THE POETRY CHALLENGE

Who writes THE BEST POETRY 

in America today?

(c) copyright 2007, David B. Axelrod

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TALENT OR DUMB LUCK?

Who Succeeds in the World of Poetry

            We have all heard the arguments about people making their own luck or succeeding simply because of dumb luck. I can't tell you with authority which accounts for the success of the best known among us or the failure of others to make the cut, but I can shed some personal light on the matter of being at the right place at the right time or the wrong place at the wrong time. 

My own story begins when I walked into the office of George Starbuck, then the director of the Writers Workshops at the University of Iowa in Iowa City . It would have been early September of 1967. My wife then, Joan C. Hand, was seven months pregnant and we had just traveled cross-country with a U-Haul and a car to establish our residence at the Workshops. We would be studying for our Ph.D.’s in creative writing on scholarships, respectively, in poetry and fiction. 

George was sitting at his desk and Paul Engle, the founder and at the time, the director of the recently established International Writing Program, was standing next to him looking at our folders on George’s desk. They welcomed us very warmly with handshakes and the immediate question about when the baby was due.

             That’s a quick, if humorous side-story. Joan and I had heard that in Iowa they didn’t allow pregnant women to teach and we were worried Joan would lose her teaching assistantship if they realized she was pregnant. Though the weather was clear, she was wearing a large raincoat to try to cover her pregnancy.  As if! She was so large even by then that she soon was dubbed “The Magic Barrel” by Bienvenido Santos who taught her fiction workshop. 

George and Paul immediately reassured us there would be no problem with Joan’s teaching. George went so far as to offer us some baby cloths and the infant bassinette and baby carriage his own recent baby had outgrown. We were, of course, not just relieved but delighted. Things couldn’t have been friendlier.

             Of course, we were coming well recommended. We sent ahead good letters of introduction from our friend Elliott Coleman, who directed The Writing Seminars of The Johns Hopkins University where Joan and I had met, married and gotten our Masters of Arts in Creative Writing. I also had letters sent ahead by two of my University of Massachusetts professors—Drs. Robert Tucker and Joseph Langland-- themselves both close to Iowa ’s Workshops. We could take a side trip philosophically about whether hard work or knowing the right people accounts for success but I’ll stick with being in the right or wrong place. 

In the course of a very warm conversation, Paul Engle said to George Starbuck, “So in a couple years, they will have their M. F. A.’s.”  

George replied, “Oh, they signed up for the Ph.D. program.”

            And Paul Engle said, “Well, let’s see. They've got their Masters already. They have a few extra semesters of graduate school on top of that. Why don’t we just let them get the M. F. A. en passant?”

             ”Oh,” George said, “Good idea.” And from the outer office there was a loud shout, “You can’t do that!”   

That was the moment when the right place turned wrong. That would be the moment that, in my mind, has explained why the poets I enjoy and admire are famous, well-prized, widely published and widely read—and I am not. Philip Levine, Billy Collins, Karen Olds, Louis Simpson, Ruth Olds, Li Young Lee, Robert Bly, William Stafford—so many wonderful and deserving poets. How did they achieve the renown that they do deserve? And why am I not there with them, though I believe I am writing as well?

Writing poetry, unlike playing a musical instrument or a sport, has no clear standard for excellence. If you are a classical pianist or violinist and you hit even one wrong note in your concert performance, it will be noticed, and thus your critics will have a sound basis to rebuke you. A professional athlete who does not play proficiently fairly quickly draws boos and eventually must withdraw as a professional in his or her game. But with poetry, the art is so subjective, so much a matter of taste that it isn’t always simply proficiency or talent that determines who succeeds. 

When I was accepted to attend the University of Iowa , I was proud. I was thrilled. I did my homework. I went and bought and read the books of poetry by those teaching there at the time. Paul Engle, of course, was a senior and luminary poet among us, though actually more famous for his founding and directing the Workshops than for his poetry. George, who had won the Yale Young Poets award in his day, was known, somewhat incongruously for the time (the cusp of the 60’s Hippy movement) as a neo-formalist. Anselm Hollo, the Finnish poet, was one of my teachers while I was there—and was writing more “experimentally.” 

Another poet, whose first book had only just been published, was also newly hired to teach at Iowa . Born in 1937, so he was just six years my senior, he was a recent Iowa graduate himself, and his book was entitled Things We Dreamt We Died For.  It was wonderful, full of passion and personal imagery and just the kind of poetry I enjoyed.  I truly looked forward to working with the fellow. 

And into the George Starbuck’s office strode a heavy-set, agitated man all but shouting “You can’t do that! You can’t give them an M. F. A. in just a year. It took me three years to do that.”    

            ”Well, Marvin,” said his boss, Paul Engle, “They already have the Masters from Hopkins and a lot more credits. So why not? They could do a dissertation…”

”I’m against it,” said Marvin Bell, and the rest, for me has become irrefutable proof that if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, that is it for you. My fortune was determined in that single moment. You can preach and you can pray, you can work and you can strive, you can say what you want about sour grapes or that I don’t really have the talent, but when Marvin Bell set his mind to it, there was no easy route for me thereafter. 

For all of my two years at Iowa he subverted all my efforts. At a party that Halloween he was directly insulting, declaring to me clearly that he would keep me from succeeding. In my class with Anselm I could do nothing right and, in fact, my own dissertation I was to produce for my degree, Stills from a Cinema, though it would become my own first book of poetry, earned me only a six-credit “B” from Anselm because of Marvin’s intervention—a grade that would come back to haunt me when my average was computed later for the renewal of my scholarship.

George and Paul were true to their promise that Joan and I should receive our M. F. A. degrees after just one year. And Marvin was true to his vow in opposing that. He actually wrote to the Dean in charge of granting the degrees to protest, the result of which was that the diplomas were withheld for several months until a review allowed them to be granted.

When we returned for our second year at Iowa to pursue the Ph. D., I could do nothing right. They took Joan aside and asked her why she wanted to tie herself to a dud and offered to let her continue on with a scholarship—but not me. My cumulative average was 3.43 and they had just passed an edict that unless you had a 3.5 you would lose your scholarship. In June of 1969, Joan and I left Iowa and set out to make a career on our own.

Iowa was and still is a king maker. There were poets I knew, our friends and fellow students, who were chosen for prizes, for major publications, recommended for prestigious jobs. We weren’t.

Subsequently, stories would emerge. Once I became friendly with William Stafford, worked with him, exchanged correspondence. He wrote an endorsement for my poetry. He went back to Iowa to do a project with Marvin and our friendship immediately ceased.   

Another time, a fellow who had just published a  book of mine was in a room with Bell and when my name came up, my own publisher heard Bell say, “Oh that fellow. He’s a nothing. He pays to publish all his own books.” My publisher was particularly angry because he was paying to publish my book and was concerned by the implication that his press would then be damned as a vanity press.  

Whether my life and career has, forever since then, been ruined by Marvin Bell, of course, is not the point. Even I, lover of conspiracy theories and apologist for my own sins, am not such a fool as to attribute my path to that one sorry man. I’ve enough sense to know things are not that simple and clear. But clearly I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That one day in Iowa certainly determined I would not rise as fast—and ultimately as far as others have. 

So, now it is time for you to make up for that twist of fate. I ask you to take the Poetry Challenge! I have placed nearly all my career on line for you to read. Here are nearly every published poem I have written since that fateful day. I believe my poems are at least as good as any work produced in America in my lifetime. Had things been different, I wouldn’t seem, perhaps, a strident, bragging man with, as one of my more vehement critics pronounced “delusions of grandeur.”  

If I were in the right place at the right time, I would, instead, be celebrated at your table and you, in fact, would be singing with me at the side of the Muse. Personally, I hope that I do no harm. In fact, I prefer to help others. I have always felt that if one among us has good fortune, there is hope for us all. Good for you if you are successful. I take nothing away from you.  

One of my dearest friends and, sadly, one of America ’s own hidden treasures, Aaron Kramer, once was asked by a young student, “Dr. Kramer, if you have published so many books, how come you are not famous?” Aaron’s career has already, literally, spoken volumes about being in the right or wrong place at the right or wrong time—but that requires another story. Aaron Kramer’s shoulders slumped, his eyes went toward an upper corner of the room, and he answered sadly, “At this point I guess I’ve given up on being famous. Now I just try to write the best poems.”   THE BEST POEMS!

Shall I give up then? I will give you another aphorism to consider: History is written by the victors. But I am not quite ready to admit my defeat. I have had some grand moments, some successes, but so far, real fame has eluded me. Who is celebrated and who, thereafter, is remembered, seems to me to be quixotic at best. Who ends up a hero in a literary history book? Certainly not those who admit defeat. 

 If you have found your way to this page, then thank you. If you have read through this essay, then thank you. Always the apologist, I am sorry that, in fact, I’ve just distracted you from the challenge at hand. 

I would ask you to read into these poems. I hope you agree they are “The Best Poetry.” At least, enjoy yourself and more power to you. 

David B. Axelrod, spring, 2006.