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Articles

Volume 08, Number 2 (1983)

Patrick Lane and the Question of Authority

  • Joseph M. Zezulka
Submitted
May 22, 2008
Published
1983-06-06

Abstract

Although the majority of Patrick Lane's poems are about the places he has worked in or passed through, and about his relationships with people, his canon is also punctuated with poems that reveal considerable anxiety about authority, particularly about the sources of poetic authority which ultimately define the poet's moral stance to his material and to his audience. For Lane, poetry is born in the bondage of experience, and this places it outside the law. The corollary is that the poet is an outlaw, an anarchist whose creative impulses frequently place him in an antagonistic relationship to society and the poetic tradition of which he is a part. As an outlaw, the poet can seek out the sources of creative impulse unconstrained by taboo, fashion, or even the canons of good taste.