THE PROBLEM OF ORIGINALITY by David Gewanter Q: What is American about American Poetry? A: Some years ago Donald Hall coined a memorable term for school-based, formulaic American poetry: the McPoem. I thought about it recently as I pulled off US 1 to grab breakfast at McDonalds. Has our poetry joined the mass-culture melting pot? The menu on the billboard reads: "Egg McMuffin, Breakfast Fajitas, French Fries, Hash Brown." Typical American gruel to be sureÑbut showing the mix of cultures we like to call "American." "Egg McMuffin" cooks over a British dish; "fajitas" are smuggled from Latin America; "french fries" fake being French; and "hash brown" seems to use a fancy French word-order, subject then adjective, as in the very American term, "Attorney General." American poetry draws fuel from American languageÑour slang, advertising jingles, jazz and sports talkÑand it draws as well from American sensibilities: our impatience with tradition and hierarchies, our impulsive chattiness and naive idealism, the feverish pace of our inventions and cast-offs. WhatÕs most "American" in American poetry? It might be the problem of originality, understood as two obsessions: that our poetry sound original; and that our poets display their origins. The first obsession is formalÑor more recently, anti-formal: the common understanding of a new, innovative American poem is that it seem independent of the poetries that precede it. The present result is a mountain of free-verse poems, whose authors enjoy the quasi-political belief that their verse is authentic, original, and free from convention. An American poet might delight to hear "how unlike" his or her poem is compared to others, not sensing that this term (from Elizabeth Bishop) sees oneÕs distinctiveness only by comparison with others. The common elements of free-verse American poemsÑpredictably irregular line lengths and stanzas, rhymes and alliteration strung everywhere but the lineÕs last syllable, repeated cadences and phrases to gain emotional ballastÑtestify to the repressive limits of contemporary free-verse freedoms, and to the role of free verse as a potentially constrictive American tradition. Against this, not surprisingly, stands a phalanx of resolutely formal poets, whose zeal for repeating older forms works as strongly to predetermine the effects of their poems as do the anti-conventional swerves of the free-versers. But this is not to depict our poetry era as a chefÕs duel between the "cooked and the raw." For every manner and form of poetryÑstorytelling customs from Vietnam, Italian sonnets, gansta rap, net-speakÑcan claim a place of importance and attention. T.S. Eliot once proposed that each new poem altered the "ideal order" of all the works before it; we might amend that to say that any motif, custom, or form of past poetry may be exploited now without comment or apology. Is this a minimalist era? or in love with the epic? Confessional? or multi-cultural? No mode can claim the day. Notwithstanding such a democracy of available forms, however, our preference for free verseÑlook at any issue of the American Poetry ReviewÑdoes seem to dominate. Perhaps our McPoems have given us the McPoetics we deserve. ThereÕs another sense of democratic access in poetry as well: more Americans are writing poems than ever. More people, more poems, more voices. The tumble of High Modernism and "impersonal art" has spawned a world of poets, and a world of styles. With one exception: while HiMod poems offered a panoply of voices, contemporary verse links style and cadence to a particular voice, the voice in turn linked to a speaker, a speaker whose "personal situation" is announced, detailed, and cemented as the poemÕs meaning. The secret of the poem, by this view, lies in compositional originsÑthat is, in the poetÕs life (or less often, in a dramatic speaker whose personal circumstances must also be ferreted out). This second "problem of originality" in American poetry tends to cast poems as a form of gossip, so that APR would become People in verse. Does the poem show the person? We are convinced that it does soÑeither through direct revelation or through some displacement that psychology can explain. So accustomed are we to look at poems for personal innards, that even our best writers and readers wind up leading the way. Charles Bernstein, known for his arguments against Ôself-centeredÕ poetics, seems most personal when denying the personal: "ItÕs a mistake, I think, to posit the self as the primary organizing feature of writing." And Robert Hass, a brilliant poetry reader and writer, is pressed to introduce a poem of Arthur Sze by making him the initial subject of interest: "Arthur Sze was born in New York City and lives in Santa Fe, N.M. His first book, The Willow WindÑwhen it appeared in 1970Ñwas one of the first books of poems ever published by an Asian American." Hass does provide an adroit precis of SzeÕs poemÑit is "dazzled and haunted by patterns that canÕt quite yield their meaning"Ñbut he still must offer readers what they want first: the three blind mice of biography, Race, Class, and Gender. In happy cases, a poetics and a compelling sensibility together create really original work: Ginsberg, Moore, OÕHara, R.Lowell, Dove, and Bidart come to mind. Here the poetics rarely seem an issue separate from the music, the subject not a map of the author, but of the poemÕs statement. The fusion of poetics and sensibility is rare, though, even in our best poets: later W.C.Williams seems Ônot quiteÕ like Williams, early Robert Frost is Ônot yetÕ like Frost. And in the hand of imitators, a poetic sensibility soon declines into a kind of style or verbal tic (cf. the ÔschoolsÕ of Ashbery, Olson, the Naropites, and so on). Even so, the path for a young poet lies precisely in imitating such master poets, in reading them with a loverÕs despair. This now happens in the very place Donald Hall decried: the poetry-workshop, the Hamburger U. of McPoetry. Many workshop instructors, however, find that while poetry-writing has become more popular, few students will on their own read and pick apart difficult poems. As if we would learn piano without reading music or practicing songs. ItÕs difficult to predict what will make tomorrowÕs American poetry most American, but it may lurk in some combination of ÔconventionalÕ training and a raw, concentrated response to the knots of American experience. WeÕre the greedy and forgetful inheritors, our dance is not WilliamsÕs europhilic "Kermess" but the square dance, whose commands are stolen from all overÑ"dos-y- do" is Mexican for "two by two"; "honor your corner" is British courtly; and "allemain left". . . German? or French? ItÕs ours now. As Virgil Thompson proposed, "The way to write American music is simple. All you have to do is be an American and then write any music you wish. There is precedent and model here for all the kinds. And any Americanism worth bothering about is everybodyÕs property anyway."			REVIEWS: The Night Abraham Called to the Starsbr> by Robert Bly The Water Between Us by Shara McCallum The Fields of Praise by Marilyn Nelson ESSAYS: The Problem of Originality by David Gewanter If you are interested in submitting a review of a recent book (within the past 3 years preferred) of poetry, please append to an e-mail or send to: Smartish Pace Reviews P.O. Box 22161 Baltimore, MD 21203 Poets and Publishers interested in having their book(s) reviewed are encouraged to send books to the above address.