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| Theodore Enslin obituary | Theodore Enslin obituary |
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| As he made his debut in the literary magazine Origin, edited by Cid Corman, Theodore Enslin, who has died aged 86, was often associated with the Black Mountain school of poetry. Indeed, his long poems, particularly Ranger, share the scale of Charles Olson's, and many of his shorter works can be as perfectly focused and crystalline as Robert Creeley's. While Olson's landmark essay Projective Verse set out the template for poetry with lines based on the human breath, Enslin's avant-garde work most often followed the structures of musical forms. | As he made his debut in the literary magazine Origin, edited by Cid Corman, Theodore Enslin, who has died aged 86, was often associated with the Black Mountain school of poetry. Indeed, his long poems, particularly Ranger, share the scale of Charles Olson's, and many of his shorter works can be as perfectly focused and crystalline as Robert Creeley's. While Olson's landmark essay Projective Verse set out the template for poetry with lines based on the human breath, Enslin's avant-garde work most often followed the structures of musical forms. |
| Other poets have borrowed forms from music, such as another of the Black Mountain school, Robert Duncan, or Ezra Pound, but neither had the ability to sustain Enslin's flow of notes. He once said the greatest compliment he could receive was to be called "a composer who used words". He told Corman that Olson would never have needed to write Projective Verse if he had studied Haydn. "Analyse a Haydn symphony," he said. "It is all right there. The whole idea that the form is dictated by content, the whole thing. This changes with every example." | Other poets have borrowed forms from music, such as another of the Black Mountain school, Robert Duncan, or Ezra Pound, but neither had the ability to sustain Enslin's flow of notes. He once said the greatest compliment he could receive was to be called "a composer who used words". He told Corman that Olson would never have needed to write Projective Verse if he had studied Haydn. "Analyse a Haydn symphony," he said. "It is all right there. The whole idea that the form is dictated by content, the whole thing. This changes with every example." |
| Enslin was born in Chester, Pennsylvania. His father was a professor of religion; his mother a Latin scholar. He showed early musical talent and studied composition under Francis Judd Cooke at the New England Conservatory in Massachusetts, and then privately with Nadia Boulanger. It was the age of modernism; Enslin recalled being at dinner with Stravinsky when the composer banged the table and exclaimed: "Gentlemen, Beethoven was a rotten composer!" But Enslin was devoted to Beethoven and Mahler, much to the exasperation of Boulanger. She was the first to suggest he take up writing. "It was an affirmation of something I already knew," he said. In the end, he gave up composing, because he realised he had nothing to say. "I could compose in many styles, but when I got done, what I had, if it was any good at all, was what I used to refer to … as beautiful, useless music." | Enslin was born in Chester, Pennsylvania. His father was a professor of religion; his mother a Latin scholar. He showed early musical talent and studied composition under Francis Judd Cooke at the New England Conservatory in Massachusetts, and then privately with Nadia Boulanger. It was the age of modernism; Enslin recalled being at dinner with Stravinsky when the composer banged the table and exclaimed: "Gentlemen, Beethoven was a rotten composer!" But Enslin was devoted to Beethoven and Mahler, much to the exasperation of Boulanger. She was the first to suggest he take up writing. "It was an affirmation of something I already knew," he said. In the end, he gave up composing, because he realised he had nothing to say. "I could compose in many styles, but when I got done, what I had, if it was any good at all, was what I used to refer to … as beautiful, useless music." |
| It was in Cambridge that he first met Corman; Enslin was an early contributor to Origin, a seminal journal in the 1950s. Origin Press published Enslin's first collection, The Work Proposed, in 1958, and they continued to write to each other until Corman's death in 2004. Enslin's 1966 collection, To Come, to Have Become, won the Hart Crane award. Beyond the Black Mountain poets, he was influenced equally strongly by the Objectivists; his long correspondence with Louis Zukofsky was carried out in verse. | It was in Cambridge that he first met Corman; Enslin was an early contributor to Origin, a seminal journal in the 1950s. Origin Press published Enslin's first collection, The Work Proposed, in 1958, and they continued to write to each other until Corman's death in 2004. Enslin's 1966 collection, To Come, to Have Become, won the Hart Crane award. Beyond the Black Mountain poets, he was influenced equally strongly by the Objectivists; his long correspondence with Louis Zukofsky was carried out in verse. |
| In 1960 Enslin moved from Cape Cod, where he grew cranberries, to Maine. He and his first wife, Mildred, divorced, and he settled in the early 1970s with his second wife, Alison, in Milbridge, Washington County, the easternmost county of the US. Much of his later work reflects the rough settings of the Maine coast; he cited Henry David Thoreau as an influence. Photographs of Enslin show him, with pipe and walking stick, as a recognisable heir to the spirit of Thoreau. All that was missing was the Mahler playing in the background. | In 1960 Enslin moved from Cape Cod, where he grew cranberries, to Maine. He and his first wife, Mildred, divorced, and he settled in the early 1970s with his second wife, Alison, in Milbridge, Washington County, the easternmost county of the US. Much of his later work reflects the rough settings of the Maine coast; he cited Henry David Thoreau as an influence. Photographs of Enslin show him, with pipe and walking stick, as a recognisable heir to the spirit of Thoreau. All that was missing was the Mahler playing in the background. |
| Enslin's major works were what he called "sequences" and "long workings", a form somewhere between the single long poem and the collection of related shorter poems. They include Forms 1-5 (1970-74); Synthesis 1-24 (1975); and the two-volume Ranger (1978 and 1980), which centres on the destruction of Native American culture in the 16th century, but expands far beyond. He was fascinated by the freedoms offered by longer forms. He quoted the painter Franz Kline, himself associated with Black Mountain, who said: "If I know what I'm doing, there's no reason why I should do it; if you know, there's even less." Ranger's epic scope is focused on sharp observation of both the setting and the process of poetry: | Enslin's major works were what he called "sequences" and "long workings", a form somewhere between the single long poem and the collection of related shorter poems. They include Forms 1-5 (1970-74); Synthesis 1-24 (1975); and the two-volume Ranger (1978 and 1980), which centres on the destruction of Native American culture in the 16th century, but expands far beyond. He was fascinated by the freedoms offered by longer forms. He quoted the painter Franz Kline, himself associated with Black Mountain, who said: "If I know what I'm doing, there's no reason why I should do it; if you know, there's even less." Ranger's epic scope is focused on sharp observation of both the setting and the process of poetry: |
| Color of fawn's hide-- dappled to camouflage. It breaks down, opens fully. The color of an ordinary day. All that is needed: this ordinary-- not much else-- and a grim sky, no rain, hardly its throat. Why do I say this? There is no other experience except my own. No exaction. | Color of fawn's hide-- dappled to camouflage. It breaks down, opens fully. The color of an ordinary day. All that is needed: this ordinary-- not much else-- and a grim sky, no rain, hardly its throat. Why do I say this? There is no other experience except my own. No exaction. |
| His use of musical form was often reflected in his titles, such as The Diabelli Variations, first printed in the Quarterly Review of Literature in 1960; Etudes (1972); and Six Pavanes (1987), a chapbook I published in London, as part of the Northern Lights series. I found Enslin a pleasure to work with; the small status of the press and the minuscule print run made no difference to his enthusiasm for the project. He was sensitive to the ordering of the poems, and their appearance on the page, and unjustifiably appreciative of the result. His work turned out to be one of the highlights of the series. | |
| Enslin supported himself, and his poetry, through odd jobs, including making walking sticks. So much of his work appeared in small-press collections that compiling a full bibliography is a daunting task. In 1975, Black Sparrow Press produced The Median Flow: Poems 1943-73, his first collected shorter poems. The 800-page Then and Now: Selected Poems, 1943-93, was published by the National Poetry Foundation in Orono, Maine, in 1999. | Enslin supported himself, and his poetry, through odd jobs, including making walking sticks. So much of his work appeared in small-press collections that compiling a full bibliography is a daunting task. In 1975, Black Sparrow Press produced The Median Flow: Poems 1943-73, his first collected shorter poems. The 800-page Then and Now: Selected Poems, 1943-93, was published by the National Poetry Foundation in Orono, Maine, in 1999. |
| Enslin is survived by Alison, his son Jonathan and his daughter Deirdre. Another son, Jacob, predeceased him. In the last of his Six Pavanes, Enslin wrote: | |
| Likely then you'd dance death won't but calls the measure length of all the steps no interest slow enough to touch or fast a pressure handled see death often at times the time a dance inherited. | Likely then you'd dance death won't but calls the measure length of all the steps no interest slow enough to touch or fast a pressure handled see death often at times the time a dance inherited. |
| • Theodore Vernon Enslin, poet, born 25 March 1925; died 21 November 2011 | • Theodore Vernon Enslin, poet, born 25 March 1925; died 21 November 2011 |
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