The Deconstructive Lyricnby Paul Ramseyn”Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must be goodnsense . . . just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house.”n— Samuel Taylor ColeridgenSelected Poems II: Poems Selectedn& New 1976-1986nby Margaret AtwoodnNew York and Boston: HoughtonnMifflin; 158 pp., $16.95 (cloth),n$9.95 (paper)nDon’t Look Backnby Dabney StuartnBaton Rouge and London: LouisiananState University Press; 64 pp.nargaret Atwood writes in hernM poem “Mushrooms”:nHere is the handfulnof shadow I have brought backnto you,nthis decay, this hope,nthis mouthfulnof dirt, this poetry.nAlso in Selected Poems U, in “FivenPoems for Grandmothers”: “I makenthis charm / from nothing but paper;nwhich is good / for exactly nothing.”nAnd in “Two-Headed Poems”: “Thisnis not a debate / but a duet / with twondeaf singers.”nPaul Ramsey is poet in residence andnGuerry Professor of English at thenUniversity of Tennessee, Chattanooga.n28/CHRONlCLESnThen, one might think, each singernmay rejoice in his own singing, howevernmuch he mangles the tune, howeverninept the words, since he does not hearna thing. The singers hear nothing,nmean little, and sing long. Some of thensingers, with Heideggerian fervor, reallynmean nothing. Really, if there were anreally. As Atwood puts it in “NotesnToward a Poem That Can Never BenWritten”: “this is the place that willnfinally defeat you / where the word whynshrivels and empties / itself. This isnfamine.”nYes, it is, and an abundant famine,nwhere many poets of our time starve,nhallucinate, and insist on their hallucinationnof starvation.nThe subject is despair, including thendespair of any genuine knowledge ornunderstanding whatever, the form unbuckled,nthe verse prose. The sufferingnentailed is often quite genuine, and Inwish to speak charitably, but the aestheticnand moral and philosophicalnconsequences are nonetheless to benjustly deplored.nThe historical causes and influencesnare long, sufficiently complex, and deficientlynRomantic. The Romanticsntaught self-expression, the power of thenself, the boundlessness of the self; thencontemporary bearers of such tidingsnnnwrite of the collapse and fragmentationnof self. Dabney Stuart in “Casting” innhis book Don’t Look Back (the booknwould not exist if it obeyed its tide),nwrites “teach me to brew / mynlife . . . / and conjure, and construe/n. . . lost selves . . . / to love.” I wish angood poet well; the lines are far fromnthe exaltations of Romantic egoism.nWordsworth’s “The Prelude,” thensearch for a unified self and selfunderstanding,nis the paradigm fornmuch of contemporary poetry, thoughnwithout Wordsworth’s self-confidencenand mastery of blank verse. The searchnbecomes search without any real hopenor even intent of arrival.nThe Romantics taught freedomnfrom “rules” and from genres, andnexalted the shaping power of imagination,nthe human power that grandlynperceives or maybe creates the beautynand excellence of its vision. “Beauty isntruth, truth beauty.” “Fled is thatnmusic: — Do I wake or sleep?”nMany modern poems vacillate betweennthe grandeur of imagination andnits falseness or uncertainty; manynothers deny the grandeur or any hope:na resultant rule is to write in the onengenre, the deconstructive, nonversenlyric.nKant taught that the mind consti-n