On American Poetry

It is a truly remarkable phenomenon, American poetry. Many years ago I showed Anna Akhmatova, a great Russian poet, several poems by Robert Frost, from his “North of Boston.” A few days later I returned and asked her what she thought. “What kind of poet is this?” she asked, in mock indignation. “He talks all the time about what people sell and buy! About getting insurance and all that!” (I suppose she was referring to his “Star Splitter.”) After a pause, she added, “What a terrifying poet.” The epithet was well chosen. It bespoke the distinction of Frost’s posture vis-a-vis the traditional “tragic” posture of the poet in European and Russian literature. For tragedy, even self-inflicted tragedy, is always a fait accompli , a backward look; whereas terror is future-bound, and has to do with apprehension or, more accurately, with the recognition of one’s own negative potential.

I am sorely tempted to suggest that this terrifying aspect is indeed Frost’s--and with him, all American poetry’s--forte. Poetry, by definition, is a highly individualistic art; in a sense, this country is its logical abode. At any rate, it is only logical that in this country this individualistic tendency has gone to its idiosyncratic extreme, in modernists and traditionalists alike. . . . To my eye as well as my ear, American poetry is a relentless nonstop sermon on human autonomy; the song of the atom, if you will, defying the chain reaction. Its general tone is that of resilience and fortitude, of exacting the full look at the worst and not blinking. It certainly keeps its eyes wide open, not so much in wonderment, or poised for a revelation, as on the lookout for danger. It is short on consolation (the diversion of so much European poetry, especially Russian); rich and extremely lucid in detail; free of nostalgia for some Golden Age; big on hardihood and escape. If one looked for its motto, I would suggest Frost’s line from “A Servant to Servants”: “The best way out is always through.”

From “An Immodest Proposal,” the New Republic, Nov. 11, 1991. Brodsky, a Russian emigre and winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, is currently Poet Laureate/Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress.