A New Generation of Harvard Poets

In 1963 poet Theodore Roethke died of a heart attack. Two days later, critic Richard Blackmur died after a long bout with Buerger's disease. In the same year, poet and critic Randall Jarrell was instantly killed when a car hit him. And in 1966 poet Delmore Schwartz died of a heart attack.

"I'm cross with God who has wrecked this generation/First he seized Ted, then Richard, Randall, and now Delmore," wrote poet John Berryman of the deaths of his peers.

But six years later, Berryman himself jumped into the frozen waters of the Mississippi River and died.

Given the tragedy which marked most of these poets' brief lives, it is hard to imagine them as role models. But for the latest generation of Harvard poets--who have started their writing careers in the past decade--those prominent writers from the 1940s to the '60s have provided them with a sense of from and style which they say was invaluable to their artistic development.

Some of the leading lights of that older group--Schwartz, Berryman, Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop--brought their poetry to Cambridge, and they in turn inspired a new school of Harvard-trained poets.

While these new poets have their own unique styles, they share the common experience of studying at Harvard under teachers such as Robert Fitzgerald, Lowell and Bishop. And these poets also say they grew up with the legacy of writers like Berryman and Schwartz, who did not survive long enough to teach the new generation.

Harvard's newest writers, most of whom are anthologized in Under 35: The New Generation of American Poets, agree that the teachings of these celebrated artists had a tremendous influence on their growth as poets.

For example, Fitzgerald's famous class in versification was instrumental in giving the young poets a grounding in form and structure, says Judith Baumel '77.

Baumel, Wayne Koestenbaum '80, Jacqueline F. Osherow '78 and Cynthia Zarin '81 were among the 12 artists invited by Penelope Laurans, Fitzgerald's widow, to participate last year in a reading of the works of those who had studied under her late husband.

Although members of the newest generation say they could not avoid feeling that they were part of a grand tradition of Harvard poets when they studied here, the prominence of their teachers often put them at a distance in the classroom.

"I was in awe of Lowell and intimidated by Bishop," recalls Osherow.

"One would be intensely aware of the presence of poets at Harvard," says Laurans, who currently teaches a similar course on versification at Yale. "I would think it very difficult to be a young poet at Harvard without that sense of history. And that may be daunting, but you also might think that if they did it, so can you."

But the younger poets eventually overcame their fears and became successful writers, inside and out of the classroom.

Many of them say they were launched into the real world of publishing from the editorial boards of The Harvard Advocate and Padan Aram, where Zarin says she sometimes found it even harder to get her work published than she has outside of Harvard.

Even with college experience, however, the publication of a volume of poetry--a key stage in a poet's career and a step which signifies a poet's maturity--does not come quickly after graduation, the new poets say.

Osherow, who lived, worked and wrote in the hills outside Florence from 1981 to 1983, says that it takes about 10 years for a writer to develop a poetic voice and produce a volume of poetry.

After college, Osherow says she continually submitted poetry to various journals and contest committees, and more often than not found a rejection slip in her mail.

"It's a long, grueling process, and each time you [enter a contest], it's a long shot," she says. "And each time you feel slightly foolish spending the money on the Xerox and the stamp."

Zarin, a staff writer for The New Yorker, agrees that writing poetry is a long and difficult process that is often unrewarding for the artist. "Poetry is not a career choice," she says. "It certainly wouldn't be a very wise one."

But members of the new generation say that writing has been less a choice than a necessity for them. Like their predecessors, the new poets see poetry as a way to express--and get through--life's tragedies.

"Lowell called writing verse a way of getting on with life, no matter how painful it was," says Lowell Professor of the Humanities William Alfred, a friend of the late poet. "[Writing] was their health, it was not their sickness. I think the writing was their balance wheel."

"They took life's chances....It's a very daring thing to tell the whole truth about what it's like to be alive," he adds.

Eileen Simpson, Berryman's wife, agrees that the older generation of literary artists used their writing to help them survive their many difficult experiences. In her book, Poets in Their Youth, she writes that for her husband, "the only thing was to write poetry. All else was wasted time."

While the latest crop of poets to be produced by Harvard has yet to meet the standard of greatness set by their teachers, these writers, too, have been driven by the need to write.

And literary experts say that the constant influence that one generation exerts on another, even as individual poets come and go, is a positive part of the creative cycle.

In his book, The Burden of the Past, Porter University Professor Emeritus W.J. Bate '39 writes: "In this dilemma, the arts mirror the greatest single cultural problem we face, assuming that we physically survive: that is, how to use the heritage, when we know and admire so much about it, how to grow by means of it, how to acquire our own 'identities,' how to be ourselves."