National Book Awards Acceptance Speeches
Richard Eberhart, Winner of the 1977 National
Book Award in Poetry
for Collected Poems, 1930-1976
Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen:
There ought to be a suffering meter for poetry. But what a joke. How can you judge the amount of suffering in a poem?
Poetry is like fighting. “Sir, there was in my heart a kind of fighting.” Hamlet was not averse to killing. But it is more like shadow-boxing. The poet is a self-knower trying to get out of himself.
I wrote a paper for this occasion but would like to summarize it instead.
Thanks to the judges for the National Book Award. Best wishes to my colleagues who were also nominated, especially Muriel Rukeyser. I reviewed her first book U.S. L in the late thirties. I have always loved the warmth and depth of her poetry. Everybody knows that to be nominated is tantamount to election.
New for the summary:
Poetry is a natural energy resource of our country. It has no energy crisis, possessing a potential that will last as long as the country. Its power is equal to that of any country in the world. Poetry is written in America by thousands of young people today as a natural expression of their perceptions of life. They invite the future.
I call for a more democratic attitude towards poetry than is found in the academy. It is hard to square elitism in poetry with democracy. Our greatest poet, Whitman, was no elitist but a poet of the people. Yet the academy, the universities, have mothered and best nurtured our art in my time.
Let us rejoice that we are free and that nobody will dictate to us what we shall say or write. While millions do not listen, American poetry attests to the great idea of democracy and freedom.
Some of our best poets have died for poetry by suicide. Poets should not die for poetry but should live for it. I deplore the suicides of these poets.
Speaking of the struggles of life, and against suicide, I would like to close with a five-line poem entitled “How It Is”:
Then the eighty-year old lady with a sparkle,
A Cambridge lady, hearing the latest
Suicide, said to her friend, turning off
TV for tea, “Well, my dear, doesn’t it
seem
A little like going where you haven’t been invited?”.