Historicity

It’s somewhat a legacy of the Beats and the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s -- both youth-worshipping cultures -- that reverence for forbears and respect for history were undermined in favor of the code of “living in the moment,” defying authority, and writing spontaneously from the hip.

To some extent, we are still in that zeitgeist. While youth are generally preoccupied with the present and the future, ideas about legacy and tradition are often the obsession of older folks. Perhaps that is why, as I age, I am more and more drawn to poets and works of poetry that examine earlier historical periods.

One of the best books I’ve recently read is Berkeley poet JIM POWELL’S Substrate; in it, he offers a fascinating group of poems written in the voices of (mostly) 19th-century explorers and chroniclers, witnesses to the settlement of the western United States and Pacific coast to Alaska. These persona poems sent me frequently to Google to cull background; aside from being thought-provoking, the poems are like chewy nougat, rich and fun to read.

I’m fascinated by what ALETA GEORGE of Suisun City and SUSAN PARKER of Benicia are doing, excavating the writings of pioneer women of the West. George is writing a biography of Ina Coolbrith (pictured above), California’s first poet laureate, while Parker is ranging old bookstores in search of forgotten poems by 19th- century women poets. I‘m looking forward to reading the collection by early-California poet NORA MAY FRENCH, which MARVIN R. HIEMSTRA brought to my attention in this issue of BAPSR. And I just finished a book of poems written in the voice of George Shannon, the youngest of the Lewis & Clark Corps of Discovery who tracked across two-thirds of the nascent United States in 1803-1805 to find a water passage to the Pacific. Shannon was written by a Florida poet and professor, CAMPBELL MCGRATH, but the character he brings to life is my 5th great-grandfather who initiated a migration that eventually brought my mother’s family to California.

Many of us avoid “historical” books because we fear we lack sufficient knowledge to grasp allusions and references. For that reason, I had avoided John Milton‘s “Paradise Lost” most of my life until recently; with a group of fearless friends, we tackled reading the English epic out loud. What an amazing work of poetry it is; Milton is a poet’s poet! Our efforts have been rewarded with trance-inducing moments steeped in the glorious beauty of Milton‘s imagination and word textures, and is images and poetic rhythms. 

Many of us -- young and old--long to find ourselves in history’s mirror; poets hold up the most polished and emotionally truthful mirrors to help us identify who we are: as a people, as speakers of a particular language with all of its history, and as modern-day men and women struggling through the challenges of daily life.

Poets have a responsibility to re-view what we are conventionally taught.

The bias toward subjectivity and personal history in  much modern poetry often lacks larger historical context. It sometimes leaves me feeling a bit claustrophobic. I appreciate writers who reach for a bigger picture even when it means research and examination of our own ancestors and their roles in our more intimate histories. Whether or not we concern ourselves with legacy and tradition, we are still standing on the shoulders of those who came before: we all write out of traditions. Unacknowledged, we repeat timeworn clichés and unimaginative figurative tropes. Acknowledged and embraced, we can break-forward into the past, with the refreshing insights, the kind for which the greatest poets are known.                 

Shannon by Florida poet Campbell McGrath (Harper Collins Publishers, New York: 2009) tells the story of George Shannon, the youngest member of the Lewis & Clark Corps of Discovery (1803-1805). Shannon had a habit of getting lost (well, he was a scout . . .) and nearly starved to death during a two-week separation from the corps. McGrath imagines what he might have been experiencing, thinking and feeling during this gap of time, including a possible mental dissociation that would have been the natural result of hunger, isolation, and fear.

Organizing Poetry, Like Herding House Finches

If there were one certain method for keeping track of the poems I write, I would be following it by now, but after 40 years of writing poems, I still do it the stupid way: first, I write poems in my journal; eventually, sometimes as long as three or four years later, I type them into the computer and put them in a Chronological File; then, when I get around to it, I re-organize the poems into thematic folders on the computer and tackle revision. By then, of course, I've written many more new poems, and my new babies often interest me more.

My lack of enthusiasm for the pursuit of publication has been to my detriment as regards "earning" a reputation as a respectable poet or building up publications that could lead to teaching assignments or whatever other few rewards there are for doing this work. We don't live in a culture that places value on poetry--and some poets go so far as to complain that just too many people are writing and publishing poetry, a problem that seems so minuscule compared to the problem that poetry just doesn't count for much, whether written by the greatly accomplished or the little-known.

I've never had a problem writing poems, except during one fallow period following the death of a dear friend when I couldn't find the words to express my grief--it was the first meaningful death I had known up close and personal. But, I'm a failure at "getting my work out there." I know real "go-getters" in the poetry scene, people who have only been writing a few years who are quite pro-active about publishing, and have a tolerance for sending out pieces and getting rejections, and then sending them out again, that I truly envy. It's just not what I'm good at.

I'm trying to change this, and so the first task is getting the damn things into some kind of workable order, selecting a few to send out, and then matching them to publications and contests where they stand a bit of a chance of being published. Why bother, I sometimes wonder, when I'd much rather focus on the act of expression that gives me so much pleasure and meaning in the writing of new work. Why bother attempting to publish?