Transatlantic Connections

The poems that I have discussed (and some that I have not) strongly suggest that the New Formalists have absorbed ideas, themes, images, metaphors, techniques, and even language from Davie, Gunn, and Larkin, and that they have refracted these through lenses that are distinctively American or transatlantic. The resultant poems are different from the originals, modified by the New Formalists to suit their own strengths, interests, experiences, beliefs, ideas, and occasionally, perhaps, their Americanness. These poems support Gunn’s argument that “derivative” poets have nothing to be ashamed of, for the New Formalists appear to have done exactly as Robert Duncan did (in Gunn’s estimation): “Duncan too fed on those he admired, but like a true cannibal he digested their virtues to make them his, and they rose in him with a fresh life, both recognizable and altered.”

The New Formalists have likewise taken in the work of their predecessors, resulting in poems that contain—“both recognizable and altered”—a number of the virtues and, perhaps, limitations of the Movement. Many New Formalists, like the mockingbird in Gunn’s poem “Patch Work,” have not only heard and admired the “repertoire of songs” written by Davie, Gunn, and Larkin but have also borrowed freely from that repertoire. The New Formalists have appropriated the “plangent notes” and “trills” of these Movement writers, creating “headlong song[s]” of their own. The resulting poems are much more than mere imitations or echoes, consisting of much more than “virtuosity of tone,” a phrase Steele uses in his negative assessment of mockingbird-poets. Indeed, a substantial number of the New Formalist poems are equal in quality to the English poems that have evidently inspired them.