiasm, it would not be extravagant to describe this book as one of the greatest collections of American poetry since the war.