Poetry collection neglects tradition

THE MAINE POETS: AN ANTHOLOGY OF VERSE, edited by Wesley McNair; Down East Books, Camden, Maine, 2003; 260 pages, hardcover; $25.

“The Maine Poets,” Wesley McNair informs us in his introduction, reveals “an ongoing tradition” of Maine poetry by collecting together verse of Maine’s poets from past to present. What could be more welcome than an up-to-date, authoritative anthology that maps “the rich heritage Maine’s poets from Longfellow to the present have given us”? To this point, even though three of the four most popular American poets of all time were Mainers, we haven’t had such an anthology.

Unfortunately, we still don’t.

A quick glance seems to belie the point, though. The first 50 pages offer poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edwin Arlington Robinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay – all three of whom may have been more widely read during their lifetimes than even Robert Frost – together with three poems by Robert P. Tristram Coffin, who in 1936 joined Robinson and Millay as a Pulitzer Prize winner. Also included are poems by mid-century poets Louise Bogan, Elizabeth Coatsworth and Richard Aldridge. These certainly are some of Maine’s most notable poets.

But peculiarly, roughly 160 pages of the book are made up of poems by 31 more poets who all made their careers after the 1960s. By this count, any general reader would conclude – based on the authority of this book – that the state’s Golden Age of Poetry has occurred in the last 35 years.

I wonder if this is possible.

Certainly, well-wrought poems by creditable postmodern-day Mainers appear: Leo Connellan, Philip Booth, May Sarton, Theodore Enslin, Kenneth Rosen, Constance Hunting, Gary Lawless, and present state laureate Baron Wormser are included. But it’s hard to believe that Longfellow, Robinson, Millay and four others could be the only Maine poets worth mentioning from before about 1970. Writers and artists – and traditions – do not arise alone from nowhere; their genius is nurtured and fired in surroundings that make demands of them. But missing from “The Maine Poets” is any real sense of historical surroundings. Conspicuously absent from the selection of 19th and 20th century Mainers, for example, are Wilbert Snow, Marsden Hartley, Holman Day and Sarah Orne Jewett. And no contemporaries of Longfellow appear at all.

If the book is what McNair claims, then many of the included poems – competently phrased though they are – should not have pre-empted poems by at least some of these poets, among others. But maybe the book is not exactly what it claims. The introduction also declares, for example, that McNair “was simply out to pick the best poems I could find.”

This is a bit different from representing a tradition, even though it has advantages. Since one of McNair’s criteria for a good poem is that it “appeal not just to the literary specialist but to readers in general,” most of this anthology’s poems can be read without much work. This is in a way refreshing because so much poetry of the last 100 years or so seems so obscure. It’s easy to follow what David Walker’s “The Crossing” and Kate Barnes’ “Where the Deer Were” are saying – pleasant, recognizable meanings conveying what oft was thought. And even the token dead poets Longfellow and Millay are notoriously simple in their philosophies, while brilliant in their language.

But despite the current vogue for reacting against the aggravating difficulties of modern poetry, comfortable accessibility is not the defining mark of a good poem, nor is it the critical factor in McNair’s selection. If it was, more poems from the 19th century would appear in this book.

The critical factor in McNair’s selection was proximity. If we accept, as the book leads us to believe, that about two-thirds of Maine’s “best poems” have been written in the last 30 years or so, then we should conclude that most – or at least, the best – of our contemporary poets are represented here. Some are. In truth, no anthologist can match everyone’s preferences, but it’s hard to say why Bern Porter, William Hathaway, and especially H.R. Coursen and Peter Kilgore were not included. They meet all McNair’s stated demands for inclusion, and their most powerful works exceed a good many of the poems we do get.

Some readers familiar with Maine’s poetry scene might add other names to this brief list. But any poet who lived in Maine, for one reason or another, fell out of the historical anthologies or steered clear of Associated Writing Programs, Maine Arts Commission and NEA awards, or of logy readings on college campuses, or of writers conferences and colonies, and instead stayed put in Portland, Orland or Garland – that poet was too far from the industrial centers, fell short of the time’s demands and doesn’t appear.

“The Maine Poets” is a good book for what it does. But it doesn’t reveal much of Maine’s tradition in poetry, and while it includes many competent contemporary poets, it doesn’t even give a full picture of the territory it lavishes most attention on. Instead, “The Maine Poets” gives samples of the favorites of Maine belles-lettres in the early 21st century, along with some elders whose brilliance reflects well on the rest.

Dana Wilde can be reached at dana.wilde@umit.maine.edu.