>


I wonder if all of those poets who sat round campfires through time and
told of different stories in verse from the tale of the tribe thought of
their activity as lonely and isolated?
Not sure I am not overstepping bounds in sending this, but herewith.
> Pre-refused by one of  my few outlets. Tom White
>
> Will Poetry Survive Ruth Lilly Van Riper?
>
> The poetry world (yes, Virginia, there is one) has been rocked by
> astonishing news: an elderly poet, Ruth Lilly (age 87) has established
> an endowment of $100 million to fund an annual $100,000 Ruth Lilly
> Poetry Prize. (Before returning to her maiden name after a divorce she
> was Mrs. Guernsey Van Riper Jr.)
>
> Well, kids, there goes poetry as an honest craft‹what was left of it
> anyway, after altogether tough times in the homeland since Browning was
> alive and puzzling all England, and Walt Whitman was the good, gray,
> and largely ignored sage of Camden, N.J., USA.
>
> It¹s not that poets ought to starve. The fact that the serious ones,
> the authentic ones‹the ones who can do nothing else‹do starve is
> irrefutable condemnation of the society they live in. Nothing else. But
> like every other social evil it cannot be fixed by government, and, I
> suggest, not by main force either, force majeure, represented by the
> lush Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. (The money descends from the
> pharmaceutical outfit.) Poetry is a lonely, private activity. Here¹s a
> jingle to that effect, entitled ³Orpheus²:
>
> I live in the wind, my lyre shrill in the wind
> I have no place in the councils
> But sing alone of high wide-ranging heroes
> Those other lonely, who people islands as I the air
>
> On the other hand, if the editors of Poetry Magazine should happen to
> like, say, one of my effusions (they are to be arbiters of the prize)
> and award me the moolah, I gotta tell you I¹d cash the check; just as I
> would take the lottery prize (except that I do not buy tickets); and as
> I cash my monthly SS check (while declaiming all the while against
> iniquitous
> government-forced income redistribution). I am impelled by news of the
> Lilly Prize to make this public confession and feel better for it; but
> I intend to take money where I can find it, except that I will not
> steal and will not sell drugs. (Not that I haven¹t thought a bit about
> doing both.)
>
> But back to the prize. Many earth-people readers may not know that
> Poetry Magazine became famous back in the years immediately before,
> during, and after the war WWI, because that amazing shill for po biz,
> Ezra Pound, got Harriet Munroe, to run Frost, Yeats, Eliot, himself,
> and others, all trailblazers in the modern movement which transformed
> verse in English. H.M. founded the magazine in the Windy City in 1912,
> and Pound was on to her from London, where he was then living, like a
> chicken on a June bug. If H.M. had not put up with his pushing and done
> what he told her to, Ruth Lilly might never have heard of Poetry
> Magazine.
>
> To put this whole matter on a time line: Pound was born in 1885; Ruth
> Lilly was born (I calculate) in 1912. She would have been reading
> Poetry in its latter years of ³the new thing,² through the 20s and 30s,
> and of course on from there.
>
> It seems Poetry Magazine¹s present editor, Ed Parisi, often rejected
> Ruth¹s poems, which came to her under the Van Riper moniker. He says it
> would have made no difference if he had known who she was. I believe
> that, because it would be more of a stretch for someone interested in
> poetry to believe in a philanthropist who would drop $100 mil for
> poetry than to perform high deeds in Hungary to pass all men¹s
> believing.
>
> Eric Slater¹s AP story on Ruth¹s big gift does not suggest that she may
> be revenging herself on Poetry Magazine for ignoring her. But it would
> be an exquisite revenge. A king¹s ransom to close all doors to the
> Muses forever? Maybe not. Let¹s leave room for hope.
>
> Anybody interested in the story of Harriet Munroe and Ezra Pound and
> the reason Poetry Magazine became‹in Slater¹s words in the AP article
> of Nov. 19 about the Ruth Lilly Prize‹³the oldest and, many believe,
> the pre-eminent poetry journal in the English language,² might read the
> account of it in the charming biography of Pound by Charles Norman
> (revised edition, 1969). (It¹s not that Pound was totally and
> unfailingly charming, but that Norman is, as a kind and quite truthful
> biographer). Pages 84 and following detail the events. The very first
> issue of Poetry Magazine carried a note by H.M.:
>
> ³Mr. Ezra Pound, the young Philadelphia poet whose recent distinguished
> success in London led to the wide recognition of his own country,
> authorizes the statement that at present such of his poetic work as
> receives
> publication in America will appear exclusively in Poetry.²
>
> Looking back, that innocent announcement appears as a virtual manifesto
> of revolution pending. (Pound¹s friend, revolutionary
> painter-and-writer friend Wyndham Lewis said Pound was a revolutionary
> simpleton‹high praise of a sort coming from that source.) Along the way
> Pound literally required Munroe to print Frost, who had been rejected
> here but published in England. Pound wrote the first review of Frost
> there and pumped him for years until he became an American ³standard.²
> He did as much for many others.
>
> The reactions of several poets consulted by Eric Slater were all most
> favorable to Mrs. Van Riper¹s gift. So perhaps I am being sour grapes
> about it. But I¹ll risk setting this down and wait for other comment to
> see how I fare in the pundit sweeps. But I think of the awful fate of
> American writing generally that resulted from the widespread making of
> cozy berths in the universities for ³creative writers.² Cozy and
> creative somehow don¹t go together. A sort of alarming perversity
> emerges from coddled people, or so I think at least.
>
> However, I think I¹ll make up a batch of my scribbles and send them off
> to join the flood. Odds are surely no worse than the lottery.
>
> Hail, Ruth! Thanks for the thought.