|
Fresno, a town that frequently makes lists for things like the air quality and a lack of culture, has the unique distinction of being a literary capital in the world. Clearly not New York or London, the world's
centers for book publishing, or a place with the most prize winning authors per
capita, although Fresno has been the home of two Pulitzer prize-winning writers,
this San Joaquin Valley location is recognized in the literary world as a place
where poetry emanates. When the Fresno
Poet's Association meets on the first Thursday of the month, October through
April, excluding January, at the Fresno
Art Museum, poetry readers from all
over the country usually remark that it is a pleasure to be in Fresno, a poetry place, a city well loved and
respected for its poetry.
William Saroyan, a Fresno
native, left school at fifteen to become a writer. He wanted to be a poet first and foremost,
though it was his play, The Time of Your
Life, that in 1939 earned him the honor of becoming the first Pulitzer
prize-winning writer from Fresno. Since that time, over fifty poets with ties
to Fresno, whether born here, lived here, or gone
to school in Fresno,
have gained national or international reputations for their poetry.
One of the first to
gain distinction as a poet from Fresno
was William Everson, who was born in Sacramento,
and raised in Selma. While a student at Fresno State College in
the 1930's, he had a poetic, and in a sense religious experience, reading the
poetry of Carmel
poet Robinson Jeffers. Everson later
went on to become a conscientious objector during World War II, a lay brother in
the Dominican Order, as Brother Antoninus, a fine art printer, and part of the
poetry renaissance in San Francisco in the 1950's and 60's.
But the strongest
poetry winds for Fresno blew from the northwest,
with the arrival of Philip Levine from Stanford University
in 1958. Levine came to Fresno as an associate professor of English
at Fresno State College. In the course
of the next twenty-five years, as a teacher of poetry, he helped launch the
careers of the best young poets the valley had to offer. Levine himself has published seventeen books
of poetry and received numerous prestigious awards, including the Pulitzer Prize
for Poetry in 1995 for his book The
Simple Truth. What Work Is, won
the National Book Award; Ashes: Poems Old
and New, was the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and
the first American Book Award for Poetry; 7
Years From Somewhere, also won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and
numerous other awards. Levine, through
his teaching and writing, solidly established Fresno as a home for poetry in the literary
world.
Levine's
seriousness and dedication for reading and writing excellent poetry, for Fresno, was comparable to
that of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, in the western world. He has guided the writing of students who
would become some of the finest poets in the country and the world. In 1962, Levine teamed with Stanford Stegner
Fellow, poet Peter Everwine on the faculty of Fresno State,
making the college's reputation for poetry writing, as one of the foremost. In
1966, C.G. Hanzlicek joined the faculty, followed in 1987 by Corrinne Clegg
Hales.
Another
Selma high school student who came to Fresno State
to study with Levine and Everwine was Larry Levis, who died prematurely at age
49 in 1996. Levis was a student Levine recognized as
having great potential, who could have developed a poetry career with the
capability of surpassing that of his teachers, had his career not sadly ended so
soon.
A
number of well-known and respected poets gravitated toward Fresno, eager to study with Phil Levine and
Peter Everwine in the early days, then later with Hanzlicek and Hales. Poets like Gary Soto, a writer of numerous
books and collections of poetry, winner of many awards, graduated from Roosevelt High School
in 1971 and studied at Fresno
State. David St. John, a 1967 McLane High graduate,
and a Levine student, now teaches poetry writing at the University of Southern
California, and is the author of nine books of
poetry. A list, by no means all
inclusive of renowned poets from Fresno, include Lawson Fusao Inada, DeWayne
Rail, Roberta Spear, Ernesto Trejo, Luis Omar Salinas, C. W. Chuck Moulton, Juan Felipe Herrera, Jean
Janzen, Corrinne Clegg Hales, and C. G. Hanzlicek. One way or another, they all
have ties to Fresno.
Fresno poets first received recognition collectively in an
anthology published in 1970, entitled Down
at the Santa Fe Depot, Twenty Fresno Poets, a title coined by Saroyan,
and edited by poets James Baloian, and David Kherdian. This anthology began to define what has became known as the Fresno School of Poetry, not just poetry from schools in Fresno, but a definitive style of poetry that certainly reflects the influences of Fresno and the teachers.
What is a Fresno
poem? The scope of Fresno
poetry became even more defined with the publication of a second anthology, Piecework, 19 Fresno Poets, edited by Jon Veinberg and
Ernesto Trejo, and published in 1987.
Many of the original poets were included, along with many newer, emerging
writers, and more women poets.
In 1999, a third anthology whose title came from a line in a poem by
Levine, How Much Earth, The Fresno Poets, included over 40 poets,
and was edited by Christopher Buckley, David Oliveira, and M. L. Williams, all
three with ties to Fresno.
Today, poetry
continues to be written and is thriving in Fresno.
California State University Fresno has a nationally recognized Master of
Fine Arts program in Creative Writing, led by Corrinne Clegg Hales, and Liza
Wieland, following in the tradition of Philip Levine, Peter Everwine, and C. G.
Hanzlicek. Poetry jams, and readings are
being held regularly throughout Fresno. The Fresno County Library, in conjunction
with The Fresno Poetry Center locally, and the Poets House and the Poetry
Society of America, two of America's preeminent poetry organizations, will be
bring a new program to Fresno in 2005 and 2006.
Branching Out, Poetry for the 21st
Century, presents accessible and engaging talks by distinguished
poets/scholars about contemporary and classic poets. In the spring, Eavan Boland, and Vijay
Seshadri will be in Fresno
to talk about William Butler Yeats, and Elizabeth Bishop. The Poetry Society of America, the Fresno
Area Express, and the Creative Writing Program at CSUF, have conducted the Poetry in Motion program for the last
three years, regularly putting poems by national and local poets on Fresno's buses. On February 10, Philip Levine will return to
the Fresno Art Museum to start the 2005 reading
series by the Fresno Poet's Association.
Levine, who turns 76 this month (January), is the biggest attraction at
the Poet's Association programs, reading his poems almost every year to a sold
out auditorium.
|
