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The New Poetry:
Two Critical Views
Entertainment n Ann Arbor
Tiger Lilies Gravely Marvelous: Anything Can Happen
By DONALD L. HILL
A ROOF OF TIGER LILIES. Poems by
Donald Hall. New York: The Viking
Press. 1964.
SOMETIMES IT is said that a poet
ought not to pay much attention
to the poetry of his contemporaries. If
he is really good, the argument goes,
then keeping track of what the others
are doing can only distract him, tempt
him into unprofitable experiments,
muddy his vision, jeopardize his unique-
ness. This isolationist line appeals to
some young poets because they are al-
ready trying hard, and rightly so, to
locate and to assert their individuality.
Nevertheless, for young poets at least,
ignorance and self-absorption are prob-
ably more dangerous to talent than the
influence of their contemporaries. It may
even be suspected that any talent spoiled
by the study of other talents is too weak
to have flourished in isolation.
In any case, most if not all good poets
educate themselves by studying the work
of other poets, not only of the past but
of their own time. Donald Hall has taken
the further step of becoming a devoted
editor of contemporary poetry, and one
picks up his new volume of poems know-
ing that no poet today is writing out
of a more highly educated awareness of
what is happening in poetry at the pres-
ent moment. I take this awareness to be
an advantage to him as a poet.
THE BOOK, "A Roof of Tiger Lilies,"
is divided into four parts, of which
the first consists of fourteen poems,
most of them focused on a single thing
or event. This much similarity is sug-
gested by their parallel titles ("The
Snow," "The Farm,". "The Grass," "The
Child," "The Moon," and so on), but
they have important differences too.
Some are gravely marvelous, like "The
Moon," which begins "A woman who
lived / in a tree caught / the moon in a
kettle;" or like "The Wives," in which
the poet thinks of telling this care-dulled
sisterhood of his happy dream that "an
enormous / tiger lily splits / the roof of
each house / in the night, and arranges /
the moon to itself, / and only withdraws
/ just at dawn. . ." These are poems in
which we feel that anything can happen.
But in this same group are poems of a
different kind, in which -the imagination,
instead of leaping, penetrates or infil-
trates into some object or state of being
outside the usual limits. These poems
have an air'of spellbound alertness nar-
rowed to its object, like that of a medium
in a trance. "The Grass" is one of this
kind:
When I look at the grass
out my window in rain.
I know that it happens
Again. Under
new grass,
among stones and the downward
probe of trees,
everything builds
or alters itself.
I am led
through a warm descent
with my eyes covered,
to hear the words
of water. I listen, with
roots of
the moist grass.
hear but hard to evaluate.
The poems in Part II differ from the
earlier ones also in their specifically
English subjects or settings. Of the two
poems on English walks, I think I prefer
"By the North Sea," with its unforced
juxtaposition, without nostalgia, of the
old and the new: a Roman road, "the
lean daffodils of March," gulls swooping
at the Nuclear Power Station, Maldon
estuary with its Roman and Danish as-
sociations, Bishop Cedd's seventh-cen-
tury church become a Victorian farm-
ers' barn and then a church again. These
poems depend less than most of the
others on a special tone or point of view
or fancy, but they are no less artful.
Part III is more miscellaneous. It in-
cludes poems in which different speakers
call -up moments of the past with great
power and precision, and with very dif-
ferent feelings about them. There are
short poems on places, including the
evocative but unflinching "New Hamp-
shire," three fantasias on Henry Moore's
sculptures, the amusing "Self-Portrait,
As a Bear" and an English poem, "An
Airstrip in Essex, 1960," which begins
"It is a lost road into the air" and ends
with lines in which I find a strange and
moving blend of feelings about the war
of which the airstrip is a relic. "O Flod-
den Field," in memory of the Scottish
writer Edwin Muir, requires a little spe-
cial information, well worth getting just
to read the poem by.
THE FINAL SECTION of seven poems,
which I believe are the most recently
written, strikes me as especially good. Not
that all the poems are equally success-
ful: I find the images of "Sleeping" un-
convincing in themselves, and those of
"At Thirty-five" are proceeding so rap-
idly outward into space and away from
each other that I despair of finding the
spot where the original explosion occur-
red. But the others, "The Stump," "The
Old Pilot's Death," "Digging" and "Cold
Water," seem easier in their manner,
more fully worked out, somehow less re-
strained and no less moving, than even
the best of the earlier poems. Mr. Hall
may be saying things here that he cares
more about, finding his true subjects
more often, or he may be working with
a surer sense of what we all care about.
All these poems show those special pow-
ers of attention and invention of which
I spoke earlier. In the best ones the sub-
ject is pressed and cornered until like
the ladder in "Wells" it breaks out in
leaves and fruit hangs from the branches.
Skeptics should consider "Cold Water,"
a poem in - syllabically measured lines
(9-3-7-7-4-7-9) on which Mr. Hall, when
he reads the poem, makes this helpful
comment: that before the farmers moved
into New Hampshire (the scene of the
poem), the brooks were full of brook
trout; when they cleared the woods for
farming and opened the brooks to the
heat of the sun, the brook trout dis-
appeared; later, when they left their
farms and the woods grew up again, the
brook trout came back. Not having the
space to quote the whole poem, I must
cruelly summarize the first three stanzas.
The poet walks into the woods and comes
to a shaded "black pool, / a small circle
of stunned drowsing air, / vaulted with
birch which meets overhead / as if smoke
/ rose up and turned into leaves." He
imagines dropping a line and catching
a brook trout and thinks "The pine
forests I walked through / darken and
cool a dead farmer's brook." Then he is
granted the vision so vividly and subtly
prepared for earlier in the details of cold
water, isolation in the woods, and the
imagined struggle with the trout:
I look up and see the Iroquois
coming back
standing among the birches
on the other side of the black pool.
The five elders
have come for me, I am young,
my naked body whitens with cold
in the snow, blisters in the bare sun,
the ice cuts
me, the thorns of blackberries:
I am ready for the mystery.
I follow them
over the speechless needles
of pines which are dead or born again.
About some of the details of these two
stanzas I have my doubts; nevertheless,
for me the mood is induced, the vision
hangs stubbornly in the mind's eye, and
the poem insists on its value as a cele-
bration of feelings that are not too re-
motely primitive to be called into play by
the right charm or ceremony. If after we
are quite familar with a poem, we still
want to return to it, to go through it
again, it is a good poem. "Cold Water"
is a poem I would not be willing to for-
get, and there are many others in "A
Roof of Tiger Lilies."
Jazz on Campus
-Why Not inSc
"The Grass" (from Part I) will serve
to illustrate Mr. Hall's rhythms and line
arrangements at their freest. Several of
the poems in Part II of the book are
written in "syllabics"--free verse with
one restriction, that of fixed line-lengths
measured in syllables. "Letter to an Eng-
lish Poet," for example, uses a stanza
with four lines of five, nine, five and nine
syllables. This device makes it possible
to write in stanzas without reminding the
reader of any familiar metrical under-
pattern. As in all free verse, local or
shifting rhythmic figures take the place
of meter, with results that are easy to
Rebellion and Return in the New England Tradition
By STEVE RABSON
LAST WEEK THE University of Mich-
igan Jazz Band left for an extensive
State Department tour of Latin America
that will cover 14 nations in four months.
Earlier this month the band drew a
capacity audience to the first jazz con-
cert ever performed in Rackham Audi-
torium. The success and recognition this
organization has recently achieved would
seem to suggest a renewed interest in jazz
on campus and in Ann Arbor. Certainly
there are more people willing to spend an
evening listening to jazz now than in
past years when the band played to a
half-filled Union Ballroom.
But what does this mean in terms of
the future of jazz in Ann Arbor? Will
there be more of it? Should the Univer-
sity, and particularly the School of
Music, begin to support jazz on a larger
scale? Jazz fans would like to think so.
But if there is to be more jazz in Ann
Arbor, what will the quality be like?
WHENEVER JAZZ enjoys a lift in
popularity, there is always a lot of
accompanying talk, particularly in aca-
demic circles, about how jazz is an "im-
provisatory art." the only "pure Ameri-
can folk form." Listening to some
scholars talk about jazz, one would
almost think that their impression
of a jazz musician is an old foot-shuffl-
ing Negro stereotype with "inborn
talent" and "natural rhythm." And while
the view of jazz as "illiterate music" has
largely disappeared in recent years, a
new and related attitude has grown up
to supplant it. The socially-conscious
now talk about jazz as "expression"-
as expression of the chaos of modern
urban life, as expression of racial tensions
and sexual intensity. And a jazz musician
must certainly find his inspiration in
these themes and others as well. But with
all this emphasis on expressionism, too
many of us lose sight of the fact that
Jazz is a discipline. It is music that must
be practiced and learned; and, because
of the fast-moving nature of its develop-
ment, it is music that must be constantly
re-learned.
Pianist Bill Evans has urged that this
expressionism must never become an ex-
cuse for lack of dedication. He suggests
that there are young jazz, players today
who would rather play something wrong
and impassioned than go home to work
it out until it is right, returning to the
stand to play it right and impassioned.
Jazz fans would agree, I think, that if
we are to have more jazz in Ann Arbor,
it should be good jazz. But, we may ask,
who is responsible for insuring us that
the jazz we are exposed to will be good
jazz? The logical answer would seem to
be that the musicians should be respon-
sible. But how is a local musician to
develop himself in a town of Ann Arbor's
size and location? Obviously if he is a
student, he can study in the music school.
But what can he learn there that will
specifically help his playing of jazz? Jazz
demands dedication and practice, yes.
But is it really possible to teach it in
school?
EAN JAMES B. WALLACE of the
music school compares the gradual
acceptance of jazz as a valid academic
discipline to the surprisingly recent
acceptance by music scholars of applied
music itself. He points out that before
1930 music schools were not giving
,ourses and degrees in specific instru-
ments. One could take a course in music
theory or history, but not in violin. Dean
Wallace says that there have been many
courses in jazz history and that the
University now includes the study of jazz
in a more general survey of American
music.
But a musician can't perfect his own
playing by studying jazz as history. Dean
Wallace agrees that it "takes as great a
port the offering of a degree in the sub-
ject. Citing other universities where such
degrees are offered (most notably In-
diana University and North Texas State),
he finds that a professional school has a
responsibility to supply the market. A
graduate of a music school "is expected
to walk from commencement into a pay-
ing job." And despite the recent resurg-
ence of interest in Ann Arbor, he does
not think that this market has developed
sufficiently to absorb "graduates in jazz."
But even if the administrative climate
is favorable to the inclusion of courses
in applied jazz at the University, the
question still remains: can jazz really be
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0
By G. ABBOTT WHITE
FOR THE UNION DEAD by
Lowell. Farrar, Straus and
New York. 72 pp. $3.95.
Robert
Giroux.
THIS LATEST book of poems by Robert
Lowell has been greeted critically and
publically with the sort of enthusiasm
one associates with Rose-Bowl winning
football teams. No review I have read
ends with anything but praise for the
47-year-old Pulitzer-Prize winner, and
his publisher announces in a full-page
New York Times ad that the book is in
a third printing. All of which proclaims
the fact that Robert Lowell has attained
the stature of the major poet now writing
in English, with four books of poems
over a twenty year span. It looks like a
neat trick.
Except that it isn't a trick in any dull
anderstanding of the word. An acrobat
with his prosody, Lowell has a keen and
sensitive eye as well which shows in all
his poems-and shows with courage. For1
if this latest book has any single line
of continuity with the earlier books other
than stylistic traits, it is the courage to
say with grace and force things lesser
poets would find embarrassing. Neither
a poetry pedantic nor scandalous "aca-
demic" nor "Beat," it is both learned
and savage.
Page Sixi
LOWELL'S LATEST book is in a New
England tradition of rebellion and
return. Where his first two books roughly,
were quarrels with society (past and
present) and authority, with a fixation
on the Second World War, the third
book, "Life Studies," became concerned,
intimately, with the immediate: Robert
Lowell and his memories. It was a dif-
ficult book - for few in his family or
friendship escaped a rigorous dissection.
We are almost reminded of the old Puri-
tan congregations and their stern re-
quirement for "election": that the pros-
pective member stand before them all
and bare all without qualm or qualifica-
tion. Lowell has done this and if we
have not found him perfect (which is to
say, an assurance of his humanity), at
least he has told us the truth as he saw
it and has come to terms with his past.
A knowledge of all this seems essential
for any just view of "For The Union
Dead." For this book is a reflection of
that turmoil, that coming-to-terms,
which is now done with. Not that the re-
bellion is ended-but that the poet has
firm ground, self-knowledge and accept-
ance, from which he can move.
T HE THIRTY-FIVE poems in the slim
volume fall into three main cate-
gories: poems rooted in the Northeast
(Boston and area), poems that deal with
nlaces and atmospheres quite diferent,
and "portraits." In all of them we find
the forceful, personal sense of their
author, and the immediate. Robert
Lowell's poetry is a poetry rooted in
place, in ancestry, in situation-all of
which adds up to its excellence, that it
has a voice; a unique and unmistakable
manner of talking and looking at the
world. Not only is there the powerful
sense of the particular, the concrete, but
also there is at the same time, a critical
and profound projection beyond. I deal
with two of the best:
"Water" begins with place: "It was a
Maine lobster town-" and is "about" a
relationship and the tensions and in-
securities that batter it into painful dis-
solution. The language is in terms of
that town, that occupation, and the sea:
"bleak white frame houses stuck/like
oyster shells/on a hill of rock." There is
an overwhelming . sense of weariness
through changing images of gray rock
that "looked" "the color/of iris, rotting
and turning purpler. . ." It ends with the
almost-pathetic fantasy of the woman's
dream-a mermaid clinging to a wharf-
pile, attempting an impossible "cleans-
ing" of barnacles. The metaphor is com-
plete: "In the end,/the water was too
cold for us."
"Fall 1961" captures those horrifying
moments that seem so long ago; moments
we have desperately tried to forget, mo-
ments when we all waited in a cold stupor
or in a quiet frenzy, filled our gas tanks
and phoned our loved ones for what we
thought, the last time. The rendering of
that frustration is perfect: "I swim like
a minnow/behind my studio window."
"The state/is a diver under a glass bell."
The most intense ends, "A father's no
shield/for his child." The. cold horror
smashes us - how completely we have
succeeded in frustrating our existence!
SOME OF THE poems fail because they
are either too involved or too distant
from Lowell's "center" - they lack the
certainty of voice. But there is pleasure
to be found-the kind of pleasure that
only comes from poetry doing what it
alone can do, and doing it well.
knowledge of styles to perform this as
it does to perform any other kind of
music. . . . We should bring jazz to life,
out of the history book.... It is impera-
tive that we have the performance of it."
He says, as an administrator, he would be
in favor of teaching jazz as applied music,
but the final curriculum decision would
have to be made by the faculty.
When asked about any immediate plans
to expand the present program, he point-
ed out that participants in the Latin
American tour are receiving four hours
of "instrumental ensemble" credit. He
also expected that next fall, with faculty
approval, there would be a formal re-
riuest for establishing the Jazz Band on
a permanent credit basis. He said he
would support the request.
HOWEVER, WHILE Dean Wallace is in
favor of the extension of jazz instruc-
tion to applied music, he does not sup-
taught in school? Discussing the degree
programs at Indiana University and
North Texas State, theory instructor
Jerry Bilik of the music school says, "the
idea of a college teaching someone to
play jazz does not seem valid." With ex-
perience as a composer and arranger for
television and Hollywood, Bilik maintains
that playing jazz "can't be taught aca-
demically. . . It's a personal thing .. .
(and) by its very nature, it can't be
taught. You can teach someone to play
an instrument, but you can't teach jazz.
. . . (Jazz is) basically feeling, not in-
tellectuality." He supports the story of
jazz in terms of its theory, history and
its effect on contemporary music, but
does not feel that credit courses in jazz
performance, per se, could be useful.
And what does the practicing jazzman
think of jazz as an academic study?
Saxophonist-pianist Bob Detwiler, '59M,
was involved in the Jazz Band as a stu-
THE MICHIGAN DAILY MAGAZINE SUNDAY, JANUARY 31, 1965