Southern Bookman

Farewell, Mr. Cassity

I'll never forget his voice, the one with which he spoke and the one in his poems. My encounters with the poet and scholar Turner Cassity over 20 years were all memorable. 

Looking back,I must have first met Mr. Cassity -- he always called me Mr. Mayeux -- at the excellent Callanwolde poetry weekends, once a major part of Atlanta's literary life before they fell victim to pre-Olympics budgeting. The weekends allowed local poets to meet and receive instruction from an amazing array of talent. I remember Amy Clampitt laughing at my statement that Keats was my "main man," and Paul Muldoon, before he became such a big deal, brushing his hair back from his brow and rolling those Irish eyes. Rosemary Daniell's energy and passion also stand out. My most cherished memory is sitting at a table with Mr. Cassity and James Merrill during lunch at a tavern in Toco Hill shopping center. Mr. Merrill ate a sandwich of some kind, and might have had a beer.  Of course, I spoke too much, but Mr. Merrill and Mr. Cassity graciously accepted me. That night, Mr. Merrill gave one of the best readings I've every attended. Electricity pulsed through me as he stood in the half light, reading poems about his refined New York childhood. The only other readings that captivated me so were Howard Nemerov at Sewanee and Bill Matthews at Indiana.

Mr. Cassity's voice retained the lilt and cadence of his native Mississippi. His speech was like the discovery of a lost historic artifact. The voice of the early 20th century Southern educated upper middle class was mixed with a clipped, world-weary tone, giving it the quality of a a mixture of bourbon and vinegar. He was a most opinionated man, with unconventional, rather caustic views, yet he delivered his pronoucements with such warmth and good spirit that they were never offensive or threatening. He was generous and encouraging, no matter how unskilled the poet. I also took his poetry writing class at Emory's evening program, and loved his comments about craft and the knowledge he imparted about technical matters such as meter. Every poem he wrote, except for one (a love poem), was in meter, and he frequently used rhymed couplets, although he avoided writing in forms like the sonnet and the villanelle. 

Probably the last of the celebrated students of the Stanford curmudgeon and poetry controversalist Ivor Winters, Mr. Cassity with his 'wit and learning was like being with  Noel Coward or Oscar Wilde. Each casual sentence sounded as well-crafted as a line in one of this poems. A good many of his poems will stay permanently on my list of favorites. I particularly loved his narrative poems with historical settings, such as his evocation of German sailors visiting New Orleans in the 1930s after piloting their U-boat up the Mississippi. 

I last saw Mr. Cassity about two years ago, at a reading he gave at Callanwolde. I once published an article on his work, and wanted to write a book on him, and mentioned this to him. "Well, do it," he said. I also pitched an article on him to Poets and Writers, the self-proclaimed nurturer of writing, but I suppose he wasn't trendy enough. At the reading, Mr. Cassity shocked me at how much he'd aged, but he was still full of energy and enthusiasm and gave a strong reading. Unfortunately, he had to share the billing with a lesser Atlanta poet. Afterwards, I told him farewell, thinking I would surely enounter him again. I kept putting off the book as other projects and daily concerns popped up. This week, I was stunned to find a meager paid obituary on him in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He deserves much, much more. 

Mr. Cassity was a strong influence in my development as a poet, critic and lover of literature and I will cherish my memories of him. It's too bad that I never conducted a Southern Bookman interview with him. Over the years, I have tracked down nearly every book he published, some at library book sales or discovered on rarely visited shelves. He will always be a poet to whom I will return. And, I still have that book to finish.

Thoreau's Living Spirit

In drowsy early afternoon, I watch through the living room window as a small woodpecker attempts to hammer holes in a young tree. At last the little fellow gives up and flies away, no doubt to receive pecking lessons from Dad.

Living in Atlanta's North Buckhead, we have been lucky to observe nature close up. A patch of woods borders our backyard, and through the years we have seen foxes, rabbits, squirrels, owls, hawks and other creatures. Like Thoreau and the contemporary poet Mary Oliver, I have longed to document the daily life of our small patch of wildnerness.

Our swimming pool, the deck of which now lies in disrepair, has been an idyllic attraction for animals. Lately, replicating previous summers, I've found four young baby frogs, shrews and salamanders in the pool. Alas, the frogs and shrews, unable to climb back out of the pool because of its ledge, are usually found drowned, although I've often caught a frog in the midst of its trademark frog kick. Salamanders frequently start wriggling when I pull them up in my net.  In recent years, I've rescued snakes, not my most favored animal, but worth saving.

Another curious occurrence is the proliferation of baby mimosa trees. They sprout up everywhere, and I pull them up or douse them with Roundup (not so Thoreauvian). A huge bastard mimosa grew up beside the swimming pool fence over the years, and I suppose that is the parent of all of the seedlings. If I didn't keep pulling them up, I would eventually live in a mimosa forest of trees just like the original one that I let mature from a tiny seedling. Their abundance makes me think about the Amazon rain forest. The rain forest is in peril, but I'm sure that when humans eventually disappear, the rain forest will regenerate itself.

Last summer, I fulfilled a longtime desire to visit Thoreau's Walden pond in Concord, Mass., the center of Transcendentalist thought. (And the site of the first shot fired in the American revolution. Like Thoreau's writings, the shot was famously heard around the world, as Mr. Emerson noted.) The huge, dark pond, the result of a glacier scouring the earth, I assume, is actually a public beach, full of swimmers. On a hike, we found the site of Thoreau's cabin, now covered by woods. In Thoreau's time, the site was mainly barren of trees, so the forest has come back.

Standing by the place where Thoreau lived and worked, where thousands of visitors have placed stones, I had the sensation of feeling Thoreau's presence, as I suppose everyone does. The darkness beneath the trees, the realization of how Thoreau's message had begun in this small spot and resounded through the world, the reverence of fellow visitors, made me want to live as he did.

Standing there, I recalled a much smaller pond in our neighborhood. Years before, after reading Thoreau, I'd walked to the pond and had my first enounter with the Blue Heron, one of several over the years. The experience led to this poem:.

After Reading “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”

At the pond by the condominiums,

the great blue heron

stalks the shallow water,

slow, lugubrious dance

almost beautiful.

Head speared for fish,

disturbing his own reflection,

he hunts along the edges.

One day he stood, perfectly still,

as if at prayer,

then broke and flew

toward his endless

blue freedom.

A flock of them in flight

astonished Henry and his brother, John,

as they prepared the raft

for their journey home,

strange, fierce wind behind them,

world changed to autumn overnight.

“Now comes good sailing,”

Henry said, near death,

as his sister, Sophia, read to him,

his own words about that morning.

 

I hoped to keep following Thoreau's example. A year after visiting Walden, watching the small woodpecker, and a cardinal that lands on the magnolia tree, I feel his presence again.   

 

A New Gift from William Styron

The New Yorker's publication of William Styron's "Rat Beach" reminds us of what we lost at his death. The story about Styron's World War II experience with the Marines in the South Pacific brings back his unmistakable first-person voice. Again, I was carried along by his humor, the acutely observed details, the memorable characters and settings. As with Philip Roth, that voice echoes through different books and stories, modulating and shifting, yet unique and indelible, like a signature. 

Such a sensitive, time-haunted man. I met him briefly once at Sewanee, undoubtedly making a fool of myself with my alcohol-fueled blather. I remember him seated in Rebel's Roost, with a glass of white wine. He'd already written his book about depression, and had given up the whiskey. His sad, caring face remains with me all these years later.

He left us that voice, and now another book of stories. A gift for all of us, in these perilous times of war and desolation. 

The Mosiac of Cavafy's Historical Vision

I first encountered C.P Cavafy about 20 years ago, captivated as many are by poems like "The City," "Ithaca," and "Waiting for the Barbarians." Rolfe Humphries' translation, rarely if ever mentioned today, excited me, giving Cavafy's language and ideas depth and vitality. Since then, each translation I have seen lessens Cavafy's impact.

The latest is Daniel Mendelsohn's. My first inclination on reading his edition of "Collected Poems" (Alfred A. Knoph) was to wonder if Cavafy is really such a great poet. Many of the poems now seemed simplistic and flat. Many of the love poems showed all of the emotional complexity of a 14-year-old's. The famous anthologized pieces were muffled and muted, lacking the vibrant energy that I remembered. 

As I read on, the work gained on me. The sheer cumulative power of the history poems gave me a sense of Cavafy's mourning for the ancient cultures of Rome and Greece, his sense of Alexandra's glorious past and long decline. Medelsohn's notes on the historic background of the poems are an education in classical culture. On second reading, the defining Cavafy poems regained some of their luster. 

The cumulative weight of the collection overcomes the weakness of some of the individual poems. Many of them strike me as flat and old-fashioned, but I've had the same reaction to translations of ancient poets such as Horace. Mendelsohn's translations, in this collection and a companion book of Cavafy's uncollected poems, received strong reviews, and I'd hoped that they would renew the excitement that I'd first experienced over Cavafy. 

Mendelsohn says that his translations are closer to Cavafy's original Greek, that Cavafy was more of a formal poet than his other translators showed, adhering to strict meter and rhymes. Mendelsohn's fidelity to Cavafy's original work is worthy, but also reveals Cavafy's drawbacks, a flatness of tone and emotional simplicity.

Cavafy's historic melancholy, his ability to replicate the pathos of Marc Antony and other historic figures, comes through, however. A rich portrait of Cavafy's Alexandra and other Mediterranean cities, such as Beirut, slowly builds, with historic layers like the coats of paint of an old painting. While I don't experience my youthful excitement over Cavafy, I gain a quieter appreciation of his cumulative vision.

 

Lorrie Moore Upholds New Yorker's Tradition

A delicious sense of anticipation warmed me when I saw the New Yorker's table of contents for the July 6 and 13 issue included a short story by Lorrie Moore. The story, "Childcare," met my expectations, enthralling me with strong characters and wonderful language.

How rare it is now for a reader to enjoy a short story in a general interest magazine. Esquire still publishes fiction, along with the New Yorker's weekly contribution, and I recently read that the Saturday Evening Post is re-entering the field. But mainstream fiction is an endangered species. Sure, the literary quarterlies still perform admirably, and short story collections continue to roll out. Yet the short story appears in retreat from our central culture (if such exists anymore).

Writers like Lorrie Moore keep the form vital. I've been reading her work for years, and looking again at what she's achieved in light of this newest story, I place her in the upper tier of writers. I sometimes thought of her work as too light, too wry, but "Childcare" shows her mastery at giving apparently mundane words and events deep significance. And, thinking back to her stories and novels, I recall how she's given light to some of our deepest subjects. The author's note said that Moore's coming out with a new novel this fall. I'll be looking forward to every sentence.   

San Francisco's Golden Days

Last week in San Francisco, I made the obligatory visit to City Lights Bookstore, that cathedral of Beat history. I had my own memories of the place, having bought Jackson Bate's exellent biography of Keats there 25 years or so ago. Over the years, memories grow hazy, but I've always paired my love for the book with the happiness of browsing the shelves at City Lights, the energy of the North Beach streets, and the glow of walking in the same place as Kerouac and his comrades.

This time, older and not so enamored with the Beats, I still marveled at the bookstore's fine selection. But when I went upstairs to the poetry room, and an obviously stoned young man stared at me with deadened eyes, I felt sad and weary. "Howl's" lament about the best minds of the generations made a hollow echo. Only days before we'd happened upon young medical interns celebrating their graduation into residency, and their energy and purpose made a bright contrast to these young people sitting morosely in the poetry room. I revere reading and the life of the mind, but the kids there struck me as human cliches.

 Finally, we emerged into the cool San Francisco twilight, and headed down Jack Kerouac Alley. Remembering the joy of his books, his sense of wonder and the ecstatic, I wondered what he would have thought about being turned into a label, a tourist destination. (Well, I was a tourist, with my shaggy late middle age white-man look). Yet, what an accomplishment he had made. Like Thoreau and Whitman, he'd struck deep into a strain of Ameican thought, stepping back from the corporate orthodoxy, the machine of success, to celebrate the natural and the spiritual, although his vision took it to its extreme dead end, as he himself recognized.

Well, so much for City Lights and the Beats. Later, on Fillmore Street, I found a book I've been searching for for some time: a collection of Leonard Michaels' essays. I'd never heard of Michaels until years after his death. He'd been a consequential writer of the '60s and '70s, and I discovered his short stories and novels when they were reprinted in the late '90s. Yes, like Richard Yates and others, he'd been rediscovered. I'd heard his essays were also reprinted, and had searched vainly for the book in Atlanta's corporate bookstores. Then, I saw my long-sought treasure at Browser Books, a shop with an outstanding selection. Going up to Alta Park to a bench overlooking the city, I dipped into the first essay, on the essence of the story, and was happy to encounter Michaels as a fine critic and thinker.

San Francisco is one of the few cities left in America where independent bookstores still thrive, and Borders and Barnes & Nobles don't dominate. The beautiful old city of hills and cliffs and rainbow-hued Victorians swung me from excitement to heart break second by second. A beautiful young woman, a homeless mental case cursing the universe. Lovely fountains, soaring buildings, stunning ocean vistas, and beggars, men without hope sleeping all morning in green city parks, whores and cons on Geary Street. From block to block, you witness the full arc of the human condition.

So many quotes in store windows and institutional walls from dead writers, from Herb Caen to Mark Twain to Jack Kerouac. I sensed a city living too much on its past. But at a bar or in the train, I would overhear young people talking, speculating, dreaming. Surely, new stories, new literature, new ideas, new music will arise in such a place.