Readers unfamiliar with the poetry of Hayden Carruth will be struck by the honesty and clarity of his new book of autobiographical essays. A solid introduction to his interior world, Reluctantly also serves well as a supplement to Carruth's 50 years of publishing poetry, criticism, and one fine, underread novel, Appendix A. Now in his late 70s, Carruth has witnessed from his seclusion in remote New England the rise and fall of myriad intellectual, political, and poetical movements. In his essays, he sets these passages alongside events in his own life as if to find explanations for the absurdity of one in the chaos of the other. As the title suggests, it is with great reluctance that he discusses his suicide attempts, hospitalizations, nervous breakdowns, divorces, and other disappointments. Yet in his memory these events are so intertwined with his successes and joys, indeed with his whole creative enterprise, that he is compelled to give both equal time. At times, the essays' careful manipulation of style and sound approaches the measured reverie of Carruth's poetry, especially when discussing his years in northern Vermont, the setting for many of his more famous poems. He describes in great detail the cowshed he converted into a writing cabin, and in fact the book's main characters besides himself are his neighbors there, Martin and Frances Parkhurst, through whose friendship Carruth relearned the social skills he felt he lost during a series of bad crackups in his 30s.

For whatever reason, Carruth remains elliptical about some of the more significant details of his life. For many years he was the editor of Poetry. Prior to that he was part of the Allied Army force that invaded Italy during World War II. He mentions these experiences only briefly, then, for example, writes three paragraphs about watching a frozen bobcat slowly decompose during a spring thaw. Unlike Tobias Wolff and Mary Karr, his former colleagues at Syracuse University, who only mildly retooled their styles for their memoirs This Boy's Life and The Liars' Club, Carruth employs the autobiographical mode as a footnote to his real work. There are more specific details of his life in his National Book Award-winning collection, Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey, than in Reluctantly. What Carruth captures here is more ephemeral yet more vital than a mere autobiography. Given a chance to explain his love of jazz, or his suicide attempt, or his psychoanalysis, Carruth indulges in tangents in ways his strict poetics would never entertain. There is something fitting about the author allowing himself a few autobiographical reflections at this point in his career, and his reluctance only heightens their value. --Edward Skoog


From Publishers Weekly
The myth of the poet as a tortured, suicidal soul unable to cope with the complexities of modern life is deeply ingrained in popular consciousness. Based on the evidence here, prize-winning poet Carruth (Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey) might well be considered a model case; in any event it seems a wonder he did not succumb to the fate of fellow American poets such as Berryman and Lowell. But, in the fragments of memoir that comprise this book, Carruth, now in his late 70s, demonstrates that there is more to being a poet than merely wearing one's neuroses on one's sleeve. He recounts the peculiarities of growing up in a home pervaded by a "secular and neurotic puritanism" that, he suggests, formed the basis of his later difficulties. With matter-of-fact forthrightness, Carruth assesses the significance of his hospitalization for chronic depression, debilitating phobias, nearly fatal suicide attempt as well as his love affairs and poverty. He argues that "a writer's writing occurs in the midst of, and by means of, all the materials of life, not just a selected few," and although he has taught creative writing at Syracuse University, he believes that "life in the academy is too easy." He has been sustained by certain much-loved things: music, "abandoned places," and, of course, a lifelong "fascination with words, grammar, the mechanics of language" with an emphasis on precise writing that is evident throughout. Eccentric, opinionated and cantankerous, Carruth shows that although life is messy and unpredictable, it is possible to survive, to write well and to salvage from the wreckage a redemptive dignity. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Though poet Hayden Carruth writes about his nicotine addiction, his chronic psychiatric disorders, a suicide attempt, and a daughter's death from cancer, this book is a far cry from the current crop of tell-all memoirs. Instead, these three essays read like poems: they start abruptly and ramble purposefully over a variety of topics before concluding in surprising and appropriate ways. As a result, the tragedies assume their proper proportion in life. A prolific author and prize winner (most recently, a National Book Award for Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey, LJ 6/1/96), Carruth describes himself as an "old man in his cave of darkness, regretting his arthritis and impotence and failing imagination," though the tone even of that sentence seems deliberately wry. If Carruth's woes loom large, his joys grow even larger, and his treatment of both proves to be a triumph the reader is privileged to share.?David Kirby, Florida State Univ., TallahasseeCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
With three long essays and one short one, Carruth reconfirms the rule that men and women of letters--Franklin, J. S. Mill, Edwin Muir, Mary McCarthy, etc.--write the best autobiographies. Such authors present the philosophical, psychological, and emotional realities of their lives, demonstrating that the examined life is, if not the life most worth living, then the life most worth reading and thinking about. Carruth, one of the most honored U.S. poets, has had a quiet yet turbulent life, spent predominantly in rural poverty, nearly always with a wife or lover, but complicated by bouts of anxiety and depression, one requiring years of hospitalization and recovery. Another, much later episode led him to suicide--the subject and title of the most concentrated essay, which reports his reflections on the ethics of self-murder, his particular near-death experience, and the unaccountable happiness he has felt since nearly dying. The other long pieces, both entitled "Fragments of Autobiography," are looser (the short piece is "Footnote to Suicide") and include vivid memoirs of parents, neighbors, and friends, philosophical musings, and pitiless, bracing self-assessments. From early childhood, Carruth says, he has known that the universe is sad, existence is pointless, and values are inventions. Out of such an outlook, he has created a powerful autobiography, however fragmentary. Ray Olson


From Kirkus Reviews
Frank, curmudgeonly wisdom. Carruth (Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey, 1996) is nothing if not a contradiction: a professor who scorns that word and derides academia as antagonistic to art-making; a poet of appealing modesty, erudition, and formal grace whose psychic life, as described here, has veered into every sort of excess; an outsider to the poetry establishment who yet has received many of its most coveted awards, edited its marquee publications, etc. It is thus no surprise that, from the title on, his succinct and wonderful book should declare frequently that it didnt want or even need to be written. (Consider it ironic, then, that much of this collection should have appeared in print before, in the fine Suicides and Jazzers). The centerpiece here is an essay simply entitled ``Suicide,'' as moving and original as it is artless, that recounts in occasionally morbid detail the poet's massive drug overdose in 1988: ``In my suicide I experienced a renewal of luck . . . .I was ready for that renewal and for its reward in happiness.'' Carruth's dogged use of the term ``suicide'' despite his having survived does, however, skirt the line between pretension and profundity. The same could be said of another statement in another essay: ``Where I am is the cosmic individual. Nothing grand, nothing romantic.'' Elsewhere, though, Carruth writes passionately of his devotion to music--primarily jazz and the blues--and of its devotion to him over years of lonely labor and despair. Many fine passages detail his rural-but-not-rustic upbringing, which may have inspired his fondness for calling a spade no more (and no less) than a spade. Complains Carruth memorably, Our lives are supposed to be fun and not much else. His own preference: A life of hardship that was nevertheless possible was the luckiest thing that could have happened to me in my middle age. If I didnt choose it, I quickly acquiesced in it. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
Autobiographical Essays. These touching and intimate essays reveal the integrity of Hayden Carruth-- one of the most solitary, esteemed, and controversial poets of this century. Despite his wide erudition, he has lived largely outside academia. These essays chronicle a lifetime of wrestling with his personal demons and muses; time spent hospitalized for severe chronic depression; a passionate love of jazz and blues; his suicide attempt; and most of all, his uncommon, unflinching honesty.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

These touching and intimate essays reveal the integrity of Hayden Carruth -- one of the most solitary, esteemed, and controversial poets of this century. Despite his wide erudition, he has lived largely outside academia. These essays chronicle a life-time of wrestling with his personal demons and muses; time spent hospitalized for severe chronic depression; a passionate love of jazz and blues; his suicide attempt; and most of all, his uncommon, unflinching honesty.

SYNOPSIS

These touching and intimate essays reveal the integrity of Hayden Carruth--one of the most solitary, esteemed and controversial poets of this century. Despite his wide erudition, he has lived largely outside academia. These essays chronical a lifetime of wrestling with his personal demons and muses; time spent hospitalized for severe chronic depression; a passionate love of jazz and blues; his suicide attempt; and most of all, his uncommon, unflinching honesty.

FROM THE CRITICS

Peter Szatmary

At its best Reluctantly isolates idiosyncratic clarity. At its worst it betrays arbitrary self-indulgence. The slender volume is most suitable as an addendum for fans of a poet who has won a National Book Award.
— Biblio Magazine

Publishers Weekly

The myth of the poet as a tortured, suicidal soul unable to cope with the complexities of modern life is deeply ingrained in popular consciousness. Based on the evidence here, prize-winning poet Carruth might well be considered a model case; in any event it seems a wonder he did not succumb to the fate of fellow American poets such as Berryman and Lowell. But, in the fragments of memoir that comprise this book, Carruth, now in his late 70s, demonstrates that there is more to being a poet than merely wearing one's neuroses on one's sleeve. He recounts the peculiarities of growing up in a home pervaded by a 'secular and neurotic puritanism' that, he suggests, formed the basis of his later difficulties. With matter-of-fact forthrightness, Carruth assesses the significance of his hospitalization for chronic depression, debilitating phobias, nearly fatal suicide attempt as well as his love affairs and poverty. He argues that 'a writer's writing occurs in the midst of, and by means of, all the materials of life, not just a selected few,' and although he has taught creative writing at Syracuse University, he believes that 'life in the academy is too easy.' He has been sustained by certain much-loved things: music, 'abandoned places,' and, of course, a lifelong 'fascination with words, grammar, the mechanics of language' with an emphasis on precise writing that is evident throughout. Eccentric, opinionated and cantankerous, Carruth shows that although life is messy and unpredictable, it is possible to survive, to write well and to salvage from the wreckage a redemptive dignity.

Library Journal

Though poet Hayden Carruth writes about his nicotine addiction, his chronic psychiatric disorders, a suicide attempt, and a daughter's death from cancer, this book is a far cry from the current crop of tell-all memoirs. Instead, these three essays read like poems: they start abruptly and ramble purposefully over a variety of topics before concluding in surprising and appropriate ways. As a result, the tragedies assume their proper proportion in life. Carruth describes himself as an 'old man in his cave of darkness, regretting his arthritis and impotence and failing imagination,' though the tone even of that sentence seems deliberately wry. If Carruth's woes loom large, his joys grow even larger, and his treatment of both proves to be a triumph the reader is privileged to share.--David Kirby, Florida State University, Tallahassee

Kirkus Reviews

Frank, curmudgeonly wisdom. Carruth (Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey) is nothing if not a contradiction: a professor who scorns that word and derides academia as antagonistic to art-making; a poet of appealing modesty, erudition, and formal grace whose psychic life, as described here, has veered into every sort of excess; an outsider to the poetry establishment who yet has received many of its most coveted awards, edited its marquee publications, etc. It is thus no surprise that, from the title on, his succinct and wonderful book should declare frequently that it didn't want or even need to be written. (Consider it ironic, then, that much of this collection should have appeared in print before, in the fine Suicides and Jazzers). The centerpiece here is an essay simply entitled 'Suicide,' as moving and original as it is artless, that recounts in occasionally morbid detail the poet's massive drug overdose in 1988: 'In my suicide I experienced a renewal of luck.'