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At the End of the Open Road. Poems By Louis Simpson
Excerpt from At the End of the Open RoadAs others before you Were born to walk in procession To the temple, singing.
- GenresPoetry
Unknown Binding
First published October 28, 1963
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 29, 2012
After Louis Simpson died, I read several obituaries that stirred me enough to order a couple of his volumes from the library. This book was the skinniest, and although I didn't love all the poems - two were absolutely worth the read for some of the lines that captured how I feel, living in LA and feeling tiny tremors of the demise of civility and culture. One of these favorites is "Pacific Ideas--A Letter to Walt Whitman." In the poem, things happen - for instance, Caruso runs out of a San Francisco hotel into the street - but mostly it seems a series of images a la Whitman with a little Woody Guthrie as a side note. Even though this book was published in 1963, Simpson seems prescient:
Ever night, at the end of America
We taste our wine, looking at the Pacific.
How sad it is, the end of America!
While we were waiting for the land
They'd finished it--with gas drums
On the hilltops, cheap housing in the valleys
Where lives are mean and wretched.
But the banks thrive and the realtors
Rejoice--they have their America.
Simple, spare, sometimes lovely writing. I have a feeling that some of these poems are perhaps not of the highest order, but I give it four stars for the pleasure I got out of reading them.
Ever night, at the end of America
We taste our wine, looking at the Pacific.
How sad it is, the end of America!
While we were waiting for the land
They'd finished it--with gas drums
On the hilltops, cheap housing in the valleys
Where lives are mean and wretched.
But the banks thrive and the realtors
Rejoice--they have their America.
Simple, spare, sometimes lovely writing. I have a feeling that some of these poems are perhaps not of the highest order, but I give it four stars for the pleasure I got out of reading them.
November 26, 2012
A collection of often wonderful poems, which I saw as American as On the Road—the similarity coming from the title and much of the tone as well. Simpson's poetry is a kind of standard lyricism. Often the poems start with descriptions of a scene or place, either the budding American towns of San Francisco or New York, or the more traditional landscapes of pacific coasts, New Mexican stretches, or wooded east, and then proceeds to make a point about America, usually a criticism of America's past, present, future in its consumerist, anti-intellectual, technology and progress-obsessed, unreflective glory. Hardly a new criticism but Simpson does it well, and less didactically than I've suggested.
And there is very different tone from On the Road in that Simpson's poems strike me as pretty classically lyrical. He is not trying to invent a new from of American poetry. He is not even saying "I have all these new brilliant ideas about America." He's is rather lamenting that the poetic tradition has been ignored by the modern, ascendant, post-war America. He wishes that all could see the country, its present, past and future, through the critical and creative art of poetry. But he also realizes the unlikeliness of this. At the end where he talks to Walt Whitman, we realize that poetry cannot change the world, but it can sure help the people who enjoy it.
And there is very different tone from On the Road in that Simpson's poems strike me as pretty classically lyrical. He is not trying to invent a new from of American poetry. He is not even saying "I have all these new brilliant ideas about America." He's is rather lamenting that the poetic tradition has been ignored by the modern, ascendant, post-war America. He wishes that all could see the country, its present, past and future, through the critical and creative art of poetry. But he also realizes the unlikeliness of this. At the end where he talks to Walt Whitman, we realize that poetry cannot change the world, but it can sure help the people who enjoy it.
December 6, 2020
Every night, at the end of America
We taste our wine, looking at the Pacific.
How sad it is, the end of America!
While we were waiting for the land
They’d finished it—with gas drums
On the hilltops, cheap housing in the valleys
Where lives are mean and wretched.
But the banks thrive and the realtors
Rejoice—they have their America.
Still, there is something unsettled in the air,
Out there on the Pacific
There’s no America but the Marines.
Whitman was wrong about the People,
But right about himself. The land is within.
At the end of the open road we come to ourselves.
”Lines Written Near San Francisco
These lines from the concluding poem in Louis Simpson’s Pulitzer Prize winning 1963 collection At the End of the Open Road are emblematic of the style and substance of all the poems. Simpson laments the idealism and hope in Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road” has ended, that “the People” choose not to interact with the poetic process, that big business has gutted the American dream and tossed the entrails into the ocean.
Simpson, however, manages to elevate his material above maudlin, self-pitying poems—barely. There’s a few poems where he uses imagery of muses or symbols from Russian literature or even T.S. Eliot as an “embalmer” looking over a fence to make his point—and they’re strained, unsuccessful exercises. However some poems focus on Simpson’s unease with the eroding of the poetic soul, and while he could adopt the “we just don’t write them like we used to anymore” stance, he doesn’t. As the statue of Whitman notes in “Walt Whitman at Bear Mountain”:
“I am here,” he answered.
“It seems you have found me out.
Yet, did I not warn you that it was Myself
I advertised? Were my words not sufficiently plain?
“I gave no prescriptions,
And those who have taken my moods for prophecies
Mistake the matter.”
For me, this is how to approach this collection—these are the “moods” of a poet lamenting the current cultural state of his nation. They are neither “prescriptions” nor “prophecies. Simpson is not clanging a bell wearing a sandwich board warning we will perish after meaningless lives unless we nourish our parched souls with poetry--though he skirts dangerously close to that stance at times. No, there’s something deeper going on at the end of our road—something poets, our nations, and ourselves need to wrestle with. When he isn't lamenting loss, Simpson places a reassuring yet firm hand on our shoulders and entreats us to contemplate the darkness between the stars. And, in the end, doing so is good for our souls.
We taste our wine, looking at the Pacific.
How sad it is, the end of America!
While we were waiting for the land
They’d finished it—with gas drums
On the hilltops, cheap housing in the valleys
Where lives are mean and wretched.
But the banks thrive and the realtors
Rejoice—they have their America.
Still, there is something unsettled in the air,
Out there on the Pacific
There’s no America but the Marines.
Whitman was wrong about the People,
But right about himself. The land is within.
At the end of the open road we come to ourselves.
”Lines Written Near San Francisco
These lines from the concluding poem in Louis Simpson’s Pulitzer Prize winning 1963 collection At the End of the Open Road are emblematic of the style and substance of all the poems. Simpson laments the idealism and hope in Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road” has ended, that “the People” choose not to interact with the poetic process, that big business has gutted the American dream and tossed the entrails into the ocean.
Simpson, however, manages to elevate his material above maudlin, self-pitying poems—barely. There’s a few poems where he uses imagery of muses or symbols from Russian literature or even T.S. Eliot as an “embalmer” looking over a fence to make his point—and they’re strained, unsuccessful exercises. However some poems focus on Simpson’s unease with the eroding of the poetic soul, and while he could adopt the “we just don’t write them like we used to anymore” stance, he doesn’t. As the statue of Whitman notes in “Walt Whitman at Bear Mountain”:
“I am here,” he answered.
“It seems you have found me out.
Yet, did I not warn you that it was Myself
I advertised? Were my words not sufficiently plain?
“I gave no prescriptions,
And those who have taken my moods for prophecies
Mistake the matter.”
For me, this is how to approach this collection—these are the “moods” of a poet lamenting the current cultural state of his nation. They are neither “prescriptions” nor “prophecies. Simpson is not clanging a bell wearing a sandwich board warning we will perish after meaningless lives unless we nourish our parched souls with poetry--though he skirts dangerously close to that stance at times. No, there’s something deeper going on at the end of our road—something poets, our nations, and ourselves need to wrestle with. When he isn't lamenting loss, Simpson places a reassuring yet firm hand on our shoulders and entreats us to contemplate the darkness between the stars. And, in the end, doing so is good for our souls.
July 21, 2019
Buckle up. Enjoy the ride!
How I wish Louis Simpson were still around! I would love to hear him read and expound his poetry. Simpson's At The End Of The Open Road won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1964.
His opening piece, "In California" is a preview of his ability (as Harper's notes), "to look at American dispassionately; and the image he evokes of it, both urban and rural, spares us nothing of its ugliness while at the same time never diminishing its sweep and vision.
Here is a portion of that poem:
How I wish Louis Simpson were still around! I would love to hear him read and expound his poetry. Simpson's At The End Of The Open Road won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1964.
His opening piece, "In California" is a preview of his ability (as Harper's notes), "to look at American dispassionately; and the image he evokes of it, both urban and rural, spares us nothing of its ugliness while at the same time never diminishing its sweep and vision.
Here is a portion of that poem:
Lie back! We cannot bear
The stars any more, those infinite spaces.
Let the realtors divide the mountain,
For they have already subdivided the valley.Poetry is not my first love, or second, or third so a part of his work is beyond me. Still, much resonated. "The Redwoods" reminded me of Paul's words to the Romans, "For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed." The poems, "Frogs," and "My Father in the Night Commanding No" also caused me to pause and think. And then there was this arresting verse from "The Marriage of Pocahontas"
What will it avail you to take by force
What you may quickly have by love?Poetry is a thinking game. Simpson's verses are worth playing.
August 21, 2023
Around the time he was writing this book, Simpson dipped his feet for a while into the poetry of the deep image—a sort of surrealism—especially endorsed by By and James Wright. It’s not his normative voice and doesn’t much survive into his later career, but is apparent in some of the work here.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews