In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

134 THEMINNESOTA REVIEW books in brief Gary Snyder, Lew Welch A PhiĆ¼p Whalen, On Bread and Poetry: A Panel Discussion. Bolinas, CaUfornia: Grey Fox Press, 1977. 47pp. $2.50. This printing of a 1964 radio broadcast is a pleasant reminder of the high hopes once entertained by the members of the Beat generation and the San Francisco Renaissance . It was a year before the fuU-scale escalation in Viet Nam and only eight years beyond the pubUcation ofHowl. At the time, Snyder, Welch and Whalen were stiU excited by what was happening or by what seemed possible. As Snyder said, . . . one of the things that really turned us on about 1956 when we started reading poetry aloud around San Francisco, was that it reminded everybody that the excitement of poetry is a communal, social, human thing, and that poems aren't meant to be read in the quiet of your Uttle room aU by yourself with a dictionary at hand. . . . The "bread" of the title is less the money one Uves on than a symbol for the communal and social ethic these poets spoke for. Not only is poetry supposed to be communal rather than individual, but it is also supposed to be popular rather than elitist or specialized, inspired rather than thought, native (i.e., American, usually in speech) rather than AngUfied, based on experience rather than learning. The most identifiable enemy is the academy. Again, Snyder: There's an academic style and an academic language, which is Uterary, poetic, and so forth, and it doesn't come from the way anybody around here speaks, and it doesn't have much to do with the way anybody is Uving. The argument had vaUdity then, and, to an extent, it stUl does. But, as much as we owe these poets for their Bohemian courage, we should see these issues better than they saw them. Their argument makes too much of the university. Snyder may know better now, but thenhe and the others thought that the cultural problem originated in the university. The complexities of cultural production are reduced to a false intramural argument, three wild happy boys from Reed sticking their tongues out at John Crowe Ransome. R.M. Lucien Goldmann, Lukacs and Heidegger: Towards a New Philosophy. Tr. William Q. Boelhower. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978. 112 pp. $7.50. When Goldmann died in 1970, he had completed only the introductory section of his projected study of the relationship between the thinking of Lukacs and Heidegger. ...

pdf

Share