Burt Kimmelman was not on our reading list for this week, but I feel like he should have been. In addition to the books and articles on literary criticism that he has under his belt, he has also penned 11 books of poetry, with one, Steeple at Sunrise, published as recently as 2022. After reading some of his poetry available on his website, I am actually interested to know why he isn’t included in the readings for this week. I have a feeling that it has to do with the fact that Dr. Kimmelman is younger, more current, than the esteemed Black Mountain poets that we read. That has me considering how time factors into schools of poetry, and how much that should matter in the big scheme of things. Musings for another blog post, perhaps.
Kimmelman acknowledges the influence of the Black Mountain poets on his own poetry in “My Own Private Black Mountain”, published by the Appalachian Journal. In fact, this article centers around Kimmelman’s “malady” (272) that he was inadvertently immersed in the workings of the Black Mountain poets from his teenaged days, and this informed, and in critical ways formed, the poet that he is today. In some ways, it might be easy to read this as Kimmelman’s own extended humble brag. For instance, Kimmelman speaks of attending a workshop at his New York college run by a professor, David Toor, who had a brother who worked alongside Joel Oppenheimer (272). However, Kimmelman seems invested in more than just dropping the big names. This article is practically a love letter to the Black Mountain poetic movement.
Kimmelman walks through basic history of his college program at SUNY Cortland and infuses his own timeline with a Who’s Who list of Black Mountain regulars, loosely connected to the program in some way. For instance, a Project in which many students participated was created by Paul Blackburn, directed by Oppenheimer, and eventually directed by Anne Waldman (273). Kimmelman’s history is grounded in the exposure given to the Black Mountain poets by Toor, but his education was not exclusive to that poetic school. In fact, Kimmelman describes exposure to “The Philadelphia Three”, including Pound, as something that went beyond the accepted anthologies being taught at most colleges.
As for criticism, Kimmelman covers that as well. However, even in criticism Kimmelman is honest but not cruel, as though he wants the point to be what is not being said as much as what he is saying. Kimmelman labeled Donald Allen’s The New American Poetry: 1945-1960 a “game-changing anthology” (272), then shares that a common anthology, New Poets of England and America, that was popular around the same time and did not share a single entry with Allen’s anthology. While the New Poets anthology was taught in many places at the time, it is a barely remembered footnote today. Allen’s anthology contained the newer, cutting edge poets that are largely associated with Black Mountain poetics. In fact, Allen had a history with Charles Olsen, who was once the rector of Black Mountain College.
While Kimmelman credits Black Mountain College with the innovation that was sparked in other sectors of the arts scene, including New York and San Francisco, he stops short of saying that these hubs of creativity would not have existed without the Black Mountain influence. Instead, these different communities are intrinsically linked through layers of what Kimmelman calls intermixing, migration, and hybridization (274). Kimmelman points to the specter of community in which “Ginsberg’s poem Howl was first typewritten by Robert Creeley” as a prime example of this (274). The comings and goings and connectedness that Kimmelman highlights shows a how far-reaching the Black Mountain movement was, and in many ways still is.
A trademark of Black Mountain poets is their use of colloquial language in their poems. Kimmelman shows this with an example from Oppenheimer, dubbed as “urban grit” because the feel of the city seemed to ooze from the pores of “The Love Bit”. Another example of this particular trait comes from Diana di Parma, who Kimmelman quotes as saying “All my writing was completely predicated on getting the slang of N.Y. in the period in the early 50’s, down on paper somehow or another” (275). Kimmelman’s inclusion of specific traits of Black Mountain poetics show how deeply invested he is in their styles.
Overall, though it could be easy to dismiss Kimmelman’s article as a modern day ode to the Black Mountain aesthetic, “My Own Private Black Mountain” should not be dismissed without careful consideration. Part love letter, part critical examination, Kimmelman does an admirable job of showing how the big names of this movement coalesced around ideas and community as much as around any specific style or trait. While this article is challenging to comprehend without a fairly comprehensive knowledge of the poets and the movement, Kimmelman makes a strong case for how his own illustrious career benefitted from the influence of Black Mountain poets in many distinct instances. In doing so, it seems obvious to me at least that most poets would be lucky to find themselves as part of such a community.
Work Cited:
Kimmelman, Burt. “My Own Private Black Mountain.” Appalachian Journal, vol. 44, no. 3–4, 2017, pp. 272–279.
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