The Iowa Review Volume 2 Issue 1 Winter 1971
The Poetry of Carl Rakosi L. S. Dembo
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Article 29
The Poetry of Carl Rakosi
L.
S. Dembo
to
continues
in 1965 after a twenty-five
to poetry
returned
Having
a
enjoy
chiefly
reputation.
avant-garde
silence, Carl Rakosi
year
him
Associating
with
the
so
called Objectivist Group of the thirties, which included Louis Zukofsky, George a collection of his Oppen and Charles Reznikoff, New Directions brought out in 1967, and his poetry has continued to appear in various little work, Amulet, Like the other members of the group, which was held together more magazines. financial
by
than
necessity
a
by
common
Rakosi
program,
has
ac
reluctantly
label. And, also like the others, he has done so because cepted the Objectivist has been able to interpret the term to suit his own aesthetic inclinations:
he
It conveyed a meaning [he wrote] which was, in fact, my objective: to present objects in their most essential reality and to make of
each
an
poem
of a subject; of
The
loose
bowels
and
was
however,
subject, and
a concern
that
sometimes
streaming, not
to be
gives
shape
to
the
obviously,
the
the
sincerely,
craftsmanship." than clich?s
more
broken
made
poet
the
by discriminating
and
halves
opposite
vagueness;
consciousness.1
screaming,
eliminated;
by imagination these distinctions
intelligence, What makes
this,
by
that is, of all forms of personal
the experience
by "feeling
object honesty
. . . meaning
object.
the opposite,
particularity,
is that
are
they
career.
of Rakosi's
into
poem
an
by
of part back
Looking
on his early work, Rakosi remarked that, for the most part, he had been "seduced by the elegance of language." After the hiatus he had had, as he relates, "a lifetime more
with
about
feelings
an
sometimes
cessful,
"objective" an immediate
social
for
defined, the
poem?and and
need
him made experience as most part, personal to turn subjective expressed or avoid sentimentality
This
work."2
the
Rakosi therefore
one.
deeply-felt
Sometimes
he
was
suc
not.
When of
in
people
"subject-matter," Thus relations.
human
into experience "loose bowels"?was
gance
with
involvement concerned
said that in his early poems he was
Rakosi
language
(or
"subsumed
by
language"),
he
was
in
seduced a
sense
by the ele ad
passing
verse
that he had been strongly influenced by judgment. He acknowledged Stevens and argued that Stevens had "killed all subject-matter": Wallace "I dont know what kind of experience Stevens started with, but if you take one of
his
poems
and
try
to understand
terms of this criterion, another
occupies vens,
are
open
dimension, to
it as
a man
saying
the "elegant" rhetorical universe but
Rakosi's
remarks,
on
something,
lost."
you're
of the early work himself
as well
as
In
clearly on
Ste
question,
72
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To tinka," actually "Peter
more, effete
and
and the by "Sittingroom to Wallace Stevens," "Homage a take-off to be "Salons" appears as
imitations.3 by
"Sittingroom
they not only parody
Stevens'
Pa
"Salons"
poems, in Amulet
reprinted true not
parodies, Quince"
two
the
with,
begin were
which
Patinka"
on
diction
and
"Sunday
they
on
Further
Morning."
imagery but
are
satirize an
world:
in a plush repose,
I found Miss Levi curves
the
counting
in her
pitched
portly
mirrors
by seven bored and pigmy globes. Her floors were
tourmaline
standards.
topaz
supporting
("Sittingroom")4
The rhetoric is Stevens' but the imagery and the irony recall Eliot. In any case Miss Levi is a fit companion for the dandyesque Stevensian speaker who is de she says, scribing her. "Carl, I feel/the musings of profuse dim meistersingers," a Stevensian revealing tive meaninglessness, "We mix on
with
pelagic
of her
sensibility
where
passes
to
say
in
imagina
passions.
my into
on
from my hair,
Sea spiders hobble twinkle
goes
sail
prawns
like
shall
she
corals
and
carbonates
and
own,
eyes
frost."
of
octagons
This is clearly the language of surreality and it is a style in which the the early poems are usually something took delight. Nonetheless, Rakosi young a more than exercises: they present lyric speaker whose elegance delimits his Rakosian
The
personality.
"in
works
poet
cut
and
glass
majolica"
and
hears
"the
But essentially it is a music that plectrum of the angels" ("Night Thoughts"). cannot be transcribed into an intelligible measure, just as the speaker is obsessed in a the its existence has that world chiefly imagination: by My thoughts kept dwelling on the littoral where china clocks tick in the cold shells and
the weeds
"Fluteplayers
effectively
expresses
in the
from
Finmarken"
equinox.
the inexpressible the
encounters
fluteplayer
slide
polar
sea
is
psychic
of
some
a
meaningfully
afterworld,
this fungoid program of the mind and matter the
where
abstract
signals to the
abstract
and the mind directs a final white on
the
spewing
and the wings
73
Criticism
of
the waterworm
of the midsea.
obscure
poem
that
life of the artist. The Scandinavian
lens
I was not clear what "It was says, to the reader. it can never be clear
The
speaker but arrived,"
in a
And must
take
his
there
as
identity
in the late poem connected,
sense
really isolated
the
of
images
is not
other
of
flutes
for
imagination.
and
the
other
flutes
who Fluteplayer, as much reveals
un
by presenting
begins
Hrothgar,
their original
the
Rakosi
Ink," which
Jupiter,
and continues by saying that whatever . . . that
no
in an Ancient
"Figures
imaginative
are man
. . ./until
after
"Saracen
physicians"
significance,
the way
they speak tome. I made them but took away their speech and patina
a precious associations.
instead
them gave of ancient
that is how they got their mystery and The
is
vision
to me.
speak entirely
as
private,
the next
lines make
clear:
What, am I in love then with my own images, and Onan wrapped in their protective strangeness? shrinking from what failure? The
is
question
at
answered,
perhaps
least
in
part,
in "The
Heifer":
I am he who lost his father's simple power to touch and smell untouched
by
of
a heifer
forever The sion young
and poet
licking . . . lost.
rearrangement, reveals who
ond section describes I dreamed that I was
I was
integrity its nose
"A
sequence, is
early
. . .
philosophy
the inexpugnable
a
himself
. . .
Journey
Away,"
partly-hallucinatory to be another
last night the woman
being very young, with green stones
in her
garter.
She looked upon me wistfully and said: I was with
a taxi
dancer
a sweetheart
on
a
fishing
I perceive by these pains that I am condemned to die,
74
account Mauberley
the typical problem with women
married.
scared,
which
smack.
underwent of
the
much failures
or Prufrock.5
of the effeminate
The
revi of sec
aesthete:
a
The
assumes
lady
mythic
overwhelmingly
From
Okeanos
proportions:
sprang
her hot breath. Her
image
source
the
Perhaps
is an
ancient
blue
glass, so subtle.
was
the dream
of
an
immediate
:
situation
It reminded me of one I had not seduced. She was brushing out her hair the mirror.
before Whatever
the
more
seeks
he
case,
suitable
occupations:
I should have been arranging the white poppies in the window with
the
coriander.
In the original version of the third section (which was entitled "The Disillusionment of a Very Young Man") another bad romance seems to be the cause
of
ever,
and
the
speaker's
the
is absent
The
despair. turns out
portrait
lady a to be
from of
rendering
the
final
Eliot's
version,
international
how dilet
tante: On
the
went
at Cannes
esplanade
the awnings black
suddenly me.
before
I was carried to the belvedere of Villa Policastro. His aesthetique for
the
du mal
bird
in a
sensitive
but
unknown
laurel
more
perhaps man, young his aesthetic
who,
painful as we
sensibilities She
played
clef-wandering
a
emitting
passionless
The experiences are
is the song of birds: a canary singing
at
and
powers
sweet
the
end of
symbolic of section imagination
are
They
jaded hero with
no more
find
a classical
"tiny himself.
speaker
of Eliot's but
arsis."
in the dark and an emblems
appropriate
genteel middle-aged
than
those
four if
("The nothing
suffered Concert"), else:
by
women Rakosi's retains
pianoforte, pinna
tremolo,
a in a dominoes ?tude: Chippendale the Bird pirriko pirriko prrrk ia ia the leghorn rustling in the brush, the creek between the rockshelves. Nancy with a bunch of wet grapes. Again, like Eliot's figures, the speaker is capable of having intense, if meaning less, visions, of light (section five) or anticipations of rebirth from water (sec tion six) :
75
Criticism
Sea-kin, we
broken
have
Our
away.
are
hearts
grounded
in the waterways.
Our butts foam in the
current
a keel.
like
We pray that our wings may blaze in the One
version
course.
sterling
of
was poem summoned
this
its
lines
concluding lation:
I have
Sea-kin,
I fear, banally, vision the whole of
entitled, up
broken
a Poem,"
for
"Waiting the poet's
but articu
for
quest
away
My heart has risen like a bird in the waterways and breaks a true and I have easy May
into words. course!
final section casts the poet in the persona of a tired bullfighter who must daily face both bulls and "the gall irk/ of cafard and sceptic." Even in this mascu
The line
he
incarnation,
"Keep
the whiskey
kosi.
(The line was The
cinatory
as
himself
he
in a
says,
is not
however,
only touch
a natural
strange vision
The
but
"discreetly"
speak
sees
a
performer characteristic
for
a
fickle
of
the
crowd. later
Ra
in fact added to the original. )
arena,
sensibility.
travellers
perhaps from me,"
scene
for
the
of the first section, of
impotently
"the
next
poet
an
with
world,"
hallu
two dead
in which better
reflects
his inclinations: The
words
were
impressive
and muted.
Suddenly the one preoccupied with his obsolete luetic eyeball a
made in
meaningless with keeping
Rakosi's are
of imagism. begins
renderings
conventionally Winter
enough: and wind,
the whole
age
afternoon
around the house But
concludes
esoterically:
anabasis
for edelweiss six rivers and
76
serious were of
scene.6 not objects
all
hallucinatory, and situations
it is often an imagism with
Still,
is an
poems
early
impressionistic
aside the
six wenches
a
however; and
show
many the
quirk of language.
of
them
influence
"The Gnat"
the
twelve
victories.
Similarly, gibility
of himself the
as
ishes,
lines and passages
of
pastiche
New
of
impressions
York,
from several other intelli
without
virtually
The ironic aspects of "A Journey Away" anticipate Rakosi's judgment as a young poet; yet it is precisely in the elegance of language and in
"protective his new
that
a
(1925),"
"City
is a pure of collage in their new context.
poems,
of
strangeness" on
emphasis late poem
the This
"Shore raw
is the
vision
exotic
that
matter"
"subject Line"
indicates.
not
First
at his
is often
he
does
preclude
the
best.
true
is
It
Stevensian
flour
theory:
data.
A mystery translates it into feeling and perception; then
imagination;
finally the hard inevitable
quartz
figure of will and an
And
language.
example:
Thus a squirrel tail flying a handlebar
from
establishes
unmistakably its
rider
passing as a male
unbowed in a
But
as
here,
the
of
Rakosi's
morphosed. involves and
in most
"defamiliarized"
sometimes
a
the
The
on her way to avoid
forms
"raw
plume.
mostly data"
subjects eccentric
style
and
quotidian but
Girl,"
"Young a
between
human,
rarely
perception
I believe,
is,
imagined, is
are
the
poems,
engagingly in this
meta which
thirteen-year-old
girl
real:
quite
to the beach,
in bare feet
daintily
walking Titania's
poem
encounter,
poet.
elderly
later by
best
sexual
chipper
stones.
the
gauze a cute skirt, so short
it takes As
Rakosi
the
explains carry
speaker,
breath
the
it, on
the a
. . .
away.
girl certain
now inner
"becomes dialogue
subjective her about
in
the . .
sense . that's
that my
I,
or
reality
which I project into the poem." This inner dialogue culminates in the speaker's that the girl, believing herself to be safe, momentarily whimsical supposition off
showed victim
77
of
her
her own
Criticism
sexuality only seductiveness
to become and
"ionized
discovered
herself." actual
sexual
Because feeling,
was
a
"It was
a
she
Patrick Henry/Junior
great day/for combobulations"
)
The
Pierrots."
suffered
truth
young that
by
is, however,
It is such confusion
High." women
that
the
has
girl
"in
("bitter-sweet
a moment
turn
suffered
probably
men no
dis into
discom
bobulation and that it is the speaker's own imaginings that have turned him into a a poet, just as, in part, they have turned the girl into nymphet. The effectiveness of "Young Girl" lies in the comic conceits of the was no less effective in treating a similar theme speaker, but the younger Rakosi through elegant language. Thus "Flora and the Ogre": Let her quince knees sag and the toy arcs of the dew and daisy guide her mild feet, than
The
is no more
torso
her
speaker
surreal-sensual
to me of a nun.
the woodcut
is, of course,
self-deceived
he
:
lady,
surrenders
and
after
to describe
continuing
his
Will no briny thunderbrunt or green chill deliver me? In
the
involving
new
Rakosi's
demand
for
sensibilities the
"presence"
the
of of
the
"Young Girl"
speaker, poet
in
the
poem,
the
reflects appear
ance of a "man saying that his early poem "The something." Rakosi believed Lobster," which listed the dredgings, at various depths, of a fishing vessel and was intended to reflect the "coldness of the sea," was devoid of the poet's pres ence.
Contrasted
sofar
as
of
the
with
this
a series
it presents same order
as "The
is a late work called poem at a beach, of observations
"Time seems
to Kill," at
first
which, glance
in to be
Lobster":
A man and his dog. What fun twigs
chasing into
the water!
Young girls bicycle by in pairs and plaid shorts. The poem continues with other descriptions and views, all apparently straight forward. But Rakosi saw in the poem a personal element missing in "The Lob ster," and in fact the title indicates the state of mind of the observer, a state that in a sense controls his perceptions. Rakosi explained that, This
was
thickens what's
along there.
78
a and
going
hot
summer
slows on
up become
afternoon when slower
it's and
and
know how you everything that one's of perceptions an old man comes denser. Then
hot,
so
into the scene and I felt and tried to convey
a bit of pathos
This
I think,
poem,
jectivism: terms is,
of
then,
objects
scene": . .
Rakosi's ever,
of the poems, "protective
"What
./lays/a desire
pad" in a
so
and
on
verge
subject
human
the
very
poem "humanize"
"A gentle
louse." does
idiom or
in
the
so soft"
small/wood
Girl"
"Young
responses
"A wind
ob
reality but of
he
sentimentality
how
not,
to Kill."
"Time
in subject and declarative
frankly autobiographical
strangeness"
poor and
realistic
true
of
interpretation
impersonal
whose
twigs," "The
as
fortunate
later
The
observer,
/im/chasing
healing to write
results
have
always
the
objects
sun
"The
lake,"
of Rakosi's
in their cold, emotions.
ordinary involving but observed
perception not the
the "Virgilian
essence
the
represents
are not to be recorded
Many
in syle,
lack
Rakosi's
abhors.
attempt to "throw off the cloak of Onan" and to write a social poetry is apparent an interest in folklore but is in his Americana sequence, which demonstrates his He has written his protest poem on the channel for abilities. wrong clearly a set of reflections on anti the war in Vietnam and ("The Enemy") moving semitism ("Four Characters and a Place in the Merchant of Venice"). But per is his native instrument: he sounds when he best haps playing
[The Clarinet] runs
up a water
ladder quicker than the soul past
gravity.
This
small
bored Ariel a pipe with elegant air holes to the mellow of
lining has a
on which and
abstraction reed
gentle like
I suck to dream.
Footnotes 1 "A Note
on
" the
2
Interview, Contemporary comments citations of Rakosi's life 3
Stony
'Objectivists,'
in Minneapolis,
where
he
are has
"Salons," originally published in section of "Homage"
first
79
Criticism
Brook
Literature
X, from
been
3/4, 2
this director
in Pagany final the
1969,
36.
All 178-192. 1969), (Spring, source. has lived much Rakosi of a welfare (Autumn,
(Amulet)
1931), version.
agency.
He
appears, "Sittingroom
subsequent of his adult
retired untitled, by
in 1968. as
the
Patinka,"
in The
Little
indicated,
all
originally published section. second 4 Unless
otherwise
sections 1932) parts versions
quotations
from
1925),
the
poetry
are
as
untitled,
appears,
the
from
the
Amulet
in Hound and Horn with its 1932), (July-September, appeared originally a different from the "Objectivists" version sequence (also Anthology as or in Amulet. Most of the sections titled poems separate, appeared reprinted Poems in Selected and Horn of poems The Hound (New Directions, 1941). poem
following
also
reintegrated. a series
merely
surreality
of
sections
contained The
6
(Spring,
v.s.
edition, 5 The
Review
the
Hound
and
that Horn
of unrelated style,
later version
appeared is the
the Anthology sections; a unified suggests experience.
as least
separate effective
arrangement,
poems since despite
and
were
it seems the
never to be
continued
version entitled "A Bit of in ) was original Hardy" are diction the whole Rimbaudian. clearly Actually, met "The wayfarer the passerby/in of flowers./ death's poem, which begins, champaign As the lint blew their skulls/they of the next world," has the through spoke discreetly as Hart Crane's same rhetoric of Conduct" "Emblems from a poem ( 1925 ), itself adapted Samuel "The Crane's wanderer chose later this concludes, poem by Greenberg. .... clouds the sea/ marble still spot of rest/Where support Dolphins played, arching to build memories the horizons,/But of spiritual gates." only Although the Selected
80
this
section
Poems,
the
( sixth tone
in the
and