Page 20 - Litteratteur Redefining World December issue

Litterateur redefining world December 2020

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"If there is any truth at all"

In Berkeley my writing stopped almost entirely as I concentrated on
graduate school or participated in that explosion of energy we call "the

sixties."
I had hoped that Cornell would provide me with an intellectual community. It did not.
My experience at Berkeley was similar, though again there were moments of
excitement. Josephine Miles, Joseph Kramer, Paul Alpers, and others taught courses

which interested me. Henry Nash Smith's course included Charles Feidelson, Jr.'s
excellent book, Symbolism And American Literature, with its intriguing discussions of
Melville, Poe and Whitman. A 1971 class taught by James Breslin introduced me to
many writers whom I had previously neglected, particularly to William Carlos Williams,
whose masterly Spring and All was on the reading list. We also read Robert Duncan's
magnificent Bending the Bow. (I had bought Duncan's Selected Poems in Ithaca and
been fascinated by "The Venice Poem" and "Homage to the Brothers Grimm.") Duncan
lived in San Francisco and often gave lectures and readings. I saw him frequently in
Berkeley going to the bookstores or the library. There were also writers in Breslin's
class: Ron Silliman, David Melnick and Rochelle Nameroff had all recently published
books through a press called "Ithaca House," located, ironically enough, at Cornell.
Furthermore, James Breslin was the judge of Berkeley's Yang Poetry Prize that year,
and a little selection of my poems was one of the winners. Still, I could hardly call
myself a writer. By 1970 I was really nothing more than a professional graduate student.

By 1974 I had finally had enough of graduate school.

Jack Foley's drawing of Robert Duncan

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