Literature in the Making Part 18

"_Vers libre_ is based upon rhythm. Its definition is 'A verse form based upon cadence rather than upon exact meter.' It is a little difficult to define cadence when dealing with poetry. I might call it the sense of balance.

"The unit of _vers libre_ is the strophe, not the line or the foot, as in regular meter. The strophe is a group of words which round themselves satisfactorily to the ear. In short poems this complete rounding may take place only at the end, making the poem a unit of a single movement, the lines serving only to give the slight up-and-down effect necessary to the voice when the poem is read aloud.

"In longer poems the strophe may be a group of lines. Poetry being a spoken and not a written art, those not well versed in the various poetic forms will find it simpler to read _vers libre_ poems aloud, rather than to try to get their rhythm from the printed page. For people who are used only to the exact meters, the printed arrangement of a _vers libre_ poem is a confusing process. To a certain extent cadence is dependent upon quant.i.ty--long and short syllables being of peculiar importance. Words hurried over in reading are balanced by words on which the reader pauses. Remember, also, that _vers libre_ can be either rhymed or unrhymed."

"One objection," I said, "that many critics bring up against unrhymed poetry is that it cannot be remembered."

"I cannot see that that is of the slightest importance," Miss Lowell replied. "The music that we whistle when we come out of the theater is not the greatest music we have heard.

"Zaccheus he Did climb a tree His Lord to see

is easily remembered. But I refuse to think that it is great poetry.

"The enemies of _vers libre_," she continued, "say that _vers libre_ is in no respect different from oratory. Now, there is a difference between the cadence of _vers libre_ and the cadence of oratory. Lincoln's Gettysburg address is not _vers libre_, it is rhythmical prose. At the prose end of cadence is rhythmical prose; at the verse end is _vers libre_. The difference is in the kind of cadence.

"Recently a writer in _The Nation_ took some of Meredith's prose and made it into _vers libre_ poems which any poet would have been glad to write. Then he took some of my poems and turned them into prose, with a result which he was kind enough to call beautiful. He then pertinently asked what was the difference.

"I might answer that there is no difference. Typography is not relevant to the discussion. Whether a thing is written as prose or as verse is immaterial. But if we would see the advantage which Meredith's imagination enjoyed in the freer forms of expression, we need only compare these lyrical pa.s.sages from his prose works with his own metrical poetry."

I asked Miss Lowell about the charge that the new poets are lacking in reverence for the great poets of the past. She believes that the charge is unfounded. Nevertheless, she believes that the new poets do well to take the New England group of writers less seriously than conservative critics would have them take them.

"America has produced only two great poets, Whitman and Poe," said Miss Lowell. "The rest of the early American poets were cultivated gentlemen, but they were more exactly English provincial poets than American poets, and they were decidedly inferior to the parent stock. The men of the New England group, with the single exception of Emerson, were cultivated gentlemen with a taste for literature--they never rose above that level.

"No one can judge his contemporaries. We cannot say with certainty that the poets of this generation are better than their predecessors. But surely we can see that the new poets have more originality, more of the stuff out of which poetry is made, than their predecessors had, aside from the two great exceptions that I have mentioned."

"What is the thing that American poetry chiefly needs?" I asked.

"Well," said Miss Lowell, "I wish that there were a great many changes in our att.i.tude toward literature. I wish that no man could expect to make a living by writing. I wish that the magazines did not pay for contributions--few of them do in France, you know. And I wish that the newspapers did not try to review books. But the thing that we chiefly need is informed and authoritative criticism.

"We have very few critics, we have practically none who are writing separate books on contemporary verse. When I was writing my _French Poets_ I read twenty or thirty books on contemporary French poetry, serious books, written by critics who make a specialty of the poetry of their own day.

"We have nothing like this in America. The men who write critical books write of the literature of a hundred years ago. No critical mind is bent toward contemporary verse. There are a few newspaper critics who pay serious attention to contemporary verse--William Stanley Braithwaite, O. W. Firkins, and Louis Untermeyer, for example--but there are only a few of them.

"What is to be desired is for some one to be as interested in criticism as the poets are in poetry. It was the regularity of Sainte-Beuve's 'Causeries du Lundi' that gave it its weight. What we want is a critic like that, who is neither an old man despairing of a better job nor a young man using his newspaper work as a stepping-stone to something higher. Of course, brilliant criticisms of poetry appear from time to time, but what we need is criticism as an inst.i.tution.

"After all," said Miss Lowell, in conclusion, "there are only two kinds of poetry, good poetry and bad poetry. The form of poetry is a matter of individual idiosyncrasy. It is only the very young and the very old, the very inexperienced or the numbed, who say, 'This is the only way in which poetry shall be written!'"

_A NEW DEFINITION OF POETRY_

EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON

At no time in the history of literature have the critics been able to agree upon a definition of poetry. And the recent popularity of _vers libre_ and _imagisme_ has made the definer's task harder than ever before. Is rhyme essential to poetry? Is rhythm essential to poetry? Can a mere reflection of life justly be called poetry, or must imagination be present?

I put some of these questions to Edwin Arlington Robinson, who wrote _Captain Craig_, _The Children of the Night_, _The Town Down the River_, _The Man Against the Sky_ and _Merlin: A Poem_. And this man, whom William Stanley Braithwaite and other authoritative critics have called the foremost of American poets, this student of life, who was revealing the mysterious poetry of humanity many years before Edgar Lee Masters discovered to the world the vexed spirits that haunt Spoon River, rewarded my questioning with a new definition of poetry. He said:

"Poetry is a language that tells us, through a more or less emotional reaction, something that cannot be said.

"All real poetry, great or small, does this," he added. "And it seems to me that poetry has two characteristics. One is that it is, after all, undefinable. The other is that it is eventually unmistakable."

"'Eventually'!" I said. "Then you think that poetry is not always appreciated in the lifetime of its maker?"

Mr. Robinson smiled whimsically. "I never use words enough," he said.

"It is not unmistakable as soon as it is published, but sooner or later it is unmistakable.

"And in the poet's lifetime there are always some people who will understand and appreciate his work. I really think that it is impossible for a real poet permanently to escape appreciation. And I can't imagine anything sillier for a man to do than to worry about poetry that has once been decently published. The rest is in the hands of Time, and Time has more than often a way of making a pretty thorough job of it."

"But why is it," I asked, "that a great poet so often is without honor in his own generation, where mediocrity is immediately famous?"

"It's hard to say," said Mr. Robinson, thoughtfully regarding the glowing end of his cigar. "Many causes prevent poetry from being correctly appraised in its own time. Any poetry that is marked by violence, that is conspicuous in color, that is sensationally odd, makes an immediate appeal. On the other hand, poetry that is not noticeably eccentric sometimes fails for years to attract any attention.

"I think that this is why so many of Kipling's worst poems are greatly overpraised, while some of his best poems are not appreciated. _Gunga Din_, which is, of course, a good thing in its way, has been praised far more than it deserves, because of its oddity. And the poem beginning 'There's a whisper down the field' has never been properly appreciated.

It's one of the very best of Kipling's poems, although it is marred by a few lapses of taste. One of his greatest poems, by the way, _The Children of the Zodiac_, happens to be in prose.

"But I am always revising my opinion of Kipling. I have changed my mind about him so often that I have no confidence in my critical judgment.

That is one of the reasons why I do not like to criticise my American contemporaries."

"Do you think," I asked, "that this tendency to pay attention chiefly to the more sensational poets is as characteristic of our generation as of those that came before?"

"I think it applies particularly to our own time," he replied. "More than ever before oddity and violence are bringing into prominence poets who have little besides these two qualities to offer the world, and some who have much more. It may seem very strange to you, but I think that a great modern instance of this tendency is the case of Robert Browning.

The eccentricities of Browning's method are the things that first turned popular attention upon him, but the startling quality in Browning made more sensation in his own time than it can ever make again. I say this in spite of the fact that Browning and Wordsworth are taken as the cla.s.sic examples of slow recognition. Wordsworth, you know, had no respect for the judgment of youth. It may have been sour grapes, but I am inclined to think that there was a great deal of truth in his opinion.

"I think it is safe to say that all real poetry is going to give at some time or other a suggestion of finality. In real poetry you find that something has been said, and yet you find also about it a sort of nimbus of what can't be said.

"This nimbus may be there--I wouldn't say that it isn't there--and yet I can't find it in much of the self-conscious experimenting that is going on nowadays in the name of poetry.

"I can't get over the impression," Mr. Robinson went on, with a meditative frown, "that these post-impressionists in painting and most of the _vers libristes_ in poetry are trying to find some sort of short cut to artistic success. I know that many of the new writers insist that it is harder to write good _vers libre_ than to write good rhymed poetry. And judging from some of their results, I am inclined to agree with them."

I asked Mr. Robinson if he believed that the evident increase in interest in poetry, shown by the large sales of the work of Robert Frost and Edgar Lee Masters and Rupert Brooke, indicated a real renascence of poetry.

"I think that it indicates a real renascence of poetry," he replied. "I am sufficiently child-like and hopeful to find it very encouraging."

"Do you think," I asked, "that the poetry that is written in America to-day is better than that written a generation ago?"

"I should hardly venture to say that," said Mr. Robinson. "For one thing, we have no Emerson. Emerson is the greatest poet who ever wrote in America. Pa.s.sages scattered here and there in his work surely are the greatest of American poetry. In fact, I think that there are lines and sentences in Emerson's poetry that are as great as anything anywhere."

I asked Mr. Robinson whether he thought the modern English poets were doing better work than their American contemporaries. At first he was unwilling to express an opinion on this subject, repeating his statement that he mistrusted his own critical judgment. But he said:

"Within his limits, I believe that A. E. Housman is the most authentic poet now writing in England. But, of course, his limits are very sharply drawn. I don't think that any one who knows anything about poetry will ever think of questioning the inspiration of _A Shropshire Lad_."

"Would you make a similar comment on any other poetry of our time?" I asked.

"Well," said Mr. Robinson, reflectively, "I think that no one will question the inspiration of some of Kipling's poems, of parts of John Masefield's _Dauber_, and some of the long lyrics of Alfred Noyes. But I do not think that either of these poets gives the impression of finality which A. E. Housman gives. But the way in which I have shifted my opinion about some of Rudyard Kipling's poems, and most of Swinburne's, makes me think that Wordsworth was very largely right in his att.i.tude toward the judgment of youth. But where my opinions have shifted, I think now that I always had misgivings. I fancy that youth always has misgivings in regard to what is later to be modified or repudiated."

Then I asked Mr. Robinson if he thought that the war had anything to do with the renascence of poetry.