Paul C. Metcalf (7 November 1917 – 21 January 1999) was an American writer. He wrote in verse and prose. Devoted admirers included

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, and Bruce Olds. His books include ''Will West'' (1956), ''Genoa'' (1965), ''Patagoni'' (1971), ''Apalache'' (1976), ''The Middle Passage'' (1976), ''Zip Odes'' (1979), and ''U.S. Dept. of the Interior'' (1980). He was the great-grandson of one of his major literary influences,

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Biography

Paul Metcalf was born in 1917 in East Milton, Massachusetts. He attended Harvard but disliked it and dropped out in the first year. In 1942, he married Nancy Blackford of South Carolina. Over the next two decades the couple spent long periods in the South. Metcalf traveled widely through North and South America. He drew from these travels for his works. Among his friends and associates were the poet

Charles Olson Charles John Olson (27 December 1910 – 10 January 1970) was a second generation modernist United States poetry, American poet who was a link between earlier Literary modernism, modernist figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams an ...

(whom he met when he was thirteen), the artist

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, poet and publisher Jonathan Williams, and the writer

. Later in his career, Metcalf was a visiting professor at the University of California San Diego, SUNY Albany, and the University of Kansas. In 1996–97, Coffee House Press issued a Metcalf's collected works from 1956 to 1997 in three volumes. He died in 1999, near Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

Material, preoccupations, form

Metcalf's work draws on a wide range of material, including history, anthropology and folklore, travel narratives, geography, Indian lore, geology, and physiology. His work is difficult to classify according to the conventional categories of essay, journal, and fiction; thus his label as an "experimental" writer.Dinitia Smith, "Paul Metcalf, 81; Wrote Experimental Tales"
''New York Times'', 31 January 1999; accessed 17 March 2017 Form and structure are of utmost importance to his art. Characteristic of his method is the assemblage of texts from a variety of sources fused into a new whole, and much of his work melds these several voices with that of his own. His earliest works used common fictional devices (storyline, characterization, dialogue), but soon Metcalf began pushing past such conventions. His novel ''Genoa'' (1965), subtitled "A Telling of Wonders," is a portrait of two physically deformed brothers, one a vagabond / murderer, and the other, a mediocre doctor and the narrator of the story. Interleaved with their story are passages from Melville and the journals of Christopher Columbus, dropped into the mind of the narrator. These serve to mythologize the events of the novel. The writer Guy Davenport described ''Genoa'' as being a "built" thing: "an architecture of analogies, similitudes, and Melvillean metaphor." In later works, ''Patagoni'' (1971), for instance, and especially by ''Apalache'' (1976), the semblance of story is gone. ''Apalache'' is a collage of texts taken from early American journals, exploration narratives, and newspaper articles that Metcalf uses to reconstruct American history in epic scope and form. Like

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before him, Metcalf freely mixes verse and prose. ''Waters of Potowmack'' (1982), a documentary history of the

Potomac River The Potomac River () is in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States and flows from the Potomac Highlands in West Virginia to Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. It is long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography D ...

, and other works such as ''U.S. Dept. of the Interior'' (1980) and ''I-57'' (1988), continue Metcalf's preoccupation with "juxtaposition" and documentary forms. Other Metcalf works include ''The Island'' (1982), ''Golden Delicious'' (1985), and ''Huascaran''(1997). In describing his technique, Metcalf uses the word "juxtaposition": the union of seemingly disparate or disjointed elements. These elements, what the poet

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refers to as "immense rhymes," are the building blocks of Metcalf's books. Greater than single words, they are often whole passages from other texts. "The difference is simply the size and proportion of the units I use: instead of words, I use whole lives, concepts, episodes, epochs."Metcalf interview with John O'Brien, ''Review of Contemporary Fiction'' Metcalf quotes a remark of

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as it applies to his own work, "To originate, is carefully, patiently, and understandingly to combine." He emphasizes the organizing intelligence as opposed to random association and the "cut-ups" that are a hallmark of writers such as

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." Metcalf's books have also been described in terms of music—"symphonic", "polyphonic," emphasizing the multitude of voices within that blend into one. His work was influenced by

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(especially the ''Cantos''),

(''Paterson'', ''In the American Grain''), and

(''Call Me Ishmael'', parts of the ''Maximus Poems'').Byrd, "Review of 'Collected Works' "

Honors

His papers from 1917 to 1999 are held in the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library.

Works

*''Will West''. Asheville: Jonathan Williams, 1956. *''Genoa''. Penland, NC: The Jargon Society, 1965. (Most recent edition of interest: Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2015.) *''Patagoni''. Penland, NC: The Jargon Society, 1971. *''The Middle Passage: A Triptych of Commodities''. Highlands, NC: The Jargon Society, 1976 *''Apalache''. Berkeley, CA: Turtle Island Foundation, 1976. *''Zip Odes''. Lawrence, KS: Tansy Press, 1979. *''Willie's Throw''. San Francisco: Five Trees Press, 1979. *''U.S. Dept. of the Interior''. Frankfort, KY: Gnomon Press, 1980. *''Both''. o location given The Jargon Society, 1982. *''Waters of Potowmack''. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1982. *''The Island''. Lawrence, KS: Tansy Press, 1982. *''Louis the Torch''. Flushing, NY: CrossCountry Press, 1983. *''Golden Delicious. Tucson: Chax Press'', 1985. *''Where Do You Put the Horse? Essays''. Elmwood, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 1986. *''Firebird''. Minneapolis/Tucson: Chax Press & Granary Books, 1987. *''I-57''. New Haven: LongRiver Books, 1988. *''Headlands: The Marin Coast at the Golden Gate''. (Text by Metcalf; original photography, archival research, and book design by Miles DeCoster, Mark Klett, Mike Mandel and Larry Sultan, respectively.) Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1989. *“Winslow Homer and His Era.” ''Winslow Homer at the Addison''. Andover, MA: The Addison Gallery of American Art, 1990. Pp. 33-70. *''Enter Isabel: The Herman Melville Correspondence of Clare Spark and Paul Metcalf''. Edited and annotated by Metcalf. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991. *''Mountaineers Are Always Free!'' Flint, MI: Bamberger Books, 1991. *''Araminta and the Coyotes.'' Highlands, NC: The Jargon Society, 1991. *''“... and nobody objected.”'' Providence, RI: Paradigm Press, 1992. *''Three Plays''. North Carolina Wesleyan College Press, 1993. (Containing An American Chronicle: A Two-Act Documentary Drama, The Confidence-Man, and The Players: A Documentary Comedy-Drama.) *''Collected Works''. Vol. I: 1956-1976. Vol. II: 1976-1986. Vol. III 1987-1997. Introduction by Guy Davenport. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press. 1996-97. (Containing two previously unpublished works: ''Huascarán'' (a poem sequence), and “The White Whale of Kansas” (essay).) *''Merrill Cove''. Minneapolis: Rain Taxi, 1998. (Limited edition chapbook, composed in 1956 and 1957.) *''From Quarry Road: Uncollected Essays and Reviews of Paul Metcalf''. Edited and with an introduction by Robert Buckeye; preface by Jonathan Williams. East Middlebury: Amandla Publishing, 2002. *''Working the Stone: The Natural, Social, and Industrial History of the Village of Farnams, Town of Cheshire, County of Berkshire, Commonwealth of Massachusetts''. With Lucia Saradoff. San Diego: San Diego State University Press, 2003.

References

Sources / External links

Description
of Metcalf's collection of essays, ''Where Do You Put the Horse?'', Dalkey Archive

by John O'Brien of the ''Review of Contemporary Fiction'', Dalkey Archive
David McCooey. ''No Wooden Horse''
review of Metcalf's Collected Works (Coffee House Press)

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20211016211014/https://gargoylemagazine.com/gargoyle/Issues/scanned/issue22/metcalf.htm Gargoyle Magazine Interview, 1983br>John O'Brien: "The Man Who Would Ban Happy Endings"
''The New York Observer'', 2011
Coffee House Press page for Metcalf's Collected Works, Volume I
(One of many "stray notes" on Metcalf.) * Guy Davenport. Introduction to the Metcalf's ''Collected Works'', Volume One. Coffee House Press, 1996: Minneapolis
Paul Metcalf Papers, 1917-1999
Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature of the

New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second-largest public library in the United States behind the Library of Congress a ...

.
Longform study
by Jacob Siefring {{DEFAULTSORT:Metcalf, Paul 1917 births 1999 deaths American fiction writers 20th-century American poets 20th-century American essayists