Previously: In this corner Paul Metcalf

Review: From Quarry Road, Uncollected Essays and Reviews of Paul Metcalf. Preface by Jonathan Williams, edited and with an introduction by Robert Buckeye, Amandla Publishing, East Middlebury, Vermont, 2002, ISBN: 0-9708563-2-6. $20.00 paper.

It’s the little questions that I try to answer in the early morning after the barking of the neighbor’s dog wakes me. I’ve given up on the big ones: Why do poor people vote for Republicans? Why do people love being victims? Is it that excessive consuming destroys memory or that lack of memory is necessary for excessive consuming? Why are there six degrees of separation instead of five or seven? I give up on those. I awake curious about the little questions, like this one: why is the subtitle of this book “Uncollected” when it is now collected? After it is collected, can it be “uncollected”? Was it somehow gathered without being collected? Editor Robert Buckeye explains: “This selection of Metcalf’s writing is intended to supplement the selection Dalkey Archive made in Where Do You Put the Horse? (1986).”  These, then, are previously uncollected, probably meaning that they were left un-collected by Metcalf. Perhaps. I have an answer. I doubt it is the real answer, but at least it’s an answer. And there is some novelty in that.

I read essays and reviews to learn about the writer as much as I read to learn about the subjects of the writing. The first time I realized I was doing this was when I first read the letters of Ezra Pound, then Williams, then Olson, three of the heavy hitters also in this selection.

So what do we learn about the subjects and the writer? You can be introduced to or given a unique reading of: Charles Olson, Edward Dahlberg, Michel Butor, Michael Lesy, Jaime de Angulo, Clark Coolidge, Ken Irby, Jonathan Williams, Emily Dickinson, Todd Moore, Lucia Berlin, Melville, and Pound. What about the writer, in this corner (from his lead essay on Olson): Paul Metcalf?

We learn what he learned from Williams, his being rooted in place, Paterson. From Pound: history, anything is the subject of the poem, rhythm, the collage of historical documents, his ear. On Pound: “Perhaps he’s a cross between Dante Alighieri and Rush Limbaugh. But I learned from him.” Olson? Space and the reminder that Melville necessarily had to be dealt with, Metcalf’s personal connection could not be long ignored, and the fight, to kick against the pricks not expecting any reward. Olson in the heavyweight division.

And from Metcalf? That the book [not the word: “playing with language”] [not the sentence: distinguishing the poem from prose] is the basic unit of writing. Writing is life, infused with time (rhythm), space (geography and the space of the page) and history (time), as opposed to the workshop, university writing, the precious no-risk writing, the language gamers [Gertrude Stein: “that bitch”]. His own writing risked everything [In my first letter to him, after reading Genoa, I included a poem for him, all that I remember is this very forgettable title: “Only everything is good enough, for Paul Metcalf”]; the path- finders do that and make it look easy, natural. He was no philosopher, no abstract thinker, no Marxist, but he understood the essence of American capitalism and produced work that stands as a constant criticism of the culture that is blind to its history, denies that the creative act only has meaning within history. A friend sent me a copy of a Delbert McClinton cd with a song called “The Jungle Room.” I thought of American culture. I thought of Metcalf: “Ain’t got no future / ain’t got no past / you’re good as gold / while the money lasts.” He never wrote from that room, never even visited.

Bob Buckeye did a superb editing job, and I couldn’t find a single typo. It’s nicely printed and bound, a refreshing hand-crafted book, solid. It is a real book, an excellent example of small press craft, honoring a writer who only published with small presses. His writings will endure, his critical writings [the essay on Dickinson should be required reading for lit students] no less than the collage novels / poems. Metcalf was an original, though firmly rooted in American literature. Critics made much of the fact that Metcalf was related to Melville. T. S. Elliot wrote that the present determines the past, that a real talent creates his predecessors. Metcalf was given his, but sometimes I have this fancy, provoking another unanswerable question: when will it be that students of literature will look to the nineteenth century and refer to Melville as the great-grandfather of Paul Metcalf?

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