{"id":37023,"date":"2019-12-08T09:53:48","date_gmt":"2019-12-08T14:53:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=37023"},"modified":"2019-12-08T21:22:02","modified_gmt":"2019-12-09T02:22:02","slug":"jay-jeff-jones-on-the-american-poets-corner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2019\/12\/jay-jeff-jones-on-the-american-poets-corner.html","title":{"rendered":"Jay Jeff Jones on the American ‘Poets Corner’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
In Heptonstall churchyard, <\/em>
West Yorkshire, U.K. <\/em>
<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Asa, translucent Jew,
your eyebrows arched
so high as to hold 
nothing excluded that might want in,

it's proper to come your way
by deflection. Exquisite poet . . . 

\u2014 Roy Fisher<\/a><\/em>
<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Asa Benveniste<\/a> at Sylvia Plath Hughes’s gravestone, nearby.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The American \u201cPoets Corner\u201d
 on the edge of West Yorkshire Moors<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
By JAY JEFF JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s unlikely that Sylvia Plath would have picked the graveyard of Heptonstall Church for her last resting place. Early in her marriage to Ted Hughes, she declined the suggestion that they move into some cheap and rambling old manor in the socially depressed Calder Valley. This was where the most formative part of Hughes\u2019 childhood had been spent. They had this discussion at the bar of a dingy public house called The Stubbing Wharf and, in the poem he wrote about the occasion, Hughes evoked a mood of \u201cshut-in sodden dreariness\u201d. The pub had already appeared in a short story he had published, a boyhood recollection of Sunday lunchtime, when the locals took grim delight in setting terriers onto captured rats.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Sylvia Plath<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
One of the properties he had in mind for a marital home was Lumb Bank, located down the hill from The Beacon, a moortop house on the edge of Heptonstall village where Hughes\u2019 parents lived. In damp weather, the Lumb Valley wasn\u2019t that cheerful either; it could be easily cut off in the winters and there were stories that the long-drop waterfall at the bottom of the valley was haunted by the ghosts of dead babies. Plath was pregnant and homesick at this time and it wasn\u2019t as if she didn\u2019t have enough emotional baggage already. Hughes\u2019 poetic account paints a picture of a gloomy lost world of defunct mills and abandoned chapels, a valley that\u2019s the \u201cfallen-in grave of its history.\u201d In spite of that, Plath\u2019s trips to Heptonstall, mostly to visits Hughes\u2019 family, were woven into her poetry. She once referred to it as a \u201cdream-peopled village\u201d and that, \u201cThe whole landscape \/ loomed absolute as the antique world was \/ once\u2026\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Asa Benveniste definitely chose the location of his own grave, having spent the final years of his life in Hebden Bridge, the valley town that adjoins Heptonstall. It was a place he discovered as a result of leading a course at the Arvon Foundation, a charity that organises writing courses and retreats. Oddly enough the course ran at Lumb Bank, the same rambling mill owner\u2019s house that Hughes considered as a possible home for Plath and himself. He had bought the place anyway as an alternative to his main residence in Devon, and offered its use to Arvon as a northern residential centre in 1975.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Asa Benveniste with Agnetha Falk at Hebeden Bridge bookstore.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Asa moved north after years of living in London, where he (and wife Pip) had founded the Trigram Press in 1965. This was the same year that the International Poetry Incarnation was held at the Albert Hall, an event that galvanised London\u2019s underground culture and energetically intersected the Beat and post-Beat poets of America and Britain. From this international network came most of the material for Trigram\u2019s publications and two other independent artisan presses launched that same year, Fulcrum and Goliard. Asa also wrote his own poems and ultimately produced seven solo collections.  After semi-retiring from publishing, he and Agnetha Falk set up a house\/bookshop in Hebden Bridge stocked mostly with the library he had collected over the years. He would look up in alarm as customers arrived through the shop door and watch them leave, carrying purchases, with resignation. On the day he jokingly enacted Kilroy on Plath\u2019s headstone (photographed by Alistair Johnstone of the Poltroon Press), he had no idea how few years would pass before he became Plath\u2019s permanent neighbour under the soil.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Patti Smith at Plath’s gravestone<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
The hundreds of Plath-seeking visitors to the graveyard every year have eyes for no one but her of course; very few know about Asa or seek him out. Before he died, he lost a leg to diabetes and in his last small collection conflated that and the approaching end of life with the amputated Rimbaud. \u201cHe writes poems without \/ one excess adjective \/ his language \/ which is pure prose. \/ Phantom pain. \/ Invisible ink.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of the visitors coming to spend a moment with Plath, Patti Smith has been at least three times. Hearing that she is a frequenter of other literary graves, I assumed those of the sainted Beat trio, but certainly she paid her respects to Jim Morrison, Anne Bronte, Bertolt Brecht, Genet and, of course, Rimbaud. It\u2019s there she was snapped gavotting across the marble monument like a vagrant memorial angel at the afterlife disco.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Diane di Prima<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
By fortunate coincidence I came across a sharp and swinging poem, \u201cRecent boring literary pastimes\u201d by Diane di Prima, which includes –<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEating yr words \/ eating yr hat \/ eating the wet hat of a dead poet \/ in a cemetery full of dismembered freezers \/ remembering the 40s \/ remembering the samba \/ remember rubbing elbows w\/ obnoxious dead \/ poets in filthy bars in unmentionable \/ neighbourhoods\u2026\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s unlikely that Sylvia Plath would have picked the graveyard of Heptonstall Church for her last resting place. Early in her marriage to Ted Hughes, she declined the suggestion that they move into some cheap and rambling old manor in the socially depressed Calder Valley where Hughes had spent part of his childhood. Asa Benveniste definitely chose the location of his own grave, having spent the final years of his life in Hebden Bridge, the valley town that adjoins Heptonstall. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26,18,4,23,17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-37023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"category-literature","9":"category-main","10":"category-news","11":"category-political-culture","12":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/jay-jeff-jones-mugshot-200.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-9D9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37023"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37061,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37023\/revisions\/37061"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}