Elinor Wylie

Her fragile poems were titled such as “Beauty,” “Address to my soul,” and “Trivial Breath.” Along with Edna St. Vincent Millay, Lola Ridge, Dorothy Parker and others, Elinor Wyle (1885-1928) cultivated the looks, behavior, metaphysical attitudes and the discontent of the new woman of the Twenties. The first twenty-five years of her life were spent in the High Society of Washington D. C. and the history of her romantic life was tumultuous and sometimes embarrassingly public (flights and divorces from her first two wealthy husbands were fodder for the daily newspapers and for gossip columnists). Often aloof, self obsessed and narcissistic she developed an aura of glamour around herself, buying silver slippers, mirrors and Balenciaga gowns. Yet she was as obsessed with poetry and with other literary concerns during her short writing life of less than ten years.

Many of the literary tastemakers of the times were in thrall to her and her delicate poems. Anthologist Louis Untermeyer devoted almost as many pages to her as to Eliot in his Modern American Poetry anthology of 1930. He characterized Angels and Earthly Creatures, the volume she readied for publication in the last months of her life:

“Here are the cunningly poised and polished syllables, here are the
old concerns with freezing silver, frail china and pearly monotones,
but here is a quality that lifts them high above themselves. . . . the poet
transcends her influences and develops a highly personal mysticism.”

Carl Van Doren, Professor of English at Columbia University and editor of the Nation and Century magazines not only printed her poems, and reviewed her books, but developed a close personal friendship with her. “She respected the passions, she respected the mind and manners,” he said. Edmund Wilson, whom she once called “Bunnius Agustus” published many of her poems and was devoted to her and her work. She was classed by Horace Gregory, with English poets Thomas Love Peacock, Walter Savage Landor, Lionel Johnson. She was in fact obsessed with the poet Shelley, writing a novel about him and in what she felt was his style. Wylie carried on a complicated friendship with Edna St. Vincent Millay whose devotion to Wylie was admirable. Millay learned of her friends death just before she was to read in public and began her reading reciting by heart her friends poems. For poetry as well as love, she married her third husband, poet William Rose Benet in 1923. He once noted that “Her spiritual home lay west of the moon” and was a careful protector of Wylie during her lifetime and of her literary reputation after.

Marjorie

Perloff has a fairly long, or maybe medium sized review of David Lehman's Oxford Book of American Poetry. It begins with a good review, or survey of the large anthologies of the last 50 years or so. She does a good job with this, dry stuff, but important. She sideswipes Lehman's insistence in the Introduction to the anthology: "Not one selection was dictated by a politcal imperative." To which Perloff quips "It all depends, on what you mean by 'political in all fairness." Indeed. Lehman of course is one of the most influential, some might say careerist (certainly the most careerest of any living poet). So many of his choices have to have been made with back scratching in mind. Well, anyway he does have a lot of energy, but one is a little dismayed to find him so
central to present-day canon forming. But, back to Marjorie, who does a bang up job of chiding DL for his lack of attention to long poems. Her list is spectacular. She objects to Tom Cark's inclusion and I have to heartily agree with her. The small tip of the hat to Creeley and Snyder is not understandable, as MP says. And only four pages to LZ. not good. She picks, rightly on a short Jean Garrigue poem. Its not very important. Which is not to say that Jean Garrigue isn't important, but really. L's treatment of Pound and Stein is incomprehensible, which she doesn't exactly say, but I do. As I also say: "Who is Aaron Fogle." One thing I would like to know more about is her assertion that Donald Hall ". . .did all he could in the 1950's to block their publication [Ashbery and O'Hara].
And last but not least "Molly Peacock" instead of "Marjorie Welish?" says Marjorie P. The reason of course should be apparent. MP has more to offer DL in the Poetry game than Marjorie W. Its sad. And why two poems in the anthology with Bitch in their title? I don't even want to go there. Read Marjorie's article in the TLS of September 1, 2006. You go girl.

"But you haven't told me yet, how's Merrier?"

"A shell . . . dead . . . poor chap."

"And the anarchist, Lully?"

"Dead."

"And Dubois?"

"Why ask?" came the faint rustling voice peevishly. "Everybody's dead. You're dead, aren't you?"

"No, I'm alive, and you. A little courage. . . . We must be cheerful."

"It's not for long. To-morrow, the next day. . . ." The blue eyelids slip back over the crazy burning eyes and the face takes on again the waxen look of death.”

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In 1917, the 21 year old Harvard student John Dos Passos began his service as an ambulance driver for the private ambulance service Norton-Harjes. In doing so, he joined other writers and artists such as Dashiell Hammett, E. E. Cummings, Malcolm Cowley and Harry Crosby. His novel/memoir of this time was published in London in 1920 and in New York in 1922. Dos Passos was shocked, embittered and incensed by what he saw of the reality of war, mounds of dead bodies, screaming soldiers, horses dying from poison gas and other atrocities. He was, unlike many of his compatriot writers, also enraged at the nationalist fervor of the press, the government and other official bodies. This rage fairly jumps off the page of One Man’s Initiation, which as published was less fiery than originally written (the printers required considerable changes in the language). The novel was largely ignored and sold poorly, in contrast to the angry reception and indignation which Three Soldiers was to cause. The impressionistic. experimental style of the book was to be further developed in Dos Passos’ masterpiece, the three volume
U. S. A. (1930-1936), a more trenchant criticism of the triumphal materialism and hypocrisy of American Society. This materialist ethos as well as an angry criticism of it were born in the Twenties.