Last night, Vincent Katz, the poet, translator, art critic,
and curator, brought the Black Mountain School of Poetry to The New
School. He read poems by Ed Dorn, John
Wiener, Charles Olsen, and Robert Creeley.
The Black Mountain poets, Vincent reminded
us, were a huge influence on the Language writers, and the Language writers
continue to influence poetry today.
From his
own work, he read the poems, “Joy Street”
“Window,” “The Hard Way,” and “Fecundity,” a recent poem written for the
painter Alexander Twombly, in which the speaker says that he keeps all of what
is given to him by his children, but of his own possessions, he keeps less and
less.
Vincent
also read a poem that he’d written for Robert Creeley, “Raleigh Night: to
Bob.”
“Creeley
was huge for me,” Vincent said. “Even
now — he never ceases to amaze me. As
great artists do, he changes — he doesn’t stick with what he has done before. He writes about elemental experience: anger,
fear, birth, death, suffering.”
Vincent
said that, early on, he was as much attracted to Creeley’s poetry as he was to
Creeley’s personae. He cited Jonathan
William’s 1955 photograph of Creeley, “Portrait of Creeley as a Spanish assassin,”
and said, “There was something dangerous, and Rock & Roll about him.” And yet,
Creeley liked to write in exclusion, in silence, whereas Frank O’Hara could
write poetry at a cocktail party.
Speaking of
the New York School of Poets, David Lehman said that the New York School poets
wanted to charm whereas The Black Mountain poets didn’t care about being
charming. Or very funny.
“The Black
Mountain Poets were a bit aggressive,” Vincent said, “and more likely to be
adversarial, politically minded. They
weren’t interested in description and simile and traditional forms, such as the
sonnet.”
David said:
“I think that today we can be influenced by both the Black Mountain Poets and
the Language writers, and still feel O.K. about writing a sonnet. Battles have been fought and won, and now
we’re free to write the kind of poetry we want to write. Look at Ted Berrigan. Even if he didn’t always follow a strict
sonnet form, he still used the sonnet.”
“I agree
with you,” Vincent said. “But, again, I think of Robert Creeley. He’s a powerful example of someone who stuck
to his principles. When you read his
work, he makes you think twice about returning to the sonnet.”
David (who
has probably written at least one poem at a cocktail party) said as a kind of
non-concession, concession: “Well, I guess the New York Poets were more interested
in traditional forms.”
And then
Vincent and David moved on to the subject of Creeley’s celebrated line breaks,
and Vincent offered this, by Clark Coolidge:
“In a quiet
moment I hear Bob pause when I never would have expected it. Such resolve.
Such heart. And an ear to reckon with.
No truly further American poem without his.”
-- Angela Patrinos
