Make Us Wave Back h
Make Us Wave Back Essays on Poetry and In uence h Ann Arbor
Copyright 2007 by All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid-free paper 2010 2009 2008 2007 4 3 2 1 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Collier, Michael, 1953 Make us wave back : essays on poetry and influence / Michael Collier. p. cm. (Writers on writing) ISBN-13: 978-0-472-09947-4 (cloth : acid-free paper) ISBN-10: 0-472-09947-7 (cloth : acid-free paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-472-06947-7 (pbk. : acid-free paper) ISBN-10: 0-472-06947-0 (pbk. : acid-free paper) 1. Poetry. 2. Poetics. I. Title. PS3553.O474645M35 2007 813'.54 dc22 2007003222
Contents preface vii I. One Utterance 3 An Exact Ratio 6 The Truant Pen 14 The Dog Gets to Dover: William Maxwell as a Correspondent 18 Becoming a Reader, Becoming a Writer 31 State Flower, Poet Laureate, State Song 34 The Look of Things 39 A Final Antidote 43 Borges and His Precursors 64 II. A Familiar Gratuity 77 On Whitman s To a Locomotive in Winter 82 In Radical Pursuit: A Brief Appreciation of the Essays of W. D. Snodgrass 87 Introduction to Annie Dillard s Tickets for a Prayer Wheel 90 Widow s Choice: Randall Jarrell s Letters 93 The Wesleyan Tradition 103 III. An Interview by Matt Barry 129 acknowledgments 159
Preface In putting together this collection of prose, written over a period of twenty years, I thought I had no choice but to adopt the method of the Roman Historian Ninius, who in compiling his History of Roman Britain made a heap of all that I found. Surprisingly, in the small heap made from these mostly occasional essays, I discovered a record of my most important literary in uences, those writers who not only helped me to develop a literary temperament but who also helped to socialize and humanize me. Literary in uence differs from the in uence of family and place, which are largely involuntary and often unconscious, and as such it is the story of a writer s deliberate attempt to nd and make something like a literary home. These essays outline part of my attempt to make such a place in the world of writing. They also acknowledge the luck, fortune, and grace that mysteriously preside over the process that has brought me closer to the thing I most wanted to become, a writer and poet. Not so surprisingly, I discovered that these essays, especially the shorter ones, are an expression of certain preoccupations I have had over the years with the language of poetry and its various traditions, and they re ect the materials I have used as a teacher of literature and writing. It is my hope that these preoccupations intersect in interesting and perhaps provocative ways with the history of my in uences as it stands so far. I m extremely grateful to Jay Parini for offering me the chance to compile these pieces, and to David Biespiel, who read the manuscript with careful attention, and to my wife, Katherine Branch, who encouraged me to nish the project and who gave me much editorial help.