SPILLS: CHECK-LISTS OUT OF ANDREW CROZIER

By David Hackbridge Johnson





Ian Brinton has done a great service in editing together the selected prose of Andrew Crozier under the general title Thrills and Frills published by Shearsman in 2013.  It isn't necessary to go through each and every fugitive piece at last included in the volume since Shearsman keeps its books in print and copies are readily available from all the usual places.  In passing then, the title essay provides a most cogent analysis of the differences between Apocalyptic and Movement poetry and how this analysis helps frame what can be perceived as a reaction to the latter, as members of what became known as the British Poetry Revival moved into print.  In calling the experiences of Movement poets as they describe what are essentially the ‘occasions’ of their poems as ‘wryly deficient'[1], Crozier has coined an epithet that might bleed over all the poets who viewed the content of their poems with an arch disdain.  This means that even very fine poets can occupy painfully narrow channels with no possibility of an escape valve into a genuine sense of oneness with what is experienced.  When does ironic distance become indifference?  And if the poet goes ‘so what', why shouldn't the reader?  Crozier wrote ‘Thrills and Frills’ just a year after the appearance of The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry, edited by Blake Morrison and Andrew Motion, where much of the Movement gambits are on display as if no challenges to its modus had been registered.  If we want to know a fiercer reaction to what Crozier criticises, we need look no further than the comments of Adrian Clark, an affiliate of the British Poetry Revival[2], who in 1998 characterised the poets of Morrison/Motion as ‘gravely untalented’.[3]

The Crozier piece[4] on a hitherto misattributed essay of Irving Kaplan is so labyrinthine in its journey and conclusions, as to almost appear as a spoof.  The joy of Crozier's writing is that his laser-like attention to detail never bores.  He carries the reader with him on the curious journey.  We even have a literary headless corpse; the essay in question, called ‘Paper’, turned up among the literary remains of Basil Bunting minus its title page, leading to its appearance in the Bunting book, Three Essays.  Tracking down Irving Kaplan is part of the fun in that he was an inveterate user of pseudonyms. Even his friend Louis Zukofsky can cause confusion when he refers to him in letters to Ezra Pound in a manner that suggests that the whole persona may be a fabrication.

Of particular interest is the extensive section on American poetry with starring roles given to Louis Zukofsky and Carl Rakosi.  Of great curiosity is the poet Harry Roskolenko; as Crozier puts it, ‘a figure so spectral as to remain at risk of being taken for a figment of the imagination'.[5]  With affiliations to proletariat, Objectivist and Apocalyptic poetry (he corresponded with Henry Treece), he nevertheless remains a shadowy figure, certainly in this country where his books cannot be had for love nor money.  Given Crozier's expertise in the field of American poetry he can fan out from Roskolenko's work into the magazines and journals in which he first saw publication, for example the magazines New Masses, Left, and Pagany. Of note is the anthology of poem and prose American Stuff published under the auspices of the Federal Writers’ Project and in which Roskolenko appears. He also appears in The Exiles’ Anthology as co-editor with Helen Neville.

Spilling out then from Crozier, I merely add a little housekeeping to these two anthologies by recording here the full list of poets included, together with the most basic details.  Firstly the Anglo-American gathering of The Exiles’ Anthology:

Florence Becker – American.  This might be Florence Becker Lennon (1895-1984)

Oswell Blakeston – British (1907-1985)

Harvey Breit – American (1909-1968)

Verne Bright – American (1893-1977)

Dorian Cooke – British (1916-2005)

Halsey Davis –I can find no information on this poet

Eleanora Deren – Presumably Maya Deren, the Ukrainian born American filmmaker, (1917-1961)

J.F. Henry – Scottish (1912-1986)

Elgar Houghton – American author of The Intruders; a novel of labor history

Rayner Heppenstall – British (1911-1981)

Nigel Heseltine – English (1916-1995) Son of Philip Hesletine (Peter Warlock)

Weldon Kees – American (1914-disappeared 1955)

Philip Lerner – I can find no information on this poet

H.B. Mallalieu – American born then British (1914-1988)

Clark Mills – This is Clark Mills McBurney.  American (1913-1986)[6]

Nicholas Moore – English (1918-1986)

Helen Neville – American.  I have found various poems in magazines but no birth and death dates as yet.

Philip O'Connor – British (1916-1998)

Kenneth Patchen – American (1911-1972)

John Prichard – No details but he appeared in Poems from the Forces, ed. Keidrych Rhys, George Routledge & Sons, 1941.

William Pillin – Ukrainian born American poet and potter.  Died in 1985 aged 75.

Paul Eaton Reeve – American (1907-1961)[7]  He appeared in at least one other anthology: Modern Things, ed. Parker Tyler[8] (1904-1974), The Galleon Press, New York, 1934

Keidrich Rhys – Welsh (1915-1987).  Married to Lynette Roberts

Lynette Roberts – Welsh (1909-1995). Married to Keidrich Rhys

Edouard Roditi – American (1910-1992)

Theodore Roethke – American (1908-1963)

Harry Roskolenko – American (1907-1980)

Winfield Townley Scott – American (1910-1968)

Gordon Sylander – American (1915-2004) (dates not confirmed, this might be a Gordon Sylander, not the Gordon Sylander)

Julian Symons – British (1912-1994)

Henry Treece – British (1911-1966)

Parker Tyler – American (1904-1974).  See footnote 6.

John Wheelwright – American (1897-1940)

George Woodcock – Canadian born but in England at an early age. (1912-1995)

Unfortunately I have been unable to obtain a copy of this anthology; it is a book even the British Library doesn’t possess.  Any number of side bars could illuminate the life and work of these poets; for the lesser-known ones considerable archaeology is required.

In compiling a check-list of writers in American Stuff I have the advantage of having a copy to hand.[9]  Here are the contents:

Foreword / Henry G. Alsberg

Fair afternoon / Ida Faye Sachs

Three poems / Lionel Abel

Panoram / Murray Godwin

Excerpts from "The apple garths of Avalon" / Kenneth Rexroth

The ethics of living Jim Crow / Richard Wright

Hill-country wonders / Americana No. 2, recorded by C. S. Barnett

Pan feinkuchen / Harry Granick

San Francisco, November 1936 / Dorothy Van Ghent

A Gullah story / Americana No. 2, recorded by Genevieve W. Chandler

Lexington express / Fred Rothermell

All are gay / Sterling Brown

Heart's desire / Nathan Asch

Twenty-one Negro spirituals / Americana No. 3, recorded by South Carolina Project workers, Effingham, South Carolina

My father has it all figured out / Salvatore Attanasio

Bumming in California / Eluad Luchell McDaniel

Old Barham on democracy / Edwin Bjorkman

Mutiny / Americana No. 4, recorded by Merle Colby and George F. Wilson

Martha's vacation / Vardis Fisher

Excerpts from the suite " Anguish take the strong" / Lola Pergament

Phrases of the people / Americana No. 5, recorded by Harris Dickson

Man with the cracked derby / Jerre Mangione

Six Negro market songs of Harlem / Americana No. 6, recorded by Frank Byrd

The straight night of Mr. McWebb / Donald Thompson

Romances and corridos of New Mexico / Americana No. 7, recorded by Aurora Lucero White

Three poems / Helen Neville

Beedlebugs / J. S. Balch -- Seven Negro convict songs / Americana No. 8, recorded by John A. Lomax

Mama, the man is standing there / Leon Dorais

Thoughts on a tank of guppies / Elizabeth Cousins

Sitwell improved Funnoiser / Travis Hoke

Just for fun / Ivan Sandrof  

The preacher's song / Americana No.9, recorded by Maggie L. Leeper–

Contempt for rifles / Vincent McHugh

Gertrude Stein and the solid world / Dorothy Van Ghent

Autumnal / Robert E. Hayden

Two poems / Harry Roskolenkier

Canzone / Robert B. Hutchison

Four traditional stories / Americana No. 10, recorded by J. C. W. Smith

Four sonnets / A. T. Rosen

Square dance calls / Americana No. 11, recorded by Maggie L. Leeper, Elva Collier

A song of the moon / Claude McKay

The end of the book / Jim Thompson

Avdotia / Nahum Sabsay

A legend passing / Margaret Lund

Manhattan moods / Charlotte Wilder

Phrases of the people / Americana No. 12, recorded by Mildred Thompson and Carol Graham

Juggler's gold / Carl Wilhelmson

Wind of change / Harry Kemp

The legend of Sharon / Americana No. 13, recorded by Francis R. Cole

A letter in these times : for Muriel Draper / Raymond E. F. Larsson

Lookin' fer three fools [i.e, Looking for three fools] / Americana No. 14, recorded by Luther Clark

There are brief notes on all the contributors at the end of the book which I don’t propose to reproduce in their entirety.  Some of the notes are miniature tone poems of working class backgrounds experienced by many affiliated to the Federal Writers’ Project or its twin organisation The Federal Art Project.  We learn of the ‘Very limited education’[10]    of Luther Clark from Sumter County, Alabama, of Mrs Fred J. Leeper (formerly Maggie Lyon) and her work in a one-room Arkansas rural school, of Jerre Mangione, ‘ditchdigger, burlesque-show-usher’[11] before entering journalism, of Jamaican writer Claude McKay, ‘waiter, porter, fireman on freighter’ whose first songs ‘were written to street-car men on strike’[12], of John Avery Lomax (son of Alan) emigrating ‘from Mississippi to Texas, riding in a hickory-split basket swung from a feed-box behind an ox wagon’.[13]  But I’m cherry picking; many of the writers received good schooling and became middle class professionals.  One must suppose they embraced the ideas formulated within the ethos of the Federal Writers’ Project. 

And Harry Roskolenko?  He appears as Harry Roskolenkier, one of his many pseudonyms.  His full entry reads: ‘was born in 1907 and went to sea at the age of 15.  He says: “A few other jobs such as operator of a drawbridge, and research worker on patents, have more or less equipped me to function as a poet” ’.[14]  He is afforded generous space in the anthology with two medium length poems.  ‘Sequence from “The Latitude of the Image” ’[15] wears its polemic in brazen imagery: ‘the ramparts of the morning papers’ and the desire of the downtrodden for ‘socialism or communism within our time’ create poetry of the revolutionary moment, if only words and action could bring about the upheaval of a discredited history ‘sealing us within coffins’.  The call for mobilisation goes out from those in ‘the unborn stillness / of the glass and steel of the City’.  The newspaper as harbinger of triumph or doom returns at the end of the poem in time to ‘print us dead’ with an ‘half-inch of news’.  The second poem, ‘Portrait of Several Abstractions’[16] begins with a list of collective scenarios that posit with some irony the desire to ‘express yourself!’ before coming more radically to life with the scornful ‘ “What we communists need / is some bourgeois solidity, ” ’.  The final stanzas are more sinister with ‘the seven sorrows’ and the thought that ‘The cockroach has gone beyond / the abstractions’.  Both these poems show an impatience with the social and personal status quo; both are to be overturned with collective will.  We might wonder at the marginal nature of many of the writers in American Stuff.  It is unlikely the leftist tendency of most on show here could have survived unscathed the paranoia of McCarthyism.  How many saw their ambitions for a better world undermined by splits, betrayals, disillusionment?  How many tried to hide under the anonymous fabric of a supreme Capital when the cry went up: AMERICANS…..DON’T PATRONIZE REDS!!!!.

Whatever the narratives discoverable from the later lives of Roskolenko and others were, the range of writing on show in American Stuff is remarkable and a tribute to multifarious expressive modes.  We find the poetry of Sterling Brown working out of the black culture of the Southern States, and whose poem ‘All Are Gay’[17] manages to play on perceived stereotypes with an interspersed lyric that voices an untouchable world beyond prejudice.  Perhaps most extraordinary of all are the poems and reports under the title ‘Americana’, of which there are 13.  They seek in song and historical documents – whaling ship logs for example[18] – to portray working life in both the rawness of its conditions and in the ways workers made that rawness bearable by satirical verse and polemic. 

But to delve yet further into American Stuff would occasion a much larger survey.  Suffice it to say that even with this slight spillage from Andrew Crozier’s research, an hinterland of literary exploration awaits the curious.  And Crozier’s mystery poet Harry Roskolenko has his role to play in this panorama of American creativity.        


©David Hackbridge Johnson xii.2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


[1] Andrew Crozier, Thrills and Frills, p. 24.

[2] I should point out that this is not a school to which poets officially belonged but rather a convenient term for those resistant to the ease of parochial and anecdotal concerns that characterised much mainstream poetry, and who took their cues from Black Mountain and Beat poetry.

[3] See Arcadian Rustbelt: The Second Generation of British Underground Poetry, ed. Andrew Duncan and John Goodby, Waterloo Press, 2024, quoting from a 1998 Writers Forum publication.

[4] Thrills and Frills, p. 89.

[5] Thrills and Frills, p. 164.

[7] His daughter Diana Birchall writes a little about her father here: https://groups.io/g/Piffle/topic/paul_eaton_reeve_1907/42292512

[8] Parker Tyler (1904-1974) was a poet and writer on film.  Modern Things includes his ‘Hollywood Dream Suite’ dedicated to C.B., that is, Charles Boultenhouse, an underground filmmaker and his partner from 1945 until his death.

[9] Unavailable or prohibitively expensive, American Stuff is available here as a PDF: https://archive.org/details/trent_0116400465955/page/n11/mode/2up?view=theater

[10] American Stuff, The Viking Press, 1937, p. 294.

[11] Ibid. p. 297.

[12] Ibid. p. 297.

[13] Ibid. p. 296.

[14] Ibid. p. 298.

[15] Ibid. pp. 225-226.

[16] Ibid. pp.226-227.

[17] Ibid. p. 79.

[18] Ibid. p. 130.