I exhumed an old notebook/journal that listed poets whose readings I had attended in the 1970s, mostly at U.C. Davis:
Gary Snyder (multiple), Galway Kinnell, Karl Shapiro (I took several classes from him, but he gave only one reading when I was at Davis), Gwendolyn Brooks (she insisted that her husband read, too; he seemed reticent to do so); Stephen Spender; William Everson (multiple); William Stafford, Josephine Miles; Kenneth Rexroth; Kenneth Koch; Philip Levine; Richard Eberhart; Robert Bly; Donald Davie; Robert Duncan; Mark Strand; Charles Bukowski; Robert Sward. I also attended a "lecture" by Norman Mailer. What an evening that was. Mailer was promoting his book on Marilyn Monroe. It was all bluster and crude jokes, and people seemed amused. After the lecture, Mailer adjourned to a classroom (this hadn't been planned) and spoke with about 20 of us.
In almost every poetry reading, the poetry comes alive to such a degree that you return to the printed version of it with a significantly different sense of what you are reading, and you recall once again that even poetry that isn't explicitly "spoken word" poetry is a vocal, aural art. I found this circumstance to be the case especially with Snyder, whose poetry I appreciated when I read it on the page but whose poetry seemed a bit flat and clumsy at times. When he read his poems, he brought out rhythms and nuances I had overlooked. Spender's reading was remarkable, in part because of Spender's wit and stateliness, but also because of his memories of Auden and Eliot. He joked that when Eliot was a young man, Eliot wrote middle-aged poems; when middle-aged, he wrote old-man poems; and when old he wrote posthumous poems. A person in the audience wanted to quarrel about the issue of Pound's having edited Eliot's The Waste Land considerably. The person asked, "If a man impregnates my wife, in what sense is the child mine?" [meaning, isn't The Waste Land really Pound's poem?] Spender said, "I can't really speak to your personal difficulties with your wife, but The Waste Land was Eliot's poem, and Pound simply made suggestions, the way an editor does." Spender also demystified The Waste Land by saying that it can be read as a series of satirical sketches about urban life. Such a statement cuts through so much cant and nonsense written about that poem. A couple years later, coincidentally, a poem of mine won a national contest sponsored by the University of Houston--and judged by Stephen Spender. The poem is "Spider Killing," and he wrote a very kind letter to me about the poem.
Bly, of course, is an over-the-top performer, complete with lyre and poncho--but he's a great reader, not only of his own poetry but of others'. He has a great rendition, if that's the word, of W. C. Williams' "This is just to say." Stafford and Levine were both great: unpretentious. Duncan was okay, but I never really "got" his poetry. Brooks was wonderful. Rexroth was full of himself, of course. He packed the house. He was smart and well read, but he also seemed intent upon reminding everyone that he was smart and well read: that classic Poundian, American insecurity: rather the opposite of Spender. Everson wore buckskins and a bear-tooth necklace, paced silently for minutes before he started, stared at people. In later readings he trembled because of Parkinson's. His rendition of "Canticle for the Water Birds" was one for the ages. After one reading, I met him at a friend's house, at a small reception. We got to talking about the movie, "The Rose," in which Bette Midler plays a version of Joplin. I said I that loved Joplin's music but that I thought, technically, Midler had the better voice, and Everson got furious and said that a kind of pure soul poured out of Joplin. I wasn't about to press the issue. I always thought Joplin was a very good blues singer but by no means a goddess of the blues. Oh, well: I was sorry to have ticked off the famous Beat poet. Shapiro always liked to tell of the time in 1969 (?) when, as Brother Antoninus, Everson literally defrocked himself at a reading in Davis. Right in the middle of the reading, he removed his lay-brother's robes, and had some difficulty with the microphone-cord to which it and he were attached. A wonderful spectacle, remembered wryly by Shapiro, who later wrote an homage-poem for Everson.
Miles was almost completely disabled, by rheumatoid arthritis, I think, so an assistant literally carried her around, laying her in a chair for the reception after the reading. But she was bright, witty, and quick in conversation, so much so that you were almost shocked to see that her body was disabled. She seemed to have great reserves of mental toughness, with no bitterness or sarcasm. Mailer was promoting his book on Marilyn Monroe. He pontificated, told dirty jokes, dropped names. One crude joke was about a woman's worn-out c--t, about which her husband complains, only to have her reply, "My boyfriend likes it because he's well endowed enough to get past the worn-out part." Mailer as middle-school boy, in other words. The lecture went on and on, and then some 20 of us adjourned to another room on campus, where he kept talking to/at us. He struck me as a terribly insecure man--the kind of physically small man who feels he must act tough: I'd seen the type in the small mountain town I was raised in. It was very easy to see through his bluster and arrogance to a certain vulnerability. How strange that his very best book ended up being the nonfiction, The Executioner's Song. Bizarrely, I read it and Styron's Sophie's Choice in the same week in Germany when I was teaching there. .. .I wrote Styron a fan letter, and he wrote back on a card, dated Christmas Day 1980: very kind of him. Enough of the aimless recollections.....
Gary Snyder (multiple), Galway Kinnell, Karl Shapiro (I took several classes from him, but he gave only one reading when I was at Davis), Gwendolyn Brooks (she insisted that her husband read, too; he seemed reticent to do so); Stephen Spender; William Everson (multiple); William Stafford, Josephine Miles; Kenneth Rexroth; Kenneth Koch; Philip Levine; Richard Eberhart; Robert Bly; Donald Davie; Robert Duncan; Mark Strand; Charles Bukowski; Robert Sward. I also attended a "lecture" by Norman Mailer. What an evening that was. Mailer was promoting his book on Marilyn Monroe. It was all bluster and crude jokes, and people seemed amused. After the lecture, Mailer adjourned to a classroom (this hadn't been planned) and spoke with about 20 of us.
In almost every poetry reading, the poetry comes alive to such a degree that you return to the printed version of it with a significantly different sense of what you are reading, and you recall once again that even poetry that isn't explicitly "spoken word" poetry is a vocal, aural art. I found this circumstance to be the case especially with Snyder, whose poetry I appreciated when I read it on the page but whose poetry seemed a bit flat and clumsy at times. When he read his poems, he brought out rhythms and nuances I had overlooked. Spender's reading was remarkable, in part because of Spender's wit and stateliness, but also because of his memories of Auden and Eliot. He joked that when Eliot was a young man, Eliot wrote middle-aged poems; when middle-aged, he wrote old-man poems; and when old he wrote posthumous poems. A person in the audience wanted to quarrel about the issue of Pound's having edited Eliot's The Waste Land considerably. The person asked, "If a man impregnates my wife, in what sense is the child mine?" [meaning, isn't The Waste Land really Pound's poem?] Spender said, "I can't really speak to your personal difficulties with your wife, but The Waste Land was Eliot's poem, and Pound simply made suggestions, the way an editor does." Spender also demystified The Waste Land by saying that it can be read as a series of satirical sketches about urban life. Such a statement cuts through so much cant and nonsense written about that poem. A couple years later, coincidentally, a poem of mine won a national contest sponsored by the University of Houston--and judged by Stephen Spender. The poem is "Spider Killing," and he wrote a very kind letter to me about the poem.
Bly, of course, is an over-the-top performer, complete with lyre and poncho--but he's a great reader, not only of his own poetry but of others'. He has a great rendition, if that's the word, of W. C. Williams' "This is just to say." Stafford and Levine were both great: unpretentious. Duncan was okay, but I never really "got" his poetry. Brooks was wonderful. Rexroth was full of himself, of course. He packed the house. He was smart and well read, but he also seemed intent upon reminding everyone that he was smart and well read: that classic Poundian, American insecurity: rather the opposite of Spender. Everson wore buckskins and a bear-tooth necklace, paced silently for minutes before he started, stared at people. In later readings he trembled because of Parkinson's. His rendition of "Canticle for the Water Birds" was one for the ages. After one reading, I met him at a friend's house, at a small reception. We got to talking about the movie, "The Rose," in which Bette Midler plays a version of Joplin. I said I that loved Joplin's music but that I thought, technically, Midler had the better voice, and Everson got furious and said that a kind of pure soul poured out of Joplin. I wasn't about to press the issue. I always thought Joplin was a very good blues singer but by no means a goddess of the blues. Oh, well: I was sorry to have ticked off the famous Beat poet. Shapiro always liked to tell of the time in 1969 (?) when, as Brother Antoninus, Everson literally defrocked himself at a reading in Davis. Right in the middle of the reading, he removed his lay-brother's robes, and had some difficulty with the microphone-cord to which it and he were attached. A wonderful spectacle, remembered wryly by Shapiro, who later wrote an homage-poem for Everson.
Miles was almost completely disabled, by rheumatoid arthritis, I think, so an assistant literally carried her around, laying her in a chair for the reception after the reading. But she was bright, witty, and quick in conversation, so much so that you were almost shocked to see that her body was disabled. She seemed to have great reserves of mental toughness, with no bitterness or sarcasm. Mailer was promoting his book on Marilyn Monroe. He pontificated, told dirty jokes, dropped names. One crude joke was about a woman's worn-out c--t, about which her husband complains, only to have her reply, "My boyfriend likes it because he's well endowed enough to get past the worn-out part." Mailer as middle-school boy, in other words. The lecture went on and on, and then some 20 of us adjourned to another room on campus, where he kept talking to/at us. He struck me as a terribly insecure man--the kind of physically small man who feels he must act tough: I'd seen the type in the small mountain town I was raised in. It was very easy to see through his bluster and arrogance to a certain vulnerability. How strange that his very best book ended up being the nonfiction, The Executioner's Song. Bizarrely, I read it and Styron's Sophie's Choice in the same week in Germany when I was teaching there. .. .I wrote Styron a fan letter, and he wrote back on a card, dated Christmas Day 1980: very kind of him. Enough of the aimless recollections.....
