----------
>From: bob scheetz <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Lilly Prize
>Date: Wed, Nov 20, 2002, 11:30 PM
>
> Tom White writes:
>>... the awful fate of American writing
>>...that resulted from the widespread making of cozy berths in the
>>universities for ³creative writers.² ... A sort of alarming perversity
>>emerges from coddled people....
>
> a commonplace but true, ...more than ever re hyper-self-conscieous
> hyper-modernism, ...and now, propter said Lilly dung, only think what
> prodigious effluvia will infallibly ensue from said cozy berths,... the mind
> boggles
> viva, sartre!
He had a weird eyeball.
>
> thanks,
> bob
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Tom White <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2002 3:32 PM
> Subject: Lilly Prize
>
>
> 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 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.
>
> Itıs not that poets ought to starve. The fact that the serious ones, the
> authentic ones 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. Hereıs 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 Iıd 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 havenıt 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 Magazineıs present editor, Ed Parisi, often rejected Ruthıs
> 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 menıs believing.
>
> Eric Slaterıs AP story on Ruthıs 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 kingıs ransom to close all doors to the Muses forever?
> Maybe not. Letıs leave room for hope.
>
> Anybody interested in the story of Harriet Munroe and Ezra Pound and the
> reason Poetry Magazine became 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). (Itıs
> 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. (Poundıs friend, revolutionary painter-and-writer friend
> Wyndham Lewis said Pound was a revolutionary simpleton 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 Riperıs gift. So perhaps I am being sour grapes about
> it. But Iıll 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 donıt go
> together. A sort of alarming perversity emerges from coddled people, or so I
> think at least.
>
> However, I think Iıll 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.
|
