Books: Freer Verse

(2 of 2)

showing

even

without

a

deep

breath

thin

legs

rotted

with

disease.

Live

here!

on

this

page,

barely

making

it,

like

the

mass

of

mankind.

Bill Knott, 28, who writes under the name Saint Geraud, makes his point even more apocalyptically in To American Poets:

There's no time left to write poems.

If you will write rallying cries, yes, do so,

otherwise write poems then throw yourselves on the river to drift away.

Li Po's peachblossom, even if it departs this world, can't help us.

Pound's or Williams' theories on prosody don't meet the cries of dying children

(whose death I think is no caesura).

Soon there will be no ideas but in things,

in nibble, in skulls held under the oceans' magnifying-glass,

in screams driven into one lightning-void. . .

Only you can resurrect the present. People

need your voice to come among them like nakedness,

to fuse them into one marching language in which the

word "peace" will be said for the last time.

"Ah who shall soothe these feverish children/ Who justify these restless explorations?" wrote Whitman, who has been dead long enough to find a place in the hagiography of hip. As of now, few young poets feel the need to justify their work with critical commentary. George Amabile's response is typical: "I can't think of anything that wouldn't sound pompous or absurd." Such an attitude may not prove healthy for poetics, but it is good for poetry.