Last night’s falling-back-to-sleep list had me thinking about Eileen Myles’s COOL FOR YOU, which I recently posted about and which is now one of my favorite books.
It’s a “novel” according to her and the title page, but it’s also obviously a memoir, a very poetic and unique one. Which got me thinking about books by poets that are autobiographical and unique and are favorites of mine, including my own OF.
There are certainly more I didn’t think of, but these are the ones that came to mind last night. The criterion being they’re basically autobiographical, even if they only address one year in the life of the poet (Harry E. Northup’s REUNIONS) or even one day (Bernadette Mayer’s MIDWINTER DAY) or address more than just the poet’s own life or part of it (Michael McClure’s SCRATCHING THE BEAT SURFACE) or are small or tiny or what’s known as “chapbooks” (Geoff Young’s THE DUMP) and later included in larger collections.
There are plenty of poems that are autobiographical I can think of by many poets I dig, including friends, but if the only way I know the poem is in the context of a collection of poems which aren’t necessarily autobiographical I didn’t include those collections.
So I just listed books by poets that struck me as autobiographical in an original way. Here’s what I came up with, and might I add, all highly recommended tomes if you can get your hands on ones you haven’t already read:
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS, AT BAOSHAN by Simon Schuchat
THE BASKETBALL DIARIES by Jim Carroll, BANGALORE BLUE by Terry Kennedy, BREAD & FISH by Mark Terrill, BOY DRINKERS by Terence Winch
COOL FOR YOU by Eileen Myles, CROSSING THREE WILDERNESSES by U Sam Oeur
DAKOTA by Kathleen Norris, THE DUMP by Geoffrey Young
THE ENORMOUS ROOM by e. e. cummings, EIMI by e. e. cummings, EARTH HOUSEHOLD by Gary Snyder, ETHIOPIA by Eric Torgersen, ELM by Nick Muska
FRIENDS IN THE WORLD by Aram Saroyan, A FAST LIFE by Tim Dlugos, FAIT ACCOMPLI by Nick Piombino
G?
HOLLYWOOD by Blaise Cendrars, HARMATAN by Paul Violi
I REMEMBER by Joe Brainard
JANUARY ZERO by Ray DiPalma
K?
LINE CAUGHT by Brooks Rodden, THE LONG EXPERIENCE OF LOVE by Jim Moore, LATE SHOW by David Trinidad, LUNCH. A POEM by Nathan Kernan
MOMENTS OF THE ITALIAN SUN, by James Wright, MY LIFE by Michael Lally (originally published as a “chapbook” by Wyrd Press), MAGPIE RISING by Merrill Gilfillan, MIDWINTER DAY by Berndaette Mayer, MEMOIRS OF A STREET POET by Frank T. Rios
THE NOTEBOOKS OF MALTE LAURIDS BRIGGE by Rainer Maria Rilke
OF by Michael Lally, OBSIDIAN POINT by Ken McCullough
THE PISAN CANTOS by Ezra Pound
A QUINCY HISTORY by James Haining
RUNNING by Nathan Whiting, REUNIONS by Harry E. Northup, RECOLLECTIONS OF MY LIFE AS A WOMAN by Diane di Prima
SPECIMEN DAYS by Walt Whitman, SKY by Blaise Cendrars, A SERIAL BIOGRAPHY by Tom Raworth, THE STREET by Aram Saroyan, SCRATCHING THE BEAT SURFACE by Michael McClure
TRAIN RIDE by Ted Berrigan, THAT SPECIAL PLACE by Terence Winch
THE UFOs OF OCTOBER by Robert Bove
LA VITA NUOVA by Dante, THE VERMONT NOTEBOOK by John Ashbery, THE VIRGIN OF BENNINGTON by Kathleen Norris
WORLD WITHIN WORLD by Stephen Spender, WAKE UP CALLS by Wanda Phipps. WHERE X MARKS THE SPOT by Bill Zavatsky
X?
Y?
Z?
[Just read this on poet Tom Clark's poetry (and art) blog—"Beyond the Pale"—which made me think maybe in the future a lot of this great poet autbio writing will only be accessible on the web]
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4 comments:
Swell post, Michael. Inclusive, yet provoking the mind to instant lists of further candidates. But you've covered the field nicely.
And the winner is... Ezra Pound: The Pisan Cantos.
(Silent bent old man with face like stone shuffles forth to impassively accept statuette, then evaporates.)
Thanks for the link to "Mouse Ears". It's part of a set of autobiographical "street" poems, current Depression-Epoch. Though I'd rather it had been a rose garden, etc. Vincent Katz has plans to bring the set out as "The New World," Libellum Books, in November, so that we will be in effect affiliated tell-all autobiographists, my brother, at least for the nonce. (Though perhaps all this self revelation is actually conceptual, and we don't know it?)
Lal--Many thanks for that link to Tom Clark's blog. I just read his poem there, "Lines Not Written Wearing Mouse Ears," and I guess I laughed out loud at least a half-dozen times. The poem's a gem, an atlas of the miscues of adolescence for ex-altar boys, with background music provided by the popular tunes of the 50s, true country-wide: for you in East Orange,for Clark in Chicago or Wilmette or Des Plaines, and for me in southwestern Iowa. Good stuff, bro, as good today as it was then.
Bob Berner
I would have to include "The Narrow Road to the Deep North" by Basho. I reread it every five years or so. And Kerouac's "The Railroad Earth."
Can't help with the "X," "Y," or "Z," though ...
RJ, great choices. I also forgot to add a local favorite of mine, the poet Jose Funes only book—"41" poems. And Bob, glad you dug Tom Clark's poem I linked to. I wonder if you had to go through it to dig it. I hope not, because there's a lot of great stuff in it outside our shared histories. And TC, thanks for the comment, and you may be right about sheer poetry regarding The Pisan Cantos, but every book on this list is a favorite of mine and I believe well worth reading and savoring the unique writing in each.
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