A recurring theme of these notes: the forces that shaped me. And I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to mention The Voice That is Great Within Us.
The anthology of 20th century American poetry was edited by Hayden Carruth, a World War II veteran who got a master’s degree from the University of Chicago on the G.I. Bill and survived electroshock treatments when his delightfully encyclopedic mind broke down. For a while, he cobbled together a living as a farm hand, reviewer and typist. He gradually regained his health, writing poetry.
I never call the book by its title. To me, it’s Carruth’s anthology. I don’t think anyone else could have compiled it.
I started to list the poets that Carruth had introduced me to. Instead, let me just mention one, Hy Sobiloff, who had, like Carruth, had a strange and wonderful mind.
Hyman Jordan Sobiloff, 1912-1970, was an industrialist who ran several companies. For a while, he took poetry lessons from Delmore Schwartz, who lived in Greenwich Village. Sobiloff would have the chauffeur park around the corner as a matter of manners.
I love Sobiloff's poem “The Child’s Sight.” The poet is delighted to be in the company of children. “They have included me” is a recurring line.
The poet stops with the children to look, touch, taste and notice.
The child’s wisdom is in saying.
They say what they see when they see it.
I am beginning to remember how
When I don’t say it when I see it
I remember it differently.
My memory works like that. And, when I read the poem, I was surprised that people whose lives are so different — an eccentric poet and an ordinary reader — should have minds that work in similar ways. Being reminded of how much human beings have in common is a good reason to read poetry.
• Source: The Voice That is Great Within Us: American Poetry of the Twentieth Century, edited by Hayden Carruth; New York: Bantam Classics, 1983.
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