The average age of the poets in The PIP¹ Anthology of World Poetry of the 20^th Century, Volume 5: Intersections: Innovative Poetry in Southern California is just under 56 years old. Or would be, if they were all still alive. Douglas Messerli’s collection of 28 poets of Southern California offers an interesting, valuable, and deeply problematic view of the poetry scenes in Los Angeles & San Diego. Only three of the 28 are under the age of 40 and it’s worth noting that, of these, Catherine Daly is a relatively recent transplant to coastal SoCal, having already spent more years of the 21^st century there than she appears to have done in the one named in this anthology’s lugubrious title, Franklin Bruno is probably better known as a musician, and Standard Schaefer recently moved to San Francisco.

Having said that, the work here is consistently good, much legitimately great, with some famous names like Jerome Rothenberg, Harryette Mullen, David Antin, Will Alexander, Rae Armantrout, Wanda Coleman & Michael Davidson representing fully one-quarter of the whole. Plus some others who should be famous, such as Leland Hickman, Diane Ward & Martha Ronk. Even the writers whose work is entirely new to me – Martin Nakell, Barbara Maloutas & Thérèse Bachard – are all quite solid. But there’s that generational thing again – I don’t expect two-thirds of the “new” poets in an anthology to be older than I am, not at my age, but they are here.

Actually, I think it’s great that newer poets can be 60 years & up – I think even that it’s a characteristic of my generation that more than a few late starters have found it possible to carve real careers of lasting value – that’s a huge improvement over the way things were a few decades back. But, on the other hand, if I were looking to this anthology for signs of what the post-avant poetry scene of coastal Southern California will look like ten years hence, I might be hard put to find signs of it here.

Scene in fact may be the wrong word to characterize whatever formations poetry arise out of a region with a population in excess of 15 million people. With a population that large, one might expect to find not one or two, but several overlapping literary communities, as one does New York. In PIP 5, however, one doesn’t find that at all, but rather writers who appear more to have genial arms-length relationships with one another, but who – with only one or two exceptions – really work by themselves. Perhaps the closest thing to a formation here is the lifelong friendship & support David Antin & Jerome Rothenberg have given one another. But their writing has very little in common, even when, as Messerli does here, one restricts Antin’s writing to his pre-talking text works. There are three well-known language poets – Rae Armantrout, Diane Ward & Michael Davidson – but one is hard put to find similarities there. They appear no closer to one another than Will Alexander, Harryette Mullen & Wanda Coleman, who collectively could hardly be called a black literary scene.

This may, in fact, be the real message of this book. Years ago, Leland Hickman used to complain that he caught flack from local poets whenever he published authors who lived north of Santa Barbara or east of San Berdoo. Yet for all of the work that he, Bill Mohr & others poured into the local literary community in those years, it seemed at a distance as if the only identifiable L.A. style was a kind of post-Beat writing, surrounded by lots of relatively isolated poets, some of whom (Michael Lally, who only recently moved back east, Lewis MacAdams, James Krusoe, Ron Koertge, Excene Cervenka, Steve Kowit, Henry Rollins, Holly Prado, Robert Peters) probably ought to be here, but aren’t. Indeed, one doesn’t see evidence here of more recent movers & shakers, such as August Highland, Mark Weiss or Paul Naylor, let alone younger poets like Noah de Lissovoy.

The poet whose presence really underscores this for me is Leland Hickman. It’s great to see Lee’s work in print in any venue, and I won’t fault Messerli for his selection of Hickman’s work here either – the discrete versions of texts are anthologizable in ways that the great mess – I mean that term positively & affectionately – that is Great Slave Lake Suite is not. Yet Lee died 14 years ago. His inclusion in an anthology of innovative writing really casts the book into a retrospective mode, as tho this were the major SoCal poetry of the past 20 years, not of today & certainly not going forward. Imagine, by way of contrast, an anthology of New York poetry that similarly included Ted Berrigan, but not Anselm or Edmund. That’s pretty much what this book seems to be. PIP 5 tells you where SoCal innovative writing has been, not where it’s going.

One alternative might have been to not give each poet the roughly 12 pages they have here, and to have increased the number of writers included. Yet, reading Messerli’s introduction – the best explication of his editing strategies he’s ever done – I’m glad that each writer is given room enough for us to really gain a sense of the writing. And Messerli has also prefaced each poet’s selection with a brief bio-biblio note, giving context in just the right way to each contribution. This approach to an anthology plays to Messerli’s strengths as an editor in ways that a broader book (or one focused on just younger poets) would not.

In general, the PIP anthologies have struck me as unfocused, save for the Brazilian volume (tho I really don’t know enough about Brazil to have any picture of how well or badly it represents the space). This volume, however, is not only the most coherent in the series, in many respects it’s the finest anthology Douglas Messerli has ever edited – which is saying something considering that From the Other Side of the Century is a very good book indeed.

 

¹ Project for Innovative Poetry.