The Rehabilitation Squad

"Knoxville: Summer, 1915" is one of those passages that has turned my turgid rail commute into something bearable. Since first reading this in school, the disputed opening pages of James Agee’s "A Death in the Family," I have returned to it often. When I first read it, I looked for more of this kind of anguished lyricism, but was disappointed when I could not find it (Agee's stories were hard to find in collections, and even the rest of the novel seemed in shadow beside this luminosity).

There was a collection of Agee’s poems, edited by the epic translator Robert Fitzgerald, but those were the pre-pre-Amazon days, and I resigned myself to the fact that I might never find them. Old wishes were realized this week with the arrival of a galley of the forthcoming "James Agee: Selected Poems," which the Library of America will publish in the fall.

Here is yet another effort to keep a writer’s name and work within our reach. The L of A has already published much of Agee’s work; there are also the efforts of editor Michael A. Lofaro to keep Agee's name before our eyes  (although his "restoration" of "A Death in the Family" has not received apprecation from all quarters, especially not in the pages of our Book Review).

Andrew Hudgins, editor of "Selected Poems," says it contains much of the Fitzgerald edition. There are familiar pieces here (like the stirring dedication to Walker Evans at the beginning of "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men"  that begins "Against time and the damages of the brain/sharpen and calibrate..."). But there are other things that come as a surprise, such as "John Carter," his failed attempt à la Byron’s "Don Juan" to chronicle the life of a modern young man. Or else there's this surprising little bit, about work habits:

Wake up Threeish,
Clean up the sink
Air out the bedroom
Pour out a drink
Drink to the daylight
Sit down and think
I’m Open All Night.

Can't you hear the mock humor? Can't you feel the defiance? This is the kind of voice that helps you through difficult times, through times of self-doubt. Though Agee never published more than one volume, "Permit Me Voyage," he kept writing poetry, Hudgins tells us. I’m glad that he did.

Nick Owchar

(Photo credit: Associated Press)

Comments

[John Shannon]

Thank you , Nick, for this.