A Community of Writers: Paul Engle and the Iowa Writers' Workshop

Ray B. West, Jr.

Is it better to be a "little master" than a big failure? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. Some, like the aforementioned Pound, and Hart Crane, are both at the same time. Others in both camps are neither. A golden bird in the hand.... What a teacher can supply: clarity of line and clarity of vision, patience for what's good and impatience with what's bad, quality and quantity in the metric tools of the trade and quality and quantity in the history of the discipline, the knowledge that one is always a servant of the language and never more. Ifthe teacher's poems are exemplary themselves, it's a powerful show-and-tell. Not only are Justice's poems exemplary, his entire enterprise has been. He has been an alp of integrity to two generations of young poets. His work has not only withstood the mistrals and siroccos of fashion and trendiness, it has also withstood their seductive subtle breezes as well, and has remained true to its constant demandwrite clearly, write well. He has written poems, beautiful poems, in all meters and many forms. He has written plays, stories, and essays . So far as I know, he has never written a novel, but I dare say he has contemplated more than one over the years. Distilled, his writing could serve as a hornbook for any aspiring poet. And, as Walter Benjamin said, "An author who teaches writers nothing, teaches no one." Every poem that Donald Justice ever wrote is a learning experience for the young poet - and the not-so-young poet, too, I might add. There is a problem being either solved, worked on, or worked on and abandoned in each poem that has survived. That these solutions are so liquid and effortless seemingly only speaks, of course, to the mastery that went into them. Pick any poem, at random, in the Selected Poems or A Donald Justice Reader and you will see what I mean - theorems are being worked out, equations are being solved, the abstract is being made palpable, the invisible forces are being brought to light. This is the emotion, these cadences, that endures, as Pound would have it. He is the contemporary master of the adverb (most notably, perhaps, "perhaps"), both when evident and, especially, when suppressed , though he has said he considers the conjunction the most beautiful part of speech. C H A R L E S W RIG H T 191 Another interesting thing about teachers who are good writers - not only do you get their own take on everything, you also get the people who informed them. And if, as I say, the teacher is an exemplary writer himself, you get these influences condensed and distilled, essences, as it were. Justice's debts to and allegiances with Auden and Stevens have been acknowledged (almost every poet born during the 1920S was influenced by Stevens and Auden). Less well known, but more pervasive in a transparent way, is the light thrown on his work by Rafael Alberti and, especially, Rilke, the early Rilke of The Book 0/Pictures and New Poems. The nostalgia , sadness, melancholia, and sense of a world lost and a time lost (especially of childhood and adolescence) in both these poets shine like a sunrise, or sunset, over many of Justice's poems, brightening and clarifying, darkening and adumbrating them, outlining their own singularity and substance. That's about what I wanted to say. Dante put his teacher, Brunetto Latini, in hell, though not because of his teaching. I would put mine, Donald Justice, merely before your eyes, which I hope is not the same place. Reader, read his poems, they are addressed to you. 192 MEN TOR s, F 0 MEN T E R S, & TOR MEN TOR S JEAN WYLDER R. V. Cassill Even back in 1947, when I first knew him, R. V. Cassill seemed to have read all the fiction in the world. That is my first memory of him - talking about fiction. He was an Iowa boy, and ex-GI, and I knew him as both graduate student and teacher at the same time over the next two years in the Writers' Workshop in Iowa City. He and Flannery O'Connor were the only published writers in the workshop then, and I sat in awe of them both: Flannery, who said nothing; and Verlin who said everything. He had an Atlantic First under...