Of Galway Kinnell's poem 'The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World', Selden Rodman wrote: 'I do not hesitate to call this the freshest, most exciting, and by far the most readable poem of a bleak decade.' John Logan called it 'a remarkable 450 line poem hard to match in American literature, drawn from contemporary life around Avenue C in New York.' James Dickey, finally, remarked that 'It is not entirely impossible that the Wave of the Future may turn out to have begun at Avenue C, or some place within walking distance' [see CLC, Vol. 1].

These judgements show more than the persistence of the American craving for the Great American Poem; they amount, I think, to a repudiation of Allen Ginsberg and the Beats as a whole. (The 'bleak decade' Rodman speaks of was among the richest in American writing this century.) Once...