ALICIA OSTRIKER
293
originality , or even if they valued (as they all claim to do) organic form,
Goodman would have been recognized as a major poet long ago. The sense
of plain materials fills the texture of his verse , as the admiration for them
filled his thought. The poems read like a scissorcut at the edge of yardgoods
and the cl.ean ripping all across the cloth; or a man chopping wood. The
language has the vigor of many nouns and verbs, few adjectives and ad–
verbs-hence substance and deed unrefined , unqualified, unsubtle. A
quirky rough prosody for the speech rhythms of the (usually) long sentences
to fit into, enjambed and breaking in midline more likely than not, some–
thing like dangling shoelaces . A colloquial diction, which, however, can
shift back and forth to the learned or archaic phrase, not for pomp or points,
but because that is how a lifelong scholar who spends time in New York City
streets has to think. " Motion of mind in English syntax" straight-out declar–
ative, or angled into inversion and ellipse which make the comparable
syntactic features of Berryman look like artful hollow stage props. Goodman
was proud of his style for what he could make it say , and apart from having
his lines scan and rhyme when he wanted them to , he may not have thought
much about it.
It
fits perfectly, like well-worn clothes, his quick-witted and
defenceless self.
According to one
New Yorker
review, Goodman was " too pragmatic a
writer to be a good poet." What the typical critical dismissal of Goodman
boils down to , I think, is the sense that he has tried to write a poetry without
decorum. And this is a central matter, because decorum is to poetry as man–
ners is to society.
Manners, as we know, exist to maintain a given social structure, to
initiate the young into it, and to ensure that those who cannot perform cor–
rectly shall be excluded socially. Manners make life agreeable and keep peo–
ple smiling. And manners protect us all-from each other and from the
forbidden-functioning as a film or mask between the raw self and the rest
of the world, or between the raw and, as it were, the cooked self.
What do good manners forbid? The exhibition of strong emotion:–
sexuality, anger, fear , joy, grief. Don' t break down and cry. Don' t pe seized
by the inner light and start to pray at the dinner table. Do not show crude
appetite, eating like a pig, although the rules vary on
drunkenn~ss .
For
intellectuals : if
you
wish to be asked back, avoid expressing thougilts un–
usual to the company-unless
you
can do so charmingly and wittily::-in
which case your audience will not be offended and will understand , as
Wilde 's and Shaw's did , that
you
do not mean to be taken seriously.
If
properly internalized and believed in , manners will protect
you
and me
from inner disruption as well: our beastly selves, our potential insanity, our
terrors .
