Billy Collins May Know We've Forgotten Langston Hughes' History

Most people, I think, want to forget bad news. Especially when whatever tragedy that happened was the fault of him or her. Historically, the same is true. History is taught with a bias, and up until the last few decades, literary anthologies largely left out the people marginalized by American history. I have found two poems, one older and one newer, that speak to this.
In "Dinner Guest: Me", Langston Hughes laments the false humility of many white people as they "Murmur[] gently/ Over fraises bu bois,/ 'I am so ashamed of being white'." Although the white people say things like this, Hughes knows that they see him as "The Negro Problem". A "problem" emerging out of a history of slavery, lynching, and marginalization at the hands of white oppressors, no doubt. Billy Collins has an entertaining poem about twisted history titled "The History Teacher". This is one stanza from the poem:

                                         Trying to protect his students' innocence

                                         he told them the Ice Age was really just 

                                         the Chilly Age, a period of a million years 

                                         when everyone had to wear sweaters.

Although Collins' poem is much less disturbing than Hughes', I think they make a similar point. 

Hughes is observing that the people responsible for his people's history is attempting to appear innocent, and Collins is showing that we often retell history in a softer version. At the heart of the conversation about race in America lies a retelling of history. Whatever retelling of history we decide to believe will fundamentally alter the way we as people view reality and will also alter what we fundamentally believe. After that, the only choice is either to accept history and act appropriately or to ignore it and its victims and suppress them as "problems." 

Claude McKay and Chris Tonelli

Claude McKay and Chris Tonelli do not have much in common in their poetry. McKay is a Harlem Renaissance era socialist whose polemic poetry is charged with an anger over racial injustice, and Tonelli is a young living poet who focuses a lot on nature, observation, and the self. I did find one interesting similarity between two of their poems, however.
In one of his sonnets, "The Negroe's Tragedy," McKay takes the classic form of sonnet and uses it to express anger over the systematic racism that was rampant in his day (and still is today). In one of his poems in The Trees Around, "Prologue to a Song of Marriage," which is about a Greek myth, the last lines say, "I assume, muse, that you're/ the heavenly one here./ How could I turn back to you/ in light of such historic suffering?" I think the question is phrased toward the epic as a genre by addressing the muse, although Tonelli would obviously not be abandoning poetry itself. The similarity I see is that both poems are changing a tradition without abandoning it completely. "The Negroe's Tragedy" is a sonnet with a modern and polemic twist, and "Prologue..." is a poem about rejecting a muse.
Again, most of McKay and Tonelli is on different playing fields, but this similarity is important in light of modern American poetry itself. Just as Ezra Pound credited Walt Whitman with breaking the new word and announced that is was time to carve the wood, modern American poetry has been a break from tradition without completely abandoning it. Being hyperaware of tradition, while still breaking from its confines and reshaping it, seems to be the story of 20th century poetry.

Gertrude Stein and Claudia Rankine

In reading Gertrude Stein and Claudia Rankine, I really wonder what the two have in common (if anything). Are they doing a similar thing, just in two different ways? Or is there message just as different as their style?
Claudia Rankine's Citizen is poetic social commentary on what it means to be a black citizen of the United States. She has poetic style, for sure, but she also has a clear message. Her poems are normally easy to understand, even if they are disturbing to read. But there is not much abstractness to her. She also prefers to insert paintings or photographs into the text, rather than forming an image out of words.
Gertrude Stein in her Tender Buttons is quite the opposite. She always seems to be forming an image out of words, and it is rarely clear what she is saying (if anything). She doesn't have to be saying anything, that's fine, but I wonder if she is trying to say something that I'm missing. Her poetry has been likened to a cubist painting, and I would certainly agree with that assessment. In both Stein and a cubist painting, you never really know what it means, but sometimes you just enjoy it.
My theory for the core of the difference between Stein and Rankine is two-fold. Firstly, they are two very different people in very different contexts, and so they produce very different poetry--simple as that. Secondly, if Stein does have something she is trying to say, I don't think she is very concerned with the reader getting it. Rankine, on the other hand, is very much concerned with being heard. Her message is too important and has too many implications for her to conceal it behind vague abstractions.
Although I prefer the upfront and unveiled style of Ranking, those assessment shouldn't come as critiques to either writer. Stein has her virtue and Rankine has her virtue--their respective virtues are just very different.

Gertrude Stein and Elisa Gabbert

In my last post, I compared H.D. and Elisa Gabbert as two poets on opposite sides of the women's movement that are similar in content but dissimilar in form. Now I'd like to compare Gertrude Stein and Elisa Gabbert in a similar way. Gertrude Stein wrote poems that have a semi-traditional layout on the page, but she also wrote a major poem in an unorthodox form: "Patriarchal Poetry".
"Patriarchal Poetry" is about 20 pages of prose poetry. It has sections of line breaks that seem like traditional poetry, but much of it is just prose in paragraphs. She also breaks from the norm when she writes whole paragraphs consisting almost completely of a repetition of 3 or 4 words. The whole poem seems to be in form and content an attempt to break from all poetry that has come before it, which Stein would allege is patriarchal poetry. She breaks in content with the avant-garde nature of feminism in her time and content in almost every way. Though much less surprising in the 2010s, Elisa Gabbert attempts to do a similar thing as Stein. She writes about feminism, gender roles, and the self, all subjects that are still controversial, though much more common than in the early 1900s. One example of this is a poem where she says, "as the women's movement progresses, women report less happiness...Most people choose power over happiness" (The Self Unstable 26). Her form is also orthodox, as she has no titles or line breaks in her poetry.
Elisa Gabbert is certainly in conversation with H.D. and Stein, whether she knows it or not, and in many ways follows in their footsteps.

H.D. and Elisa Gabbert

Whether or not Elisa Gabbert has read and been influenced by Helen Doolittle, they are both woman poets on opposite ends of the women's movement. In form, they both match their times. H.D. was a part of the imagist movement, and puts her poetry on the page in a semi-traditional layout. Gabbert, equally fitting for her age, has no titles, line breaks, or rhythm to her poetry. Her poems are almost like short poetic commentary snippets on various subjects--profound and pleasurable to read, nonetheless.
In content, however, H.D. and Gabbert share much more commonality. H.D.'s poem "Eurydice" is based on a Greek myth in which Eurydice, Orpheus's wife, is bitten and killed by a snake. Orpheus goes to the underworld to save her and is told that if he takes Eurydice and does not look back he will  be able to save  her. Just like Lot's wife, of course, he looks back and loses Eurydice forever. In one of Gabbert's poems she ironically reports, "as the women's movement progresses, women report less happiness" (The Self Unstable 26). She counters this in the same poem, however, with, "Most people choose power over happiness" (26). She seems to be saying that whether or not women or more happy now, she's satisfied with having the power to influence her own happiness. H.D.'s poem seems to be saying the same thing. An unfortunate event took Eurydice's life, and from that point on her destiny was completely in the hands of a man. And that man let her down.

Ezra Pound and Tim Earley

At this stage in my ability to read poetry, I consider it a success if I can read a poem and feel anything, somewhat know what it means, and enjoy it. Ezra Pound and especially Tim Earley, then, come as adequate challenges for me. And these two poets seem to be on completely different playing fields. Pound was an American ex-pat who hated America and loved Nazi Germany. Tim Early is from Western North Carolina and calls his collection "Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery." Despite the attractiveness of that title, his poems are incredibly hard to digest for me. But the point is, these guys don't even seem to be part of the same conversation.
And in trying to compare or contrasts the poems of these two, that's the main difference I find. Pound hates America and its poet, Walt Whitman, evident in "A Pact." Earley, conversely, agrees that "america is the best country to die in" (Poems Descriptive, 23).
A similarity, though, is that I would guess they both pride themselves in crafting poetry that is hard to figure out. To read some of Pound you need an anthology of classical Greek literature and to read Earley you need a long day with nothing to do. These two poets may intersect and diverge at other points as well, but I've yet to find those points.

Belz (Not) Looking Like Whitman

So apparently when Aaron Belz volumizes his beard with a "vitamin enriched formula that nourishes dormant roots with essential nutrients" he looks like Walt Whitman, as he claims in "My Chosen Vocation." It does sound like Belz is a pretty humble guy, but are there other ways in which he is trying to imitate Whitman? Cary Nelson agrees that "much of twentieth century American poetry is a dialogue with Walt Whitman" (MAP 1), so even though Belz is writing in the 21st century we can justifiably say he's probably imitating or distinguishing himself from Whitman. While folically he is obviously imitating Whitman, what about poetically?

A favorite topic of both Whitman and Belz is the self. Whitman tries to form some both-and individuality and commonality of the self in "One's-Self I Sing" among other places: "One's-Self I sing, a simple separate person,/ Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse" (MAP 1). Belz may be the exact opposite on the topic. His poem "Song of Myself" paints a pretty depressing picture of having a meal alone and making a joke to the cashier about splitting the check in an attempt to have community. And then again in “Team” which is worth showing in full:   

                        There’s no I in team,

                        but there’s one in bitterness

                        and one in failure.

            Maybe it’s safe to say, then, that Belz has a different view on the individual in his poetry than Whitman does. He is in dialogue with Whitman, however, and they do share the well-nourished beard. But who knows, Belz is a pretty unpredictable guy, so maybe he’s written or could write in the future poems that praise self-sufficiency just as much as Whitman did.

Sources: Anthology of Modern American Poetry, edited by Cary Nelson

Glitter Bomb, Aaron Belz