36 I CHRONICLESnSchools, restaurants, jobs are integrated.nBlacks, sanctipned by public opinionnand legal favor, are becomingnincreasingly racist. Even so, ruralnblacks and whites still know each othernand mix at work and the crossroadsnstores. Daniels thinks it ironic that “itnhas been rural Southerners who havenmost easily adjusted to the changingnway of life.” Perhaps he does notnrealize that, in the rural South, thencommunal identification which transcendsnrace still exists in spite ofnchange. Some things do remain asnthey ever were. But, as Daniels puts it,n”Southerners are being tamed.” Tonthat extent, the prospects for retentionnof this communal sympathy may notnbe good.nTommy Rogers, a former collegiatenprofessor of sociology in Louisiananand Georgia, resides in exile in Jackson,nMississippi.nNow That the DustnHas Settlednby Jane GreernCross Ties by X.J. Kennedy, Athens,nGA: The University of GeorgianPress.nThe Drive-In by R.S. Gwynn, Columbia,nMO: The University of MissourinPress.nAmerican poetry has for the past fewndecades been going through what cannonly be called an adolescence, discardingnrules and conventions simplynbecause they existed. Poetry and all thenarts go through a healthy siege ofnanarchy every so often, but this wasnmore like terrorism than a revolution;nthese revolutionaries, unlike the Romantics,nhad no idea of what to substitutenfor what they’d destroyed. Instead,nthey simply wrote, spilling their gutsndown the pages of fashionable andnunderground journals in two-wordwide,nuncapitalized entrails of selfobsession.nAs in most revolutions, the revolutionariesneventually became the bourgeoisie,nfat and complacent, ripe fornplucking. But the new “revolution”nreally isn’t one. The din of gleefuln4isruption having died down to annoccasional emission from some universitynEnglish department or another,nwe are left with what’s been there allnthe time, indestructible; real poetry. Itsndiligent architects are so obviously superiornto the dull burghers of free versenthat it’s now bad taste for an editor tonask for submissions of “experimental”npoetry. “Craft” is the buzzword today,neven to poets and editors who have nonidea what it might mean. X.J, Kennedynand R.S. Gwynn are notable exceptions.nA youngish old pro, X.J. Kennedy isnas well-known for his children’s booksnand college English texts (written withnhis wife, Dorothy) as for his poems.nKennedy, who lives and writes in Bedford,nMassachusetts, is surely the bestnfriend young poets have today (I speaknfrom experience, and I don’t evennknow him well), as tough-mindednabout his own muscular poems as he isnabout others’. His first poetry collection,nNude Descending a Staircase,nwon him the Lamont Award for Poetrynin 1961 when he was a callow youth ofn32. Many of Kennedy’s early and bestlovednpoems are in Cross Ties—“LittlenElegy,” “Nude Descending a Staircase,”n”Ars Poetica”—surrounded bynnewer or less-known poems.nIt would be dead wrong to describenKennedy’s poems as supercilious—nbut he does seem always to have anneyebrow cocked at life. A good Christiannman, Kennedy also appreciatesnthe pagan roots of human behavior.nHe’s marvelous writing about eroticnpassion (“By the cold glow that lit mynlover’s eye / I could read what pageneight had said to try” is “Sex Manual”nin its entirety), even better writingntenderly about his wife and family.nNot a poem in this collection of “everynpoem that the poet cares to save”ncontains a superfluous word or syllable.nAt 166 pages, Cross Ties is organicnin arrangement and flawless in nearlynevery instance. X.J. Kennedy will stillnbe admired by poets and readers whennthe next New Wave of poetry crackheadsncomes and goes, and the onenafter that.nR.S. Gwynn is associate professor ofnEnglish (but don’t hold that againstnnnhim) at Lamar University in Beaumont,nTexas. His poems, translations,nand critical articles have appeared innsuch places as Poetry, The SewaneenReview, and Playboy, although this isnhis first book of poems.nX.J. Kennedy writes, for the covernof Gwynn’s book, “Verse so strictiyncrafted is rare, yet Gwynn is no merentinkering formalist: his work has equalnparts of passion, energy, and outrageousness.nPoem after poem reads likena tightly corked explosion. . . . Herenis a mature, slowly perfected voicenwith its own distinctive power andnresonance.” Kennedy is exactly rightnabout Gwynn. I wasn’t previously familiarnwith his work, and the loss isnmine. Gwynn’s poems are dark, oftennbitter, and exquisitely clever, yet generousnin theme. A less mature poetnwould have been done in by suchnoutrage, but Gwynn is in completencontrol.nSince no poem in The Drive-In isn”representative” of the whole, thenwonderfully named “Untitled” maynserve as introduction:nIn the morning light a linenStretches forever. There mynunlived lifenRises, and I resist. . . .n—Louis SimpsonnIn which I rise untroubled bynmy dreams.nIn which my unsung theoriesnare upheldnBy massive votes, in which mynstudents’ themesnMove me, in which my namenis not misspelled;nIn which I enter strangers’nrooms to find.nMatched in unbroken sets,nimmaculate.nMy great unwritten books, innwhich I signnMy name for girls outside anconvent gate;nIn which I run for daylight andnmy kneenDoes not fold up, in which thenhome teams win,nIn which my unwed wife steepsnfragrant teanIn clean white cups, in whichnmy days beginn
January 1975July 26, 2022By The Archive
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