| Then felt I like some
watcher of the skies |
| When a new planet swims
into his ken; |
| Or like stout Cortez when
with eagle eyes |
| He star’d at the
Pacific—and all his men |
| Look’d at each other with
a wild surmise— |
| Silent, upon a peak in
Darien. |
"On First Looking into Chapman's
Homer"
John Keats |
When I opened Jack
Foley's Visions and Affiliations,
I was John Keats turning the pages of
Chapman's Homer for the first time.
Keats entered the world of another poet
and merged with the ancients. I entered
the world of many poets, and merged with the
lives, the friendships, the struggles,
the visions and affiliations of writers
associated with California from
1940-2005. I turned pages, skimmed,
jumped forward in time, jumped back,
everywhere submerged in the lives, the
deaths, the drama and the poetry of
seven decades. For days I read
like one silent, upon
a peak in Darien. I felt I had
entered a secret society of poets.
Jack Foley writes this chronology in the simple present tense, a
tense that implies perpetuity.
This "timeline," then, this
separation of years, exists
only on the surface. The content, what
escapes from the words, transcends time.
Jack, seemingly aware of this, frequently nestles poems from one era
with critical commentary from another
decade.
He adds flash forward comments in the
middle of his exposition, and the only place
where this electrifying suspension of time and space vanishes is
on those powerful pages where Jack lists the
deaths of poets, often with one line
paragraphs.
Czeslaw Milosz dies at his home in
Krakow.
Thom Gunn dies.
Petaluma poet Eugene Ruggls dies.
(vol. 2, 589)
Jack juxtaposes personal
details about poets, editors and
publishers with lines of poetry from the
famous and not so famous. In
Volume 1, for example, he details how
Robert Duncan's poem, "An African
Elegy," which had been accepted for
publication by The Kenyon Review,
was later rejected by The Kenyon
Review after Duncan's essay, "The
Homosexual in Society," was published in
Dwight McDonald's journal, Politics.
Robert Frost's intervention for Ezra
Pound's release from a hospital as
"harmlessly insane" is included with
appealing details.
In Volume 2, Mary Marcia Casoly's poetry
is mentioned as is Dana Gioia's
courageous identification of himself as
a "Catholic" poet when he wrote in
The Irish Review, "the basic donée
of the Catholic writer is to examine the
consequences of living in a fallen
world...The dissonance between those two
realms of experience, the real and the
imaginary, the visible and the
invisible, is the fundamental tension of
Catholic poetry."
These two lush volumes do not isolate
poets from society, but present them
fully integrated, revealing the
affiliations of gay poets, black poets,
interracial poets, beat poets and so
forth, along with the relationships of poets with society,
with government, with editors and
publishers, disclosing how
friends and social movements influence
publications. For
instance, in volume one, there's
an explanation of the time, in 1948,
when Kenneth Rexroth was given permission by William Everson
to choose poems for a New Directions
publication. Rexroth chose poetry that emphasized Everson's
connection with D.H. Lawrence. And
in volume two there's an entire section
called, "Some Dates Having to Do With
AIDS."
These two volumes are far more than a California timeline. They
are an American timeline, and some
might even argue an international
timeline. As much as California
would like to claim Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Dana Gioia, Carolyn Kizer,
Jack Spicer, Kenneth Rexroth, Judy Grahn,
Susan Griffin, Fanny Howe, Czeslaw
Milosz, Robert Duncan, George Oppen,
Michael McClure and all the other poets
mentioned in these two volumes, these poets
don't belong to California, alone. There are no
state lines or divisions when it comes
to poetry. There is no time, nor
space. These California writers
helped change contemporary perceptions,
causing frictions that sparked humanity.
We, who live outside California, want to
claim them, too. They
belong to all of us. And so this
book is not just for west coast
readers. It has appeal for all Americans
concerned with arts and poetry.
Admittedly, these volumes have stirred
envy among the east coast poets.
We'd like to have a Jack Foley on this
side of the country to serve us in a
similar fashion. But we realize
(sigh) there is only one Jack Foley and
his home, his love, is California.
Affiliated or not, visioned or blind,
the poets, critics and activities of the
past seven decades recorded in Jack
Foley's Visions and Affiliations
are sheer delight.
Buy these two books, read them, lose
track of time.
—Mary Ann Sullivan
June 28, 2011 |
