experience cosmic consciousness, sexualnexcitement, and “this curious sensenthat you’re actually being transformednliterally into an animal”:nYou start getting fantasies — Inmean, of power, lion-like power.n… Of course, this wasnmadness, you see, but thenrelationship between the ecstasynand madness is . . . one of thenthings that the headshrinkersnknow. … I woke up on thenmorning . . . with very littlensleep, and decided I wanted tonget to [the Dean’s] office.”nWhat the Dean thought was not reported.nOn the whole, however, the poetsnanalyzed in Professor Meyers’ absorbingnstudy did not induce but were contentnto blame their madness on parents,nwives, or friends. Berryman went so farnas to blame America itself for theirndementia: “You ask why my generationnseems so screwed up? … It seemsnthey have every right to be disturbed.nThe current American society wouldndrive anybody out of his skull, anybodynwho is at all responsive; it is almostnunbearable. It doesn’t treat poets verynwell.” If this seemed paranoid, Lowellnembraced the explanation: “John B., innhis mad way keeps talking about somethingnevil stalking us poets. That’s anbad way to talk, but there’s truth to it.”nIf anything was stalking the poets,nhowever, it was the deranged inner selfnin each that could not be kept at bay. Itnwas this self that led Berryman to saynthat, in order to create, the poet had tonexperience “the worst possible ordealnwhich will not actually kill him. … Inhope to be nearly crucified.”nBut Berryman in fact crucified himselfnbecause he could not accept hisnfather’s suicide. A journal entry forn1954 reveals both his rage at his fathernand his feelings of excremental worthlessness:n”So [my] dream is my bloodynfather looking down at me, whom he’snjust f—ed by killing himself, makingnme into a s—t: and taunting me beforenhe flushes me away.” Like Berryman,nPlath also had the insane impulse tondig up the body of her father, so as tonrage at him for having had the crueltynto die of diabetes when she was eight.nAnd in “Daddy,” she imaged the fathernOtto Plath as a Nazi, a devil, and anvampire; she then transmogrified himninto her husband Ted Hughes, whonfinally had had to separate himselfnfrom her and from this madness. Shengot her “revenge” on them both byngassing herself to death in 1963. Butnneither of these hapless men ever approachednthe cruelty of Sylvia herself,nwho — in her mode of dying —npermanently scarred her two children,nwho were in the house at the time.nOne of the merits of Professor Meyers’nwork is that he continually reminds usnof the cost, to their loved ones, of thesenderanged feelings.nLowell was of the opinion that it wasnperhaps “an irrelevant accident thatn[Sylvia Plath] actually carried out thendeath she predicted”: it was “part ofnthe imaginative risk.” But as ProfessornMeyers’ evidence makes dazzlinglynplain, the mental problems of thesenwriters were deeply rooted in the psychicnconstitution of each poet, not innthe imaginative risks of writing verse.nNor was their derangement caused bynAmerican society, which honorednthem by giving them grants, awards,nteaching jobs, recognition, publicity,npraise, and success. (They were in factnthe most celebrated writers of theirntime.) In any case, toward the end,nLowell remarked to Roethke, “Therenmust be a kind of glory to it all thatnpeople coming later will wonder at. Incan see us all being written up in somenhuge book of the age. But under whatnBOOKS IN BRIEFntide?” Jeffrey Meyers has now writtennthat book, and Manic Power ofl^ers ansharply critical account of the chaoticnlives they translated directly into thendisturbing verse. The book cannot failnto create a sense of wonder, but it is notnquite of the kind Lowell hoped for. Ifnthese poets did not attain the glory theynclaimed for themselves — they wereninferior to their predecessors Eliot, Stevens,nand Frost—their story is neverthelessna parable of the risks—for poetnand reader — of cultivating and romanticizingnextremes of feeling.nGetting It Rightnby John B. JudisnThe Conservative Movement bynPaul Gottfried and ThomasnFleming, Boston: TwaynenPublishers.nWriting a history of recent Americannconservatism is not like writing a historynof baseball or the Social Security system.nThere is fairly wide agreementnabout what constitutes baseball and SocialnSecurity; at issue are specific details.nBut there is little agreement about whatnAmerican conservatism is. Not merelynthe rocks and bushes, but the verynterrain remains undefined.nThere have always been “conservatives”nin America — Ralph WaldonPella Dutch by Philip E. Webber, Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press.nSometimes we forget the submerged languages that affect our American English, thenreasons why the people of Pella, Iowa, for instance, say, “Are you coming with?” instead ofnthe grammatical “along.” Philip Webber’s slim but informative volume should prove livelynreading even for those langauge buffs whose ancestry is not Dutch.nTwice as Less by Eleanor Wilson Orr, New York: W. W. Norton & Company. A booknabout so-called “Black English,” this volume by a schoolteacher with 35 years of classroomnexperience explains why meaning must be adequately expressed for speech to be functionalnand communicative.nWriting Red: An Anthology of American Women Writers, 1930-1940 edited bynCharlotte Nekola and Paula Rabinowitz, New York: The Feminist Press. There isnnothing wrong with this pamphlet by a cadre of idee fixe activists and ideologues that somenhumor would not cure.nThe Education of a Yankee by Judson Hale, New York: Harper & Row. A goodnmemoir by a New Englander who was taught to know and feel that “a Yankee’s a man whonain’t leanin’ on nothin’.”nPepper: Eyewitness to a Century by Claude Denson Pepper with Hays Gorey, SannDiego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. “I was a New Dealer before there was a New Deal,”nwrites former US Senator Claude Pepper. For a man who, at 88, still feels that his viewsnabout a benign Soviet Union are “vindicated by events,” the world holds few secrets and,nperhaps, very few truths as well.nnnNOVEMBER 1988129n