Hayden Carruth

Hayden Carruth


     Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey is Hayden Carruth's most recent collection of

works. Published in 1996, it reflects a dark, boozed washed view of the world

throw the eyes of a 76- year-old man. His works reflect his personal experiences

and his opinion on world events. Despite technical merit Carruth works have

become depressing.

     Hayden Carruth is a child of the depression born in Vermont in 1921

where he lived for many tears. He now lives in upstate New York, where he taught

in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University, until his

recent retierment. He has published twenty-nine books, mostly of poetry but also

a novel, four books of criticism, and anthologies as well. Four of his most

recent books are Selected Essays & Reviews, Collected Longer Poems, Collected

Shorter Poems, 1946-1991, and Suicides and Jazzers. He edited poetry for, Poetry,

Harper's, and for 20 years The Hudson Review. He has received fellowships from

the Bollingen Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment

for the Arts, most recently in 1995, a Lannan Literary Fellowship. He has won

many awords including the Lenore Marshall Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the

Vermont Governor's Medal, the Carl Sandburg Award, the Whiting Award, the Ruth

Lily Prize, the National Book Award and The National Book Critics' Circle Award

for Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991.

     In "Another" Carruth comments on the goal of poetry. He begins by

dismissing truth and beauty;


          "Truth and beauty

          were never the

           aims of proper poetry

          and the era

          which proclaimed them

          was a brutal

          era."

               -Another


     The era mite have been brutal but "truth and beauty" where and still are

a large part of  "proper poetry". The collected works of William Shakespeare and

Robert Frost both have great deal of truth and beauty in their works as well as

the tragic ordeals in life while Carruth only sees the brutality of life.

Carruth goes on to name the goal of poetry as:


          "...let

          justice be primary

          when we sing,..."

               -Another


     Even though he's primary goal is justice this collection of poems seems

to be one long complaint about injustice. It is easy to agree with Carruth in

the "Quality of wine" when he says "this wine is really awful, " unlike the poet,

it is his unremitting winning that is awful. Like self commentary Carruth

writes:


           "Language is defeated

          in the heavy, heavy day.


          Limp lines on the page

          like grass mown in the meadow."

               -The Heaviness


     This utter heaviness can be seen in the horrific poem "The Camp, " all

21 verses of it lament man's hardness of heart. In the second verse, a lighter

through reads,


          "As the kittens were born

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