A Delicate Aggression

by David O. Dowling

53. Philip L. Gerber and Robert J. Gemmett, eds., “ ‘No Voices Talk to Me’: A Conversation with W. D. Snodgrass,” Western Humanities Review 24.1 (Winter 1970), 71.

  54. W. D. Snodgrass to Paul Engle, 30 December 1964; 11 January 1964; 21 June 1964; PPE SCUI.

  55. John Gilgun to Jean Wylder, 2 January 1973, Jean Wylder Project, RIWW SCUI.

  3. The Suicide: Robert Shelley

  1. T. George Harris, “University of Iowa’s Paul Engle: Poet-Grower of the World,” Look, 1 June 1965, PPE SCUI.

  2. Warren Carrier, “Some Recollections,” in A Community of Writers: Paul Engle and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, ed. Robert Dana (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999), 23.

  3. J. D. McClatchy, “W. D. Snodgrass: The Mild, Reflective Art,” in The Poetry of W. D. Snodgrass: Everything Human, ed. Stephen Haven (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 114.

  4. McClatchy, 114. See also Paul L. Gaston, W. D. Snodgrass (Boston: Twayne, 1978), 59.

  5. Carrier, 23.

  6. Vance Bourjaily describes how “one of [Kim’s] manuscripts dealt in some way with suicide, and I may have said something about thinking suicide was too easy a solution for the problem in the story. It was at this point that Richard rose, looked to us for recognition, and on receiving it, said: ‘We have a rather different attitude towards suicide in my culture.’ He went on to describe people who thought of suicide as honorable, courageous, and ritually necessary in certain situations.” Vance Bourjaily, “Dear Hualing,” in A Community of Writers: Paul Engle and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, ed. Robert Dana (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999), 54.

  7. Ray B. West, “COMMENT: The Boys in the Basement,” Western Review 13.1 (Autumn 1948), 2.

  8. Robert Shelley, “Le Lac des Cygnes,” Western Review 13.1 (Autumn 1948), 34.

  9. Student Applications, Robert Shelley, 1949, RIWW SCUI.

  10. Robin Hemley, “A Critique of Postgraduate Workshops and a Case for Low-Residency MFAs,” Teaching Creative Writing, ed. Heather Beck (New York: Palgrave, 2012), 104.

  11. Harris, “University of Iowa’s Paul Engle.”

  12. Paul Engle, “How Creative Writing Is Taught at University of Iowa Workshop,” Des Moines Sunday Register, 26 December 1947, 9E.

  13. Engle, “How Creative Writing Is Taught at University of Iowa Workshop.”

  14. Nancy C. Andreasen, “Creativity and Mental Illness,” American Journal of Psychiatry 144.10 (1987): 1288–1292. Herbert Hendin, Suicide in America: A New and Expanded Edition (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995), 30. Also citing Andreasen’s seminal 1987 study of mental illness at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop is scientific research by Frederick K. Godwin and Kay Redfield Jamison in Manic-Depressive Illness: Bipolar Disorders and Recurrent Depression (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), which concludes that a “predisposition to creativity” is significantly linked to suicides (394). Corroborating Andreasen’s findings are those of Kay Jamison, whose “study of 47 British artists and writers found that 38 percent had sought treatment for mood disorders, compared to fewer than two percent in the general population.” Significantly, “Half the poets in the group” sought treatment; Eric Maisel, Creativity for Life: Practical Advice on the Artist’s Personality and Career from America’s Foremost Creativity Coach (Novato, Calif.: New World Library, 2007), 47. The connection has been considered almost common knowledge among producers and insiders of creative media industries, as seen in Jimi Hendrix’s autobiographical lyric lamenting that “Manic depression is a frustrating mess,” and the more than five hundred paintings with unambiguous suicidal imagery, including Andy Warhol’s Suicide, Edvard Munch’s The Suicide, and Jackson Pollock’s Ten Ways of Killing Myself. Former Workshop director Frank Conroy suffered a “nervous breakdown” that struck “as I finished my autobiography,” Stop-Time. With no pharmaceutical or talking cure, he, like Shelley, was forced “out of shame and great effort, to hide the inner turmoil, put on a mask of normalcy and soldier through one day at a time”; Tom Grimes, Mentor (Portland, Ore.: Tin House, 2010), 223. For more on psychiatric issues among Workshop members, see chapter 7, “Mad Poets: Dylan Thomas and John Berryman.”

  15. Engle, “How Creative Writing Is Taught at University of Iowa Workshop.”

  16. E. A. Robinson, The Poetry of E. A. Robinson, ed. Robert Mezey (New York: Modern Library, 1999), 8.

  17. Lorrie Goldensohn aptly warns, “any reader of Randall Jarrell ought to be careful not to make simplistic arguments about repressed homosexuality. It is as if Jarrell retreated to being a woman, or being maternal at any rate, not so much because he really wanted to be a woman, or give up any powerful prerogatives assigned to the male gender.” Jarrell did not want to cancel male identity “but to enlarge it” by “appropriating feminine character” and “poaching on emotions normally thought to belong to women alone.” In this way he evaded falling into the “predictable binaries” that he believed restrained the creative process. Lorrie Goldensohn, Dismantling Glory: Twentieth-Century Soldier Poetry (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 213. Virginia Woolf similarly fueled her best writing, such as Orlando, by transcending the limitations of gender.

  18. Richard Bode, Beachcombing at Miramar: The Quest for an Authentic Life (New York: Warner, 1996), 167. Others raising repressed homosexuality as the cause of the character Richard Cory’s suicide include Scott Donaldson, Edwin Arlington Robinson’s most recent biographer, who writes, “We are apt to look at a life as dependent upon male friendship as Robinson’s and wonder if he did not live out his days as a closeted gay man (closeted against himself most of all)”; Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Poet’s Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), e-book.

  19. James Sunwall, 11 January 1973, Jean Wylder Project, RIWW SCUI.

  20. Harris, “University of Iowa’s Paul Engle.”

  21. James B. Hall, “Our Workshops Remembered: The Heroic Phase” [n.d.], RIWW SCUI.

  22. Quoted in Loren Glass, “Middle Man: Paul Engle and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop,” Minnesota Review 71–72 (Winter/Spring 2009), 4.

  23. William Doreski, The Years of Our Friendship: Robert Lowell and Allen Tate (Oxford: University Press of Mississippi, 1990), 104.

  24. Philip McGowan, Anne Sexton and Middle Generation Poetry: The Geography of Grief (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2004), x.

  25. Brewster Ghiselin, “Poets Learning,” Poetry 79.5 (February 1952), 289.

  26. Paul Engle, “Poet and Professor Overture,” Poetry 79.5 (February 1952), 270.

  27. Ghiselin, “Poets Learning,” 289.

  28. McClatchy, 115.

  29. “Student Kills Self with Hunting Rifle,” Daily Iowan, 26 April 1951: 1.

  30. Robert Shelley, “Harvest,” in Midland: Twenty-Five Years of Fiction and Poetry, Selected from the Writing Workshops of the State University of Iowa, ed. Paul Engle (New York: Random House, 1961), 538.

  31. Carrier, 23.

  32. James Sunwall, 11 January 1973, Jean Wylder Project, RIWW SCUI.

  33. Shelley, “Harvest,” 538.

  34. Shelley, “Harvest,” 538.

  35. “Student Kills Self with Hunting Rifle,” 1.

  36. Quoted in Edward Brunner, Cold War Poetry: The Social Text in the Fifties Poem (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 274.

  37. Robert Shelley, “On My Twenty-First Birthday,” in Midland: Twenty-Five Years of Fiction and Poetry, Selected from the Writing Workshops of the State University of Iowa, ed. Paul Engle (New York: Random House, 1961), 539.

  38. Quoted in Brunner, Cold War Poetry, 274.

  39. “Go Way, Ya Bother Me!” Daily Iowan, 26 April 1951: 1.

  40. Shelley, “Harvest,” 538–539.

  41. W. D. Snodgrass, “An Interview with Elizabeth Spires,” American Poetry Review 15 (July–August 1990): 38–46.

  42. Hall, “Our Workshops Remembered.”

  43. Engle, “Poet and Professor Overture,” 268.

  44. Donald Petersen, “The Stages of Narcissus,” Poetry
83.3 (December 1953), 141–144.

  45. Andreasen, 1288.

  46. James Sunwall, 11 January 1973, Jean Wylder Project, RIWW SCUI.

  47. Wylder-Leggett Addendum to James Sunwall, 11 January 1973, Jean Wylder Project, RIWW SCUI.

  48. Richard Stern, 26 April 1973, Jean Wylder Project, RIWW SCUI.

  49. Richard Stern, 26 April 1973, Jean Wylder Project, RIWW SCUI.

  4. The Professional: R. V. Cassill

  1. Jean Wylder, “R. V. Cassill,” in A Community of Writers: Paul Engle and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, ed. Robert Dana (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999), 194–195.

  2. Tom Grimes, ed., The Workshop: Seven Decades of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (New York: Hyperion, 1999), 36.

  3. Edmund Skellings to Paul Engle, 17 May 1963, PPE SCUI.

  4. Paul Engle, ed., Midland (New York: Random House, 1961), 583–584.

  5. R. V. Cassill, The Eagle on the Coin (New York: Random House, 1950), 208–209.

  6. R. V. Cassill, Dormitory Women (New York: Lion, 1954), 3.

  7. Evan Thomas (Harper and Brothers Director, General Books Department) to Paul Engle, 10 March 1960, PPE SCUI.

  8. Evan Thomas to Paul Engle, 10 March 1960, PPE SCUI.

  9. William Oman to Paul Engle, 11 March 1960, PPE SCUI.

  10. R. T. Bond to Paul Engle, 5 May 1960, PPE SCUI.

  11. R. T. Bond to Paul Engle, 5 May 1960, PPE SCUI.

  12. Paul Engle to John Gerber, 7 January 1963, PPE SCUI.

  13. Paul Engle to Gordon G. Dupee, 26 November 1962, PPE SCUI.

  14. Peter H. Huyck, “Cassill’s Latest Book—A Treatment of the Mechanics,” Daily Iowan, 19 March 1963.

  15. Huyck, “Cassill’s Latest Book.”

  16. Huyck, “Cassill’s Latest Book.”

  17. Huyck, “Cassill’s Latest Book.”

  18. Don Justice to Paul Engle, 4 April 1963, PPE SCUI.

  19. David Roberts, Letter to the Editor, Daily Iowan, 22 March 1963.

  20. Norman Peterson, Letter to the Editor, Daily Iowan, 23 March 1963.

  21. Laird Addis, Jr., et al., Letter to the Editor, Daily Iowan, 26 March 1963.

  22. Don Justice to Paul Engle, 4 April 1963, PPE SCUI.

  23. Edmund Skellings to Paul Engle, 17 May 1963, PPE SCUI.

  24. Don Justice to Paul Engle, 4 April 1963, PPE SCUI.

  25. Edmund Skellings to Paul Engle, 17 May 1963, PPE SCUI.

  26. Stephen Wilbers, The Iowa Writers’ Workshop: Origins, Emergence, and Growth (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1980), 96–97.

  27. Edmund Skellings to Paul Engle, 17 May 1963, PPE SCUI.

  28. R. V. Cassill to Paul Engle, 23 April 1963, PPE SCUI.

  29. Gordon Dupee to Paul Engle, 26 July 1963, PPE SCUI.

  30. Just as Cassill had dabbled in the market for erotic novels, Engle himself explored the seamy side of popular print culture. In 1962, for example, he ordered The Housewife’s Handbook on Selective Promiscuity, only to discover that the United States Postal Service had refused delivery and impounded it. The publisher notified him that “Our attorneys are preparing a vigorous campaign to overcome this latest instance of Post Office censorship.” To Paul Engle from Documentary Books, 31 December 1962, PPE SCUI.

  31. One advertisement makes a particularly overt gesture at arguing that the man of letters is also a man of business by presenting facsimiles of two signed typewritten letters designed to look like evidence laid on a table. The letter taking up the left half of the advertisement on Cleveland’s Western Reserve University letterhead certifies Engle’s acumen as a speaker “both in the academic and the popular sense of setting up the criteria for judging American literature and following it through with appropriate and stimulating examples,” a line underscored for emphasis. Next to it is a reference from Rochester Ad Club, Inc., a New York association of advertisers, lauding Engle’s talk as “one of the most unique programs in the history of the Rochester Ad Club.” In cursive above his name appears the heading, “To listen to him is an experience which should be enjoyed by more.” W. Colston Leigh, Inc., Advertisement for Paul Engle, 1951, PPE SCUI.

  32. R. V. Cassill to Paul Engle, n.d., 1962, PPE SCUI.

  33. R. V. Cassill, “Why I Left the Midwest,” in In an Iron Time: Statements and Reiterations, Essays by R. V. Cassill (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1969), 131.

  34. Wilbers, 114.

  35. Verlin Cassill to Stephen Wilbers, 26 August 1976, RIWW SCUI.

  36. See the epilogue for more details and further discussion of how Engle’s relationship with Gerber precipitated his resignation from the Workshop.

  37. Cassill, “Why I Left the Midwest,” 130.

  38. “Biographical Note,” R. Verlin Cassill Manuscripts, SCUI. See also Philip Roth’s look back in anger at Iowa for comparison to Cassill’s. After Roth’s brief stint as a faculty member, he fulminated against the campus and the town in the pages of Esquire so violently that its editors wrote President Virgil M. Hancher asking for a reply. He declined, explaining to Engle that “if I started a reply, I might say more than would be wise under the circumstances.” Virgil Hancher to Paul Engle, 21 November 1962, PPE SCUI. Roth’s piece, “Iowa: A Very Far Country Indeed,” appeared in the December 1962 issue of Esquire.

  39. Cassill, “Why I Left the Midwest,” 131.

  40. Mark McGurl, The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 160–171.

  41. R. V. Cassill, “The Killer Inside Me: Fear, Purgation, and the Sophoclean Light,” in Tough Guy Writers of the Thirties, ed. David Madden (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1968), 233.

  42. Louis Menand, “Show or Tell: Should Creative Writing Be Taught?” New Yorker, 8 June 2009, web.

  43. Verlin Cassill, “Associated Writing Programs,” ADE [American Departments of English] Bulletin 17 (May 1968): 33–35.

  44. Robert Day, “The Early Days of AWP,” Association of Writers and Writers Programs, 11 September 2012, web.

  45. R. V. Cassill, “Introduction,” in Fifteen by Three, ed. James Laughlin (New York: New Directions, 1957), 7.

  46. Clarence A. Andrews, A Literary History of Iowa (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1972), 204–205.

  47. R. V. Cassill, “And In My Heart,” Collected Stories (University of Arkansas Press, 1989), 144. Among the many stories based on Cassill’s experience teaching creative writing are “The Romanticizing of Dr. Fless,” and “The Martyr.” The former articulates the persistent theme in Cassill’s stories of the struggle to write great literature in mass culture. Protagonist Dick Samson considers the case of Hart Crane’s suicide and asks rhetorically, “what the hell good does it do you to write that well if nobody wants it? You may write the best poetry in the world, but the damned pigs force you to write prose to make a living.” Cassill, “The Romaniticizing of Dr. Fless,” Collected Stories, 555. “The Martyr” reprises another dominant theme in Cassill’s work of romantic affairs in college settings, as his main character Professor Alleman in his mid-forties “was having an affair with a student named Lois.” While lying in bed with her after a tryst, he inadvertently bursts into tears recalling “a pretty and rambunctious nun” he had as a student, a figure loosely based on Flannery O’Connor. Alleman inadvertently reveals he really loved the idealistic nun who “told him nothing was worth aiming for except sainthood,” prompting the jealousy of Lois in an echo of Gretta Conroy, Gabriel’s wife, in James Joyce’s The Dead. Cassill, “The Martyr,” Collected Stories, 570, 567. Cassill registered the significance of Gretta’s revelation of her love for Michael Fury in his introduction to his first collection of stories, noting that how “Gabriel finds his wife’s love at the instant of revelation when he learns it is irretrievably fixed to the memory of the dead boy” is significantly linked to how “sometimes writers must hope no more of love from readers than that they may say, like Gabriel’s wife, ‘I can see his eyes as well as well! He was standing at the
end of the wall where there was a tree.’ ” Cassill, “Introduction,” 5.

  48. Bernard Bergzorn, New York Times Book Review, 22 April 1965, 16.

  49. James Laughlin, ed., Fifteen by Three (New York: New Directions, 1957), v.

  50. Laughlin, Fifteen by Three, vi; Grimes, 35–36.

  51. Cassill, “Why I Left the Midwest,” 121.

  52. Cassill, “And In My Heart,” 145.

  5. The Guru: Marguerite Young

  1. Bruce Kellner, “Miss Young, My Darling,” Review of Contemporary Fiction 20.2 (Summer 2000), 150.

  2. Kellner, 160.

  3. William Cotter Murray, “Marguerite Young: Trying on a Style,” in A Community of Writers: Paul Engle and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, ed. Robert Dana (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999), 201.

  4. Kellner, 160.

  5. Murray, 205.

  6. Murray, 204.

  7. Murray, 202–203.

  8. Murray, 204.

  9. Barry Silesky, John Gardner: Literary Outlaw (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin, 2004), 62–63.

  10. Murray, 203.

  11. Kellner, 150.

  12. Molly McQuade, “Famous Writers’ School: Novelists and Poets Remember Their Student Days at the University of Chicago,” Chicago Tribune, 4 June 1995, 2, web.

  13. Quoted in Edna St. Vincent Millay, Edna St. Vincent Millay: Collected Poems, ed. Norma Millay (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), xxiii.

  14. Charles Raus, Conversations with American Writers (New York: Knopf, 1985), 117.

  15. McQuade, 2.

  16. Raus, Conversations, 117.

  17. McQuade, 2.

  18. Kellner, 155.

  19. Miriam Fuchs, “Interview with Marguerite Young,” Review of Contemporary Fiction 23.1 (2003), 129.

  20. Kellner, 155.

  21. Charles E. Raus, “Marguerite Young: The Art of Fiction,” Paris Review 66 (Fall 1977), 52.

  22. Raus, “Art,” 52.

  23. Marguerite Young to Paul Engle, February 1947, PPE SCUI.

  24. Raus, “Art,” 52.

  25. Kellner, 155.

  26. Kellner, 152.

  27. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (New York: Harcourt, 1981), 162–168, 48.

  28. Marguerite Young, “Fictions Mystical and Epical,” Inviting the Muses: Stories, Essays, Reviews (Normal, Ill.: Dalkey Archive, 1994), 162. In her 1975 Harvard Advocate essay “Feminine Sensibility,” she claimed, “I do not think there is any difference between the works of men and women writers, and certainly do not think that women were limited, up to Virginia Woolf’s time, to the literature of inter-human relationships.” Marguerite Young, Inviting the Muses: Stories, Essays, Reviews (Normal, Ill.: Dalkey Archive, 1994), 144.