The Bloomingdale Papers

Hayden Carruth

Excerpts from this work are the centerpiece of Carruth's Collected Shorter Poems 1946-1991, and rightly so; they are amazing pieces of work with a chilling sense of utter despair. Ever since first reading them thirteen years ago, I have been hunting for a copy of the full text. I finally found it.

The Bloomingdale Papers is a writing-as-therapy (assigned to him by the doctors) depiction of two months of Carruth's stay in a mental facility, after a nervous breakdown aided and abetted by incipient alcoholism. (This is back when the word alcoholism still had its original definition.) He was unresponsive to regular treatment, so the doctors, noting that he was a writer, told him to write things, so that they could get more of a handle on where his head was. (Carruth notes sardonically in the apologia preceding the poems that they didn't help one bit.) Rereading the manuscript prior to publication over twenty years later, Carruth despised it, in the main. He very rightly points out the effects that mental treatments (both shock therapy and drugs) have on the creative mind, and depicts the effort taken into getting each word on paper while in such a state. Unfortunately, in much of the collection that didn't make it into Collected Shorter, it shows. A good portion of this book is best described as workmanlike, almost devoid of emotion, with stultifying rhyme without any attempt at enjambment whatsoever; it's mindful of high school teen angst poetry, though Carruth has a far better eye for detail than most poets (and it is in evidence throughout this collection, which, had it been published at the time, would have been his first book).

Those pieces that work, however, are pure magic. The best portions of The Bloomingdale Papers are looks into the genesis of, arguably, the finest American poet of the twentieth century. They are worth the price of admission on their own (and with this book out of print so long that price is likely to be rather hefty). The argument against spending thirteen years of your life seeking it out is that much of the best stuff was taken for Collected Shorter, which should still be readily available.