Series Review
West Chester Poetry Conference (06/5-8)
Panel on Hudson Review Editor Frederick Morgan
by Terese Coe

The 2002 West Chester Poetry Conference was a four-day marathon of absorbing and dramatic readings, provocative panels, and exhilarating meetings with participants between events. Poets reading included Rhina Espaillat, Dick Davis, Anthony Hecht, Nina Cassian, Michael Donaghy, Kim Addonizio, Sam Gwynn, Nancy Willard, Andrew Hudgins, Marilyn Nelson, Dana Gioia, Diane Thiel, Timothy Steele, Miller Williams, and Frederick Morgan.

Panelists and faculty included Michael Peich, Lester Graves Lennon, Len Krisak, Louis Simpson, Annie Finch, Diane Thiel, Mark Wallace, Sam Gwynn, Katherine Varnes, Edward Cifelli, Thomas Cable, David Sanders, Frank Wilson, David Yezzi, Michael Lind and Chelsea Rathburn. Paul Fussell received the Robert Fitzgerald Prosody Award.

My personal favorite of all the many West Chester panels was the one called "The Achievements of Frederick Morgan." The moderator was Alexandra Mullen and the panelists were Dana Gioia, Sydney Lea and Susan Balee. Biographies and critiques of a great publisher-editor-writer may be among the most instructive of literary studies for me, especially when they are thorough and impart a sense of the wholeness of the individual's existence. Praise itself has unfortunately become a rare commodity in this world, whether literary or not, and thus I find it a highly inspiring event to see and hear a worthy person's life work the subject of public admiration when he or she reaches their later years.

Sydney Lea, a former New England Review editor, called Morgan's fifty years as founding editor of HR (as well as poet and mentor) "matchless in literary history." What Morgan said to him about his duties as an editor can only support that high praise: "Your business is not to establish a cadre of stars, but to cultivate their successors."

In spite of the fact that Lea dealt with the slush pile, Fred Morgan instructed him to "make a careful study of the manuscripts," and to respond in the same week he had agreed to do so. For that reason, Lea said, he "had to bypass many good ones." Though he lasted thirteen years at NER, he "thought he'd lived a hundred."

Susan Balee related that when Morgan and his co-editor and wife, Paula Deitz, accepted Balee's paper for publication (it was based on her Ph.D. defense at Columbia University), they added that they'd like to meet her in person, and apparently this was not unusual for them. Fred's desk was "heaped with manuscripts." She thought herself "too loquacious" that day; the professional relationship, in any case, continued to be excellent. She credits Morgan's and Deitz's "kindness, influence, and unflinching loyalty to" the highest values.

Dana Gioia listed a few of the poets published by HR in Morgan's fifty years at the helm: Eliot, Stevens, Pound, Tate, Hecht, Merwin, Plath, Sexton, Dylan Thomas, Ammons, and William Smith, among others. He mentioned the journal had been co-founded by Joseph Bennett and William Arrowsmith (like Morgan, from Princeton University). Though Fred Morgan retired in 1998, Paula Deitz continues as the editor.

Gioia noted that there is "not yet an adequate description or cogent analysis of Frederick Morgan's work…Is it obscure, does it lack an identifiable center? Is he a poet's poet?" He believes the answer to the question lies somewhere in the fact that Morgan's career is something "difficult to understand given the conventional categories of criticism."

In the US, not specializing in one's first forté is thought of as "amateurism" according to Gioia, and certainly Morgan established himself as a first-rate editor before he did so as a poet. Versatility is not properly appreciated in this country, Gioia believes, and there is little reason to disagree. Perhaps, I thought, a few exceptions exist, but more specifically in the realm of director/actors, for one.

Gioia believes a related reason for the dearth of cogent analysis of Morgan's poems is the latter's "very late development as a writer." He was busy; he raised six children in addition to running The Hudson Review. Moreover, the fact that Morgan's poems comprise numerous styles means "most critical approaches become useless." [DG]

He quoted Morgan as saying, "A poem comes as a gift.…You can't force a poem." If only more poets knew this.

Moderator Alexandra Mullen delivered an astute quote from Hudson Review Editor Hayden Carruth on "Frederick Morgan's acceptance of the shiftiness of this world." This was one of the numerous occasions the poet's inherent philosophical obsession and thrust were cited. Death, love, and to some extent violence, according to Gioia, are among Morgan's prevalent themes. Louis Simpson had the honor then of introducing the reader.

Fred Morgan read from his poems with hawk-eyed leisureliness and deep meaning. One had the impression of sitting in a private room with a poet who was a friend one wanted to know more and better, whose intimate smiles and eyes peering at his auditors while experiencing certain lines of a poem gave you all the more the sense and depth of what was meant, and whose inflection and pace projected the warmth of a sage and the patient confidence of a knowing guide.

(Poet Terese Coe is on the staff of The Alsop Review. (alsopreview.com) A version of this review appears on AR's discussion forum, The Gazebo.)