Jack Anderson: Traffic: New and Selected Prose Poems. - Review - book review

Dance Magazine, Jan, 2000 by Doris Hering

Jack Anderson: Traffic: New and Selected Prose Poems. Minneapolis, MN: New Rivers Press, 1998 (The Marie Alexander Poetry Series), 76 pp.

A NEW COMPENDIUM of Edwin Denby's dance writings and poetry, assembled by Robert Cornfield, assisted by Ron Padgett, spans the years between 1936 and 1966, but the majority of the dance selections are from his three years at the New York Herald Tribune. They are all the more precious because in none of today's newspapers does one find daily reviews of such acuity and sweetness.

Even when he was tough, Denby's manners remained intact: "Poor Toumanova. Poor Ballet Theatre. With a kind of numb dismay, your reporter watched them submitting to a new choreographic indignity when Massine's Moonlight Sonata was shown. `Russian Ballet' can hardly sink any lower than it does in offering us this clammy hallway chromo. And to have the great Massine and our fine Ballet Theatre responsible is ignominious for everyone."

Denby was not afraid to lead the way, as in his early admiration for Balanchine: "George Balanchine is the greatest choreographer of our time. He is Petipa's heir. His style is classical: grand without being impressive, clear without being strict. It is humane because it is based on the patterns the human body makes when it dances; it is not--like romantic choreography--based on patterns the human body cannot quite force itself into."

When he described the effect of a particular dancer like Alicia Markova, Denby the critic and Denby the poet often coalesced: "... her dancing is based on a rarer virtue. It is the quiet which she moves in, an instinct for the melody of movement as it deploys and subsides in the silence of time. The sense of serenity in animation she creates is as touching as that of a Mozart melody."

When his writing days began to ebb, Denby subjected his prose to fanatical rewriting. One senses, however, that his poetry had always undergone this kind of technical pressure. Although sensitively formed, the images emerge fitfully. They are pared down, almost parenthetical, and yet they occasionally elevate mundane impressions, especially of his daily life in a New York loft, giving them a lullaby tenderness.

Edwin Denby died in 1983. Much of his output is now hard to find, which makes this book doubly welcome. But isn't it really time for an assemblage of his entire output--and an authoritative biography?

At its most effective, there is a unique challenge, rhythmic and metaphorical, in writing about dance. These traits bring it close to poetry. Small wonder that four of our most distinguished dance writers--Theophile Gautier, Paul Valery, Lincoln Kirstein, and Denby--were poets. So is Jack Anderson of the New York Times.

All but one of the prose poems in Anderson's new volume, Traffic, have previously appeared elsewhere. With objectivity and a true critic's eye, he has combined them in this tantalizing book.

Some, like "The Mysterous Barricades," a tale of Taglioni encountering bandits in a wintry Russian landscape, have the substance and dramatic continuity of short stories; others, like the individual sketches comprising "Abandoned Cities," are impressions as changeable as nacre. His humorous pieces slip in and out of irony, or, as in "The Party Train," are deliciously gaga.

Throughout, the real and the imagined lightly touch fingertips. Here is part of his image of Ophelia: "When the river calms again, the imprint of her face will still be on the water. The clouds will roll downstream like drawings of organ music."

Denby's criticism is lyrical and the poetry often terse. The reverse is true for Anderson, probably because he has spent far more years than Denby submitting to the rigors of daily newspaper deadlines.