Hayden Carruth :: essays research papers

Hayden Carruth Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey is Hayden Carruth's most recent collection of works. Published in 1996, it reflects a dark, boozed washed view of the world throw the eyes of a 76- year-old man. His works reflect his personal experiences and his opinion on world events. Despite technical merit Carruth works have become depressing. Hayden Carruth is a child of the depression born in Vermont in 1921 where he lived for many tears. He now lives in upstate New York, where he taught in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University, until his recent retierment. He has published twenty-nine books, mostly of poetry but also a novel, four books of criticism, and anthologies as well. Four of his most recent books are Selected Essays & Reviews, Collected Longer Poems, Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991, and Suicides and Jazzers. He edited poetry for, Poetry, Harper's, and for 20 years The Hudson Review. He has received fellowships from the Bollingen Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts, most recently in 1995, a Lannan Literary Fellowship. He has won many awords including the Lenore Marshall Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Vermont Governor's Medal, the Carl Sandburg Award, the Whiting Award, the Ruth Lily Prize, the National Book Award and The National Book Critics' Circle Award for Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991. In "Another" Carruth comments on the goal of poetry. He begins by dismissing truth and beauty; "Truth and beauty were never the aims of proper poetry and the era which proclaimed them was a brutal era." -Another The era mite have been brutal but "truth and beauty" where and still are a large part of "proper poetry". The collected works of William Shakespeare and Robert Frost both have great deal of truth and beauty in their works as well as the tragic ordeals in life while Carruth only sees the brutality of life. Carruth goes on to name the goal of poetry as: "...let justice be primary when we sing,..." -Another Even though he's primary goal is justice this collection of poems seems to be one long complaint about injustice. It is easy to agree with Carruth in the "Quality of wine" when he says "this wine is really awful, " unlike the poet, it is his unremitting winning that is awful. Like self commentary Carruth writes: "Language is defeated in the heavy, heavy day. Limp lines on the page like grass mown in the meadow." -The Heaviness This utter heaviness can be seen in the horrific poem "The Camp, " all 21 verses of it lament man's hardness of heart. In the second verse, a lighter through reads, "As the kittens were born