On teaching poetry

College Literature, Fall 2001 by Levy, Gayle

Hollander John.1997. The Work of Poetry. New York: Columbia University Press. $17.50 sc. 318 pp.

Martin, Robert K. 1998. The Homosexual Tradition in American Poetry: An Expanded Edition. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. $18.95 sc. 279 pp.

Upton, Lee. 1998. The Muse of Abandonment: Origin, Identity, Mastery in Five American Poets. London: Associated University Press. $32.50 hc.162 pp.

Every literature teacher has heard the collective groan emanating from the classroom when they first introduce a unit on poetry. Fortunately, three recent books offer different strategies to help teachers transform this groan into lyric appreciation and help them break free from the pedagogical familiarity of prose. The poetry covered in these books reminds us of how rhythm, rhyme, meaningful neologisms and onomatopoeias can enrich the classroom experience. However, in case teachers themselves need a little nudge to get back in the habit of teaching poetry, the three authors discussed here not only display an infectious enthusiasm for teaching poetry (readers will be inspired to dig up old copies of Leaves of Grass), but their critical approaches cover a pedagogically useful range. Furthermore, the poetry they discuss runs the gamut of canonical and lesser known poets and of the work of late-nineteenth century poets to contemporary American writers.

The association of the five poets treated in Lee Upton's The Muse of Abandonment-Charles Wright, Russell Edson, Jean Valentine, James Tate, and Louise Gluck-might at first seem strange. Edson writes prose poems while the others write verse; his and Wright's work can be quite comic, Gluck's more downbeat. Nevertheless, Upton does an admirable job of linking them thematically. At a basic level, these writers wrestle with their personal subjectivity. For example, Tate's travelers are constantly moving, ". . . indicating a struggle against the petrification of sensibility and identity" while Gluck's poems "experiment with a regression into oblivion-an ultimate release from ego boundaries" (99, 120). Although she does not use the conventional definition of "muse," Upton points out that all of these poets are inspired by abandonment and thus their work "is inscribed with the double meanings that attach themselves to abandonment: the powerlessness of being rendered subject ... and, at the same time, the experience of exuberant release from the control of others" (12).Yet these poets demonstrate more than thematic commonalties; they all rethink confessional poetry in the light of postmodern critical theory and destabilize conventional reading habits. Upton notes that in Tate's case "autobiography is artifice that ought to be revealed as such. He does not reject cliches of autobiography.. so much as use them as launchpads for further investigations of new language contexts" (99).

The greatest value of this book lies in the individual readings of contemporary poets with whom teachers are too often unfamiliar. Upton's book provides reading techniques that help us analyze these poets' work. For example, in order to read her work we must recognize that Valentine "has thinned connective passages and omitted logical connections in her poetry "(76) whereas Tate's work "actively upends identities .... The actual work of the poems in their demasculinizing of male characters and caricaturing of heterosexual desires, in the voicing of need, weakness, and contingency, boldly counters patriarchal posturings of expertise" (98). Upton's book provides the initial material needed to enable the poetry teacher to gain some mastery over these five American poets in order to introduce their work to students.

Upton's readings are insightful and since each chapter addresses the work of one poet, the book lends itself to easy use in the classroom. The instructor who chooses to use these essays would nonetheless need to supplement them with some materials: the poems to be studied (Upton only quotes portions of the poems she discusses, never the entire poem) and if the chapters on Valentine or Gluck have been selected, a brief discussion of Julia Kristeva's theories since Upton makes reference to Kristevan maternal loss and abjection but rather quickly glosses it. I found the best chapter to be "Cruel Figures: The `Anti-Forms' of Russell Edson." Perhaps because Edson's prose poems are less well known (he is the one poet of the group who is less firmly entrenched in "official" poetry culture; the majority of his books are outof-print, and he leads a rather reclusive life), this is a discovery of sorts. Edson's poetry would be a welcome addition to any class or unit on the prose poem or on surrealism. Upton reports that in Edson's work "A raincoat performs an autopsy; a woman gives birth to a toad from her armpit; a man has sexual intercourse with a bicycle" (54-55). Edson's poetry is violent and physical, yet never gratuitous, and often very funny. Language provides the source of this humor; the characters in Edson's prose poems "have no sense of a reality that might accept subtlety or fluency in naming or renaming .... They only know that they must somehow pursue fragments of language.Yet they haven't the power fully to understand the ways in which they are used by language. The result is that they are compelled to reproduce the cruelties that have defined them" (66).