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Gary Lenhart teaches at Dartmouth College and is a poet and scholar. His most recent books of poetry are Father and Son Night, Light Heart, and One at a Time. His essays and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including American Poetry Review, American Book Review, Exquisite Corpse, and others.

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The Stamp of Class

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS

Contents

Introduction: "Distortion" or "Unexamined Factor"?.........................................................11 The "Uneducated Poets": Stephen Duck and Ann Yearsley....................................................82 A Song for Occupations: Whitman the Rough................................................................203 "Poor Doc, Nobody Wants His Life or His Verses": W. C. Williams and The New Masses.......................324 Special Handling: David Schubert and Marcia Nardi........................................................465 Caviar and Cabbage: The Voracious Appetite of Melvin Tolson..............................................646 Opening the Field: The New American Poetry...............................................................857 Literary Men in Blue Jeans: Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett.................................................988 Burning Beauty: Diane Wakoski, Eileen Myles, Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel, Tracie Morris.....................112Afterword...................................................................................................129Bibliography................................................................................................137Index.......................................................................................................147

Chapter One

In 1732, a London bookseller published an unauthorized volume of poems to which he gave the title, Poems on several subjects/ written by Stephen Duck, lately a poor thresher in a barn, in the county of Wilts, at the wages of four shillings and six-pence per week:; which were publickly read in the drawing-room at Windsor Castle, on Friday the 11th of September, 1730, to Her Majesty: who was thereupon most graciously pleased to take the author into her royal protection, by allotting him a salary of thirty pounds per annum, and a small house in Richmond in Surrey to live in, for the better support of himself and family. The pensioned Duck complained about the piracy; he would have liked an opportunity to further revise the poems before publication.

In 1831, Robert Southey, then English poet laureate, published an introduction to a volume of "Attempts in Verse by an Old Servant," John Jones. This introduction was later expanded and published separately as The Lives and Works of the Uneducated Poets, with an eight-page list of subscribers consisting mostly of nobles and clerics. Among Southey's uneducated poets were the Thames waterman John Taylor; shoemaker James Woodhouse; pipe-maker and trumpeter John Frederick Bryant; the "Bristol milkwoman," Ann Yearsley; and the "thresher-poet," Stephen Duck.

When J. S. Childers edited a new version of Southey's Lives another one hundred years later, he wrote that "probably no writer has ever disturbed the recognized littrateurs of his day as did Stephen Duck, who from being 'a poor thresher in a barn,' was, because of the favour of the Queen [Caroline], suddenly thrust into national fame." Jonathan Swift resented Duck's modest pension and complained strongly about it in letters to Pope and Gay. He was quick to deride the thresher in a characteristically cynical epigram.

The thresher, Duck, could o'er the Queen prevail; The proverb says, no force against a flail. From threshing corn, he turns to thresh his brains, For which his Majesty allows him grains; Tho' 'tis confest, that those who ever saw His poems, think them all not worth a straw. Thrice happy Duck, employed in threshing stubble! Thy toil is lessen'd, and thy profits double. (Southey, 109)

In his own letter to Gay, Alexander Pope approved of the pension; he had met Duck and judged him "an honest man." But when Queen Caroline sent him Duck's manuscripts for comment, Pope remarked uncharitably that "most villages could supply verses of equal force." A contrary view was expressed by Horace Walpole fifty years later (November 13, 1784) in a letter to Hannah More: "When the late Queen patronized Stephen Duck, who was a wonder only at first, and had not genius enough to support the character he had promised, twenty artisans and labourers turned poets, and starved" (Southey, 183). Walpole's estimate may have been low. Inspired by the story of Duck's ample pension, a gaggle of brickmasons, carpenters, and other working men published manuscripts that failed to support Pope's judgment. Following Swift's example, a flurry of parodies also appeared, including The Thresher's Miscellany, which stated upon the title page that the author is "now a poor Thresher in the County of Suffolk, at the wages of Five Shillings and Six Pence per Week, though formerly an Eton Scholar" (Southey, 184).

What so riled and antagonized the English literary world of the 1730s? "The Thresher's Labour" was composed when Stephen Duck was twenty-five years old, supporting a wife and three children on the meager thresher's income announced on the title page of the pirated edition. As evidence that Duck deserved inclusion in The Lives and Works of the Uneducated Poets, Southey noted that Duck much admired Milton but read him with the aid of a dictionary, as "one would Latin and Greek"; that he was fond of Seneca and Epictetus but read them only in translation; and that he owned but one volume of Shakespeare that included only seven plays. Of course, Duck was also devoted to the Spectator, which he frequently took into the fields with him to read during work breaks. The Spectator published the most fashionable writers of the times, and today we might deem the combination of stylish coffeehouse prose, Latin philosophy, and the verse of Milton and Shakespeare sufficient education for a young poet, whether laborer or gentleman.

Even Duck's detractors admit the "charm and authenticity" of his most famous poem, and recognize its singularity as a "vividly realistic" portrait "from first-hand experience" of "the labourer's life." It is still included in anthologies of the era and can also be found in The Penguin Book of English Pastoral Verse, edited by John Barrell and John Bull, though under the heading "Some Versions of Anti-Pastoral," where it is grouped with poems by Goldsmith, Crabbe, and John Clare-all poets distinguished from the pastoral company chiefly by their more intimate acquaintance with village life.

The Birds salute us, as to Work we go, And with new Life our Bosoms seem to glow. On our right shoulder hangs the crooked Blade, The Weapon destin'd to uncloath the Mead: Our left supports the Whetstone, Scrip, and Beer; This for our Scythes, and these ourselves to cheer. And now the Field, design'd to try our Might, At length appears, and meets our longing Sight. The Grass and Ground we view with careful Eyes, To see which way the best Advantage lies; And, Hero-like, each claims the foremost Place. At first our Labour seems a sportive Race: With rapid Force our sharpen'd Blades we drive, Strain ev'ry Nerve, and Blow for Blow we give. All strive to vanquish, tho' the Victor gains No other Glory, but the greatest Pains.

Admittedly, the poet's point of view is part of the poem's attraction.

Week after week, we this dull Task...