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PARTISAN REVIEW
Next to Goodman's, other political poetry of our time somehow pales.
Bly during the Vietnam War raged nobly but self-righteously beyond the
fray; Lowell in the
Notebooks
fussed over whether he should or should not
climb gingerly off the Brahmin pedestal; even Ginsberg, attired in guru
mantle, seems relatively self-luxuriating. In prose, Mailer's journalism ex–
plores the personal tumescences and detumescences of political engage–
ment brilliantly-but what exactly are Mailer's principles?
If we want writing which presents the struggle to create and maintain a
whole self consistent with moral (or even immoral) ideals, and to embody
that self in language useful to others, we can read a number of black and
women writers. But black and women writers do not love their country (why
should they? it is not loveable, especially to them), and it happens Good–
man did.
I dream my country
has quit her desperate course
and is now at peace
my people now take
a lively satisfaction
in one another
my people greet me
when I walk out the doorway
well pleased with myself
That was not rational, and he knew it.
But I have
no choice.
I do not need
to
carry my task through ,
neither am I free
to
give it up .
"Goodman," as Susan Sontag remarks, "was our Sartre ."
At the same time, of course, Goodman is a terrific love poet. So far as
he is concerned, sex is an absolute good. Naturally, since it makes people
happy, or at least it should. As he has St. Patrick opine in a comic ballad:
I never found , not I,
when I was young and incontinent,
that my reservoir ran dry,
or it kept me from becoming a saint
-the contrary! the more you come
the more you can. Period.
