“It’s open,” he said.
It was. I walked in.
“Hello, friend,” he said.
“Hello, poet,” I said.
It was summer and he had his shirt off and the walls were green and every now and then a train came by on the overhead and everything shook. This is no university. This was no easy way. This was it. Doing it now. And now Faulkner’s dead. And soon all of us.
Jory opened a couple of beers. “Good to see you,” he said.
“Likewise,” I said.
Like I said; you’ve got to live through it.
And this is the only kind of introduction I could write
Enter reader, as the worms pant over the bones of Manolete.
Jory Sherman, My Face in Wax
Chicago: Windfall Press, 1965
Lightning in a Dry Summer: Review of John William Corrington, The Anatomy of Love and Other Poems
For those of us who learn towards the poem as life slowly pulls us apart, there are long areas—years, years—when nobody comes along and it seems as if nobody ever will, and we have to be content with the occasional poem we may find among the hundreds of ½ poems, fakirs, misfits, and lepers which appear with irregular regularity in the “littles,” meanwhile thinking of the giants who once appeared with force and then seemingly dissolved very quickly as if the game were too much for them—Spender, Eliot, Auden; and e.e. cummings who was good when his style did not entirely mutilate his content; Shapiro who was good early and then forgot how to write; Jeffers who never forgot but he died on us; Pound who simply does not like to be played with has withdrawn to a kind of semi-immortality while still alive. . . .
And with the arrival of The Anatomy of Love and Other Poems we have, at last, the stirring of a possible new giant, a man who strangely has put his chips on the most horrible of the intellectual monsters—the novel. “I feel that poetry is the outpost where men learn the trade of words, and the novel is where they make it count. I like poetry; I love prose.” I have read Corrington’s first novel (And Wait for the Night) and while it is good, it has all the hamperings of the novel and all the hamperings of the novel and the novel-mind. The poetry is his Art. And now he has begun a second novel. I can see the novelist consuming the poet, and in a book-of-the-month-club Hollywood TV world where people would rather fall asleep under a lamp reading about the Civil War than stare at a slim boned-down poem, it figures. The real trouble is that after the novelist consumes the poet the novelist goes on to consume the novelist and then we have nothing left. But to hell with the future—right now The Anatomy of Love is one of the finest collections of poetry to appear in the past five years or in a possible decade. The only other collection being equal or close to it is Poems for all the Annettes by Alfred Purdy.
The forward by Richard Whittington to The Anatomy is confusing because it is intellectual, sand-dry, and is written in the old textbook style which slugs the senses. He does make some points, if you want to be stabbed and bled along the way. You listen to me now; Corrington is obsessed with the cruelty, the drone, the almost meaninglessness of life; he is obsessed with the men who conquer, quite no matter how they do it. He is obsessed with the going-on, the beaten, the raised, the disabled; he is obsessed with the stumbling and the shots of sunlight, and broken words from broken mouths, and the going-on. The going-on . . .
angels with copper eyes
and feathered parachute,
asking:
—Who Blew Up The Road?
(“Algerian Reveur”)
Corrington gives us the clean line, the clean word clear, hung there, saying it:
and from behind him an
iron factory of smoke
and the odor
of birds on fire (“On Earth As It Is”)
Corrington’s obsessions, and they become purified through the Art of the poem like a man beating a donkey with a stick and crying, can be seen in his titles: “Lucifer Means Light,” “Note From a Dead City,” “Metaphysician at Huntsville (The Texas State Penitentiary),” “Trust Me Just This Once.”
That Corrington came from the University, taught at the University and did not become the University, tells us that there is still a chance; that all men will not sell out up the river, and, if as they say, any man can be bought for a price, it appears for some of us they have not yet thought up the proper coin.
should I sell short
is there a balm in gilead
do you think it will rain
(“Prayers for a Mass in the Vernacular”)
Corrington knows that they will eventually get us—the ideal, the gut, the nerve will wilt finally. The Jeffers, the Gandhis, the Pounds in life are really more gods than men and they must also have a little luck—and say in the case of Gandhi it might have run short, depending upon how you view the table manners of death. Yet some of us go on, we all don’t jump overboard like Crane in his pajamas with hangover and needing shave and going to propeller and/ or shark.
grace
has lighted our faltering
way
through grim ages
darius for his
humanity
caesar for his
joke about the turnip
napoleon for his
modesty
julian for his
love of the old ways
bismarck for his
kultur
alexander for his
pointed way with friends
(“Prayers for a Mass in the Vernacular”)
I would like to justify my greed for the poem, and in this case Corrington’s poetry, by hoping the good reader who reads this will contact Fort Lauderdale and buy a copy of Anatomy. It would be nice to use their money to prove our point; but there’s really not much use: bad novels will always outsell great poetry, and this, in a way, proves our point too: that we have no point to prove. Mozart starved, Wolf went mad; Frank Sinatra boards a ship for Europe. We’ll let them have most of the world. Just leave us enough to stay alive, an occasional beer and a book of poems like The Anatomy of Love every decade. Surely at our final death we will be able to smile at some of the good things that did happen.
Ferment No. 6, June 1965
Another Burial of a Once Talent: Review of John William Corrington’s Lines to the South and Other Poems
“fear that Sartre’s asleep, fear that Genet is kidding Fear that there isn’t anybody here”
—Charles Bukowski
From Crucifix in a Deathhand
John William Corrington, Lines to the South and Other Poems. Louisiana State University Press, $3.50.
This latest hardcover of Corrington’s poems contains seven poems (including the title poem) from his two earlier books. This, of course, is the tip-off. The book is neither a selection nor a collection and since there are but 61 pages of short work, we can see that some padding was needed. Since I reviewed most of these poems in a recent issue of Ferment, I see little use of re-reviewing old work, except to tell you that the old work was best and that I praised it with open heart and feeling and asked the reader to take a chance. Now I must advise the reader to take it easy. $3.50 can buy you a pint of very good stuff or a quart of not so good or it could buy you Lines to the South. I would suggest the pint. Having met Corrington personally and having once held a long correspondence with him does not free me from the truth. I can lie to a hot blonde but not to history or the invisible reader.
The dust jacket warns us (in part) before entering: this work “represents an important direction in American poetry.”—Peter Michelson, former editor of Chicago Review. “Corrington is regarded throughout the country as one of the best young poets writing today. . . .”—Roy Miller, editor, San Francisco Review. “Corrington is a live and important talent. This volume proves that he has moved beyond promise and found his own voice. He has courage, independence, a good eye and a fine ear, all the craft and art of a true poet. Lines to the South is a distinguished collection.”—George Garrett.
Who sorrows interment or dashes in bits
The plenary serpent’s tail?
Who shudders the crush of ordnance wheels,
or takes up the orphan’s wail?
across the sky in a swatch of mist
when green night clings like a pug,
pearlyskinned lovers ogle the stars
with a pinch, a sigh and a hug.
Who the hell does he think he is kidding, Dr. Benjamin Spock? This is schoolgirl poetry of the first water, or the second, at least. I’d flunk anybody out of Creative Writing class for writing one like that but luckily for a lot of little dolls I do not teach Creative Writing. I write it.
“that messianic sun” he says on page 2. I tried to get him to strike out that line when he sent me the poem sometime back. “twofaced sun” we have on page 40. On page 32 we have “under a mercenary sun.” Other suns may occur in here, most of them being described with “m-,” but I do not intend to continue to search. Perhaps it is that a writer writes for a while and then he gets careless or begins to believe in himself or in what he can get away with. There is much poetic-meaningless poetry here, done perhaps in the manner of a garage mechanic turning the same bolt under his moaning sun. Some of the worst phrases are as follows: “our brief staccato lives” (page 5). “the static lie” (5). “Their chary love/impoverishes the heart” (page 6). “mimes of passion” (6). “immured in/memory” (6). “the strum of lost evening” (6). “tepid years” (page 7). “a dark calligraphy of tooth and nail” (7). “sob chill rumor of your sinking flesh” (7). “endless as our love” (7). In fact, you may think me a Hitler but I’d say the whole poem, pages 6 and 7 (“A Memo from Lilith”), should be burned.
On page 8 we have “his eyes like cloudy topaz.” Page 9, “his mind like a scavenger.” Page 10, well, on page 10 we have “a tumescent cloud.” On page 11 is a very good poem: “Who Do You Think You Are?” How did this get in here? Since you probably think me quite the hatchet-wielding bastard by now, I’ll quote the whole poem:
this guy in the cozy grille
was telling me
how rubber looks like milk
straight from the tree
and at the bar
a woman with dirty heels
coughed consumptive ballades
and watched her empty eyes
all orphanannielike
in a dark mirror
framed with rye
someone screamed
—hash
while in the booth behind
dr Jekyll solemnly shook hands
with mr hyde
and i
believing only
what i choose to believe
lifted the top of my hamburger
fearing cheese
On page 14 we have “high as silver verity”—which would be a good line in relation to a common drunk but is only artificial poetry in relation to the zeppelin “Hindenburg.” Page 20: “succinctly arrived.”
But before I continue perhaps I had better clarify the issue. I say this is bad poetry, these bits I quote, and I do not know if these terms have been used before but they could have been. What I mean is, it is a circus act because it does not come out of essence but out of instrument. The whore is selling you dead pussy, and only we who write continually and know the game can spot the rot. When a poet uses these dead and false terms he is thinking “I am a poet” but he is not, in any sense, actually creating. He is jollying us, he is shoving it to us. Right off the mark allow me to make up a few. Look here:
A gratitude of treasures
or: A hoopla inferno
or: The bandaged sun
I could go on and on like this and I am not as talented as some. But this stuff, this bullshit, this fakery runs throughout American poetry and non-American poetry too. I am not saying that I am a genius and that I want to form a new school. I travel alone, but I get tired of being robbed by these guys when I am awake. And it is usually when a man assumes a position of culture, say teaching at a university or cutting into a man’s guts with a knife, that he finds it easy to turn it on and get away with it because here in the United States we over-respect education, the doctor, the lawyer, the professor—and we allow them to shit all over us while we smile. But a diploma is not a soul and I have met whores in Philadelphia and New Jersey who knew more than any of them and didn’t bother to lie about it.
Page 20: “time of gratuities is ending.” Page 23: “calls to mind the irony of shutters.” “would spring have been the same,” same page.
“A Trip to Omaha,” page 24, is a very good poem.
Page 26: “a lucky moon.” And 27: “and tomorrow must sullen come.” Shakespeare watered with D. Thomas.
“The Portable Goya,” page 30, is a damned good poem. Maybe you ought to buy the book after all? Page 33, “The Mystic,” is also a good poem although Corrington once again insists on ending with talking about “what he suffered every spring.” It’s the easy way out, of course, and standard, but we all get tired.
“Where impatient lovers grope” (page 36). Eliot, of course.
On page 40, “Surreal for Lorca” I would say is a truly beautiful poem only I don’t like the world “beautiful.” And, besides, there is probably a line stolen from Charles Bukowski: “and God, no taller than a landlady,” from “The Sunday Artist,” has been changed by Corrington into:
while
god
no taller than a scream
But that’s all right, and besides, it’s not the same. Besides, it’s nice to be an influence. Besides, besides, besides.
Page 45: “Thus we sat dissecting silence.” Bad writing? Of course. Even you won’t argue that with me. When I was editor of Harlequin, under the hammer of my first wife’s money, I rejected 20 rather well-traveled poems from a seemingly famous poet. “We all write badly at times,” he wrote back. Of course. But why send it to me or ask $3.50? See your priest or rabbi or preacher for your sins. I don’t have time to play around.
Hang in. Only 15 pages to go. Then you can catch that drink or make the maid when your wife goes to her bridge party. In fact, you can have the drink right now. I’ve been having them as I go along.
“A Man of Terrible Integrity (Considers Himself at Morning)” seems quite similar to a Bukowski poem called “Face While Shaving.” Probably untrue, of course. The terrible problem always being that I write the poem first. Like I said, it’s nice to be an influence. Look at the way they build bridges and houses and bombs. Somebody had to be there first. I was reading library books long before I ever owned a typewriter, and although most of them put me to sleep I do not deny moments of light for Camus, Dostoyevsky, Blake, Jeffers—even from Conrad Aiken.
My God, the treachery of Man. Here I’ve drunk with this man, have spoken with him—and yet an editor sent me this book for review, and what would you do . . . saying the poems seemed bad to you? Would you lie around the corners, play the game in order to get a favor in return? What would you do, friend? Pity me as well. I am not a natural born killer. But Art is all that is left for many of us. I mean, Art makes Life. They are the same. I am on the hot spot. Would you choose that I kill myself? I will probably do it, finally, so don’t get nervous.
Page 54: “grief stands like a squad of riflemen,/where time must bandage the eyes.” This is truly bad writing, of course, and I needn’t even bother to explain.
Yet the dust jacket still talks to me. The cover falls back and I hear further from Peter Michelson: “Corrington’s work synthesizes the intellection of a Wallace Stevens and the wit of a Ferlinghetti. The res
ult is both intellectual substance and emotional excitement.” Are these people reading the same poems that I am talking to you about? Where is the TREACHERY?? Am I, truly, the traitor?
Page 55: “and an ending that plunders all.” No kidding? I didn’t know that. Maybe I shudda gone ta collitch?
Page 56: “Faith is a cunning vise/to pinch our freedom into useful paths.” It sounds good, doesn’t it? But it could only be a tin of sardines, a slur of words, or too much Jeffers. I don’t want to go into the old hack, the tiring bit of “define faith.” But poetic license too often turns into a carney show, and if I pay $3.50 to get in I want to see if that son-of-a-bitch has been really buried in the ground for 60 days, what he does with his piss and his shit, and what he does for nooky.
Poetry, most of it, has always been a glass house. It has little reference to the average man or to myself or to slipping in the bathtub or catching the siff, to sleeping night after night with a wife who has lost everything but her tenaciousness or to 22 monkeys on a football field really wanting to reach up into the sky and find a Face. It has nothing to do with waking in a drunk-tank with some idiot who has never read Rimbaud, some diddling idiot vomiting into your face. Poetry is faker than hell although it is always talking about hell and pain and love and man and earth and Spring and Summer and Winter and Autumn—o o o, Autumn. And poetry seldom reaches most men because most men are almost dead, of course, but also because most of the men who write poetry are almost dead. I can’t see all the shining flaking glass and the mirrors and tricks of the men who write it. I see only their fear of saying ANYTHING—especially anything that can be understood, even by themselves. Men only seem to rise to temporary courage or love or Art through war or poverty or an unlasting madness or having their arms cut off or finding their prostitutes asleep with men of greater dicks and greater lines—to the south, to the north, to anywhere at all. I can only see a general slime and a sinking and a formula for lying. Almost all the poetry of centuries has been wasted, and it has been wasted because the children do not sing it in the streets; it has been wasted because I do not think of it before I attempt to sleep or when I crawl out of a car shattered of glass, and me . . . one ball dangling . . . a bull without a heart or a way. Christ, when are we going to BEGIN?
The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way Page 17
