R.D. Pohl 5

Poet Irving Feldman turns 80

"Irving Feldman-what kind of name is that for a poet?" an inebriated Gregory Nunzio Corso--the youngest of Beat Poetry's inner circle--is reputed to have famously sneered at a literary party he crashed some forty years ago. Never mind that it was Feldman's liquor he was drinking at the time, or that it might seem a bit specious in the context of 1960's era American poetry for a son of Little Italy to question a son of Brooklyn's literary pedigree.

You can read Feldman's account of the contretemps in his poem "Terminal Laughs" from the volume The Life and Letters (1994), a finalist for the Poets' Prize. The poem was republished in his Collected Poems, 1954-2004 (Shocken Books), which is an indispensable volume any collector of late 20th century American poetry should own.

Irving Feldman, it turns out, is a perfectly fine name for a major American poet, or so its bearer has made it.

The author of eleven critically acclaimed collections including All of Us Here (1986), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Leaping Clear (1976) and The Pripet Marshes (1965), both finalists for the National Book Award; Feldman became Buffalo's first (and to date only) recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" Fellowship in 1992.

He taught from 1964 to 2004 at the University at Buffalo, where he retired as Distinguished Professor of English. Over those four decades at UB, his contrarian spirit served as a valuable counterpoint to those who traced their lineage through "Projective Verse" and its process-oriented descendents, including "Language Poetry" and the various poetries that comprise the field now known as "Poetics." More importantly, he served as an exacting but supportive mentor to generations of poets and scholars, many of whom have launched their own careers.

Feldman celebrated his 80th birthday on Monday. In order to commemorate the occasion, a number of his friends, students, colleagues and fellow poets came together to create a tribute web site featuring archival material, audio files, and short and not-so-short testimonials to his life and work by such luminaries as the critic Harold Bloom (who calls Feldman "one of the few canonical poets still with us" and "our only poet who complements [the greatness of] Philip Roth's fiction. Both of them manifest a deeply Jewish irony, wit, and moral eloquence."), Maxine Kumin, Geoffrey Hartman, James Logenbach, J.D. McClatchy, and Ruth Thompson.

Among the archival materials posted at the tribute site are a sampling of our reviews of Feldman's books published in The Buffalo News over the past two decades. Many thanks to Buffalo News Library Director David Valenzuela for his assistance in gaining access to these files.

You can visit and explore the Irving Feldman tribute web site at IF80.org.

--R.D. Pohl