TEXAS POETS

While San Francisco led the rest of America in reviving an appreciation of poetry in the Fifties, Austin -- yes, the one in Texas -- has become, in the beginning of the Eighties, a stronghold for small press activity and the writing and performance of poetry. Mary MacArthur, Assistant Director for the National Endowment's Literature Program, has called Austin "the literary capital of the Southwest."

Four years ago, local poets formed a solid alliance in a statewide, government-supported collective of seventy-five small presses called Texas Circuit. The Circuit's Downtown Literature Series has presented nearly two hundred poets reading their own works during the past two years, making Austin one of only twenty American cities to have an ongoing, city-sponsored literary series.

This from the state whose main claim to poetry, at least in the minds of the rest of the country, has been "The stars at night/Are big and bright/Deep in the heart of Texas."

The image of the local literati's artistic work is descended from a romantic regionalism of "tall tales" on camp fire trails, but this image is changing with the rapid growth of the city and the migration of many non-Texan artists to this university town, evolving into a hybrid of the universal backgrounds of the new-comers and the urbanized concerns of older Texans.

Grady Hillman, current manager of Texas Circuit, attributes a radical influence in the work of the regional poets to Russian dissident Konstantyn Kuzminsky, whose work is freed from restraining traditions in structure as well as content, jarring the scene's academic milieu, always reluctant to be flippant with the established forms of the classics. Kuzminsky's work has been published in numerous books and journals around the world, and his life and work were illuminated in the Autumn '76 issue of the French magazine Parler, which dedicated that volume to his creative struggles and accomplishments. He also co-edited Apollo, a six-hundred-page anthology of contemporary Russian literature and art, as well as contributing to a local small press journal called Thicket. After three and a half years of establishing residence in Austin, the poet has planted his future in the "fresh and promising" literary climate of the city, shunning New York, which he considers "dead," and California, calling it "rotten," while quoting O. Henry's description of Texas:

Texas is fresh like a radish! and primitive like a lake.

The Russian's waves in this primitive lake inspired something like a golden age of experimentation, introducing dada nonsense and theatrics to the lyrical narrations around the campfire.

Native Austinite Frieda Werden, editor and publisher of Texan Women and published in Shenandoah, Cedar Rock, Lucille, and Texas Quarterly, among others, admits to Kuzminsky's influence on her own writing, but in her politically potent verse she relies heavily on women's progress from traditional southwestern upbringing into the feminist sophistication of the Eighties. The following is an excerpt from "The Lady in Pink":

The women of the South, they say it to each other, to their daughters and their aunts, they say that a man cannot love, that he is incapable of loving, that he is a machine and that a woman must operate him.

Werden claims that the truly unique writing is being produced by women, by virtue of its content, because they are releasing much previously repressed material, and "... as with any repressed group that becomes articulate, a new content is revealed."

As relevant to Austin's literary evolution as Werden's thoughts on evolving womanhood is the dynamic outburst of newcomer Andy Clausen, who speaks daringly for the working class in colloquial language, describing the passions of a poetic soul trying to fulfill the mundane requirements of job and family. Clausen gained important support in San Francisco, where he published Renegade, from Beat hero Allen Ginsberg, who last year staged a reading at a local Austin club called Liberty Lunch for the purpose of exposing Clausen, whom Ginsberg calls "a great poet." If there are to be any popular stars of the Austin literary scene, Andy Clausen will be the first. His magnificent performance of the simple poem, "They Are Coming," broke the ice and moved a stubborn audience of more than 800 people from blind devotion to Ginsberg to acknowledge Clausen's tremendous power and insight. "They Are Coming," written in the early Seventies, anticipates the rise of "derelict women poets" from the streets and the working class coming forth to tell their stories in poetic language not taught in university literature courses.

The best recent example of the Texas-international poetry confluence came in a rare Gregory Corse reading last April. Corse, originally a New Yorker but known as one of the wildest of the Fifties San Francisco Beats, joined with Kuzminsky (cursing in Russian), Clausen (singing and bellowing for all people who didn't know how to write), and Eleanor Crockett (descendant of Davy), whose magnetic subleties floated above the gut level expression of the men with whom she shared the stage.

The migration of non-Texan writers to Austin is also bringing the awareness of national audiences to local activity as they follow the presses that follow the poets to their new home base. Poets Paul Foreman and Foster Robertson moved from San Francisco, where they published the ten-year-old poetry journal Hyperion, and opened Thorp Springs Press, which has published about ten titles so far. The opening of their off-beat bookstore at 803 Red River Street was a major literary celebration that offered a weekend of readings by scheduled and non-scheduled writers, a home for in-print and out-of-print small press publications, as well as Texas Circuit, and a gathering place for poets to meet informally. Robertson contrasts "... the spirit of cooperation between young, energetic writers and small presses here, with the highly competitive scene in the Bay Area." As for the importance of Brazos Book Store, Grady Hillman declares the inevitable comparison to City Lights is warranted.

To what extent the predictions of Austin's importance to national contemporary literature are being fulfilled is uncertain; the local vitality, though, is highly visible. The Circuit's Downtown Literature Series' monthly readings are supplemented by three other ongoing poetry readings in various clubs, cafes, and museums around town, steadily gathering growing numbers for poetry audiences that can benefit from the volatile creativity and solidifying sense of purpose in this newest Literary Center.

Hedwig Gorski is a free lance journalist, poet, art critic and producer in Austin, Texas, where she has lived for the past five years.