The Sumac Reader

In the late 1960s, when poets and Michigan State alums Dan Gerber and Jim Harrison considered their vision for a literary magazine, they chose to aim for an ""energetic catholicity"" of taste rather than an overriding paradigm or poetic school's creed. The selection here of 90 poems and short fiction pieces from the nearly 900 that appeared in over seven issues of Sumac (1969-1971) covers 58 contributors, many of whom, like Galway Kinnell and Charles Simic, went on to prominent careers. This collection functions as a cultural time capsule, putting the work of these and other now widely recognized poets, such as Adrienne Rich, Louis Simpson and Gary Snyder, in context. It allows us to read them in the company they kept 25 years ago and also provides a snapshot of poetry's attempts to assimilate the era's turbulence, as in E.G. Burrows's ""Year's End"": ""The black children of Biafra/ spit metal. Skies split/ with the same cradle croon/ under Mekong thatch."" The poets of this same generation were also coming to terms with aftershocks of WWII Europe (""home you came at last/ but in a paper nightgown/ and a white box"" --Josephine Clare) and race relations in the U.S.(""76 cities in flames on the landscape/ and the bearer of peace/ lying still in Atlanta"" --Quincy Troupe ). While few of the poems can be called classics, these selected works, observed in hindsight, suggest that Sumac's contributors captured the pulse of the times with remarkable clarity. (Oct.)