744
PETER MARIN
teur in the world of ideas or
if
that is part of his pose as an "anti–
intellectual"; it really doesn't matter. What does is the unquestion–
ing enthusiasm of his Alice-in-Wonderland crushes, his headlong
rush from Bucke's cosmic consciousness to Reich to Hassidism to
Blavatsky to Zen to Jung-without a breath, without examination.
The "anti-ascetic and joyous" is what Shapiro celebrates, and we
need its celebration, but its handling here is more than relaxed-it is
fuzzy and superficial, occasionally sophomoric. Religion and mysti–
cism are lived traditions, disciplines, whether Zen or Hassidic; they
are convincing when they flower into poems, not when presented
as happy literary platforms, not even when their advocate has such
good intentions. Elsewhere in his book Shapiro takes Yeats to task
for his tortured straining after the occult, and this is precisely the
feeling he generates himself: a continual straining after the divine,
almost desperate at times: an effort to take joy by storm.
I suppose this sounds ungrateful; there
is
much scattered in
these essays which is incisive and exciting. In places the troubled,
engaged and personal voice breaks through, sure of itself, and what
follows is unusual and useful. It is this voice which illuminates the
final essays in the collection, those in which Shapiro takes up new
heroes to replace the old. They are those writers who seem to have
moved their readers and younger writers far more and
in
different
ways than their public critics: Williams, Henry Miller, Whitman,
Dylan Thomas, Hart Crane: the eccentric, the celebratory, the
apocalyptic-the passionate human voices. Shapiro confronts them
all with a sincerity and joyous friendship in keeping with the quali–
ties he praises: the essay on Miller, for example, is marvelous,
strikes just the right balance of thought, affection and humor. It
is response without pretense to authority or affectation, and its
honesty is its justification. Freely playing, these qualities bring to
life Shapiro'S assertions: that beneath the involuted complexity of
theory we are pained and joyful creatures--writer, reader and
critic alike; that the rock-bottom essential
in
poetry
or
criticism is
the passionate honesty of the personal voice.
As for the rest of the book and those uneasy
essays:
if they
are
the fretful record of conversion they seem; they may
be
the
necessary prose approach to Shapiro's future poems.
Peter Marin
