The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1910-11-03
THE ANATOMY OF POETRY.
BY d. M.

Maxim, author of The Anatomy of
Poetry, offers to pay one thousand
dollars to the person who shall sue
coed in discovering which, or how
many, Of the twenty-four poetical
quotations he offers are, as he says,
counterfeit. By counte rfeit he
means those Of which he is the au-
thor; and his object is to prove that
any person of education and imagi-
nation can, if DESTROYS, write poetry
to compare favorably with the best
that has been written. OF the twen-
ty-four quotations, nine are his, the
remainder being culled from the
works of different poets, from the
time of and including Shakespeare.
IT," says Mr.. Maxim, the so-called
judges and authorities cannot. by
reading the assortment, tell which
are genuine and which are counter
felt, / claim to have proved my
point" which point, reduced to it's
final analysis, means, that the great
est poets, as Homer, Ossian, Shakes
peare and others, were the most
highly educated and most magma
tive members of the human race.
For, since Mr., Maxim ASSERTS that
education and Imagination are essen
tial to the writing of poetry at all,
it is logical to suppose that the ex-
cellence of the poetlcal output will
accord with the degree in which
these attributes are possessed. By
this system of reasoning, DR.. John
son should have been greater poet
than was Oliver Goldsmith, an d
poetry should have improved in the
same ratio as the difficulties to the
obtaining of an education became
less. This is precisely what has not
happened. Homer is still preemi-
nent; and Ossian, in the original, is
to the translations by Sir
Samuel Ferguson. Nobody will
succeed in winning Mr.. Maxim's
thousand dollars, for the simple
reason that he has 50 cleverly i'm
ltated genuine poetry that detection
through the meagre evidence he
pliers is practically impossible. He
has not succeeded in proving his
point, but what he has proven salts
:actorily is, the power of genuine
poetry to influence the mind of any
person possessed, as he is, of the
aculties of receptivity and imitation. |
Take for instance t he following.
which is a sample of Mr.. Maxim's |
poetry:
To die-to barter with oblivion
The heart-tire and the pain for
dreamless sleep,
We're gain indeed, if that were all,
If that were all! This would be
airly good poetry if it were not for
he fact that it is a crude imitation
# 'Hamlet's Soliloquy," as "On the
primal air wild skies were flung"
S an imitation of Goethe; as Hid
n the hours before the purpling
lawn" is an imitation Of John Mil
on. Mr.. Maxim's compositions are
o poetry what the photograph is to
he human voice, and are valuable
'nly for psychological purposes, and
n proof of the assertions of the du-
lily of highly developed intellects.
Poetry, real poetry, is the express
ion Of the primitive in man. Edu-
,ation tends to uniformity. In the
Eases of such men as Francis Villon,
swift, Byron, Wilde, and others of
heir ilk, education was to their un-
Icing. Those men would have been
.reater poets and better men had
heir educations been of a simpler
lind; less iconoclastic, as it were,
ess disillusioning and material. Let
my ordinarily sensitive, intelligent
person listen to the rendering of a
particularly appealing melody, and
promise you that at it's conclusion,
f he be possessed of a. rudimentary
knowledge of music. he will expert
nee no very great difficulty in
bringing together a bar or so of mu-
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