Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1917-12-01

81.
IIILDA DOOLITTLE
Indeed, Whitman is the inspiration of
many of the new poets. Some of them,
as Ezra Pound has done, frankly admit
their Indebtedness. Others initiate and
say nothing. Miss Lowell has many fine
things to say about Edward Arlington
Robinson, hut she might have traced his
poetical origin "a little more clearly.
There is a Wordsworthian quality about
him which becomes strkingly manifest il
one reads the two men alternately, a quail
| ity of simplicity and drcctncss that
moves straight ahead with the story
! without recourse to the tricks or the laz-
nesses of lesser poets. Miss Lowell finds
| Robinson "a link between the poetry of
| the past and that of the present. Robert
| Frost Edgar Lee Masters and Carl Sand
berg connect Robinson with the imagists.
| ! confess that | cannot understand how
| she can like Sandberg, yet she quotes
| one of the prosiest bits of stuff ] ever saw
| put forth as verse and contesscs that it
| is little short of sublime This, I sup
| pose, is because she is intellectually pre-
| disposed to enjoy the freak verse. Yet,
after all her book is likely to have "a long
| life as an intelligent and acute study of
an important intellectual movement in
| America. 1t is admirably done. 1t is
difficult to see how it could have been
done better or more sympathetically."
81 see that some one in London calls
Ezra Pound one of the greatest poets of
the day" said Priscilla, who had been
looking over "Lustra," containing his
latest work.
"Mr. Pound undoubtedly has poetic
gifts" said I, but as I read him 7 find
him in revolt against accepted stand
ards. not only of verse FORM but of life
itself. Now, you know, poetry of revolt
is always Of transient interest. The only
poetry that lives is that which contains
a sane application of great ideas TO an
intelligent conception Of life. 1t has
moral content not in the sense that it Is
| didactic, but in the sense that it is based
on the fundamental moralities on which
the world has agreed as necessary to an
orderly and progressive society. Mr..
Pound challenges these and annolfnces
that he is going his own gait regard
less of what the world thinks. The road
TO great poetry does not lead in that di-
rection. Neither does ii lie in the direc.
tion toward which is headed that group
of writer's of new verse from which AL
fred Kreymborg has drawn for his second
anthology. Here is a sample. 1t is a
poem called Axiom and is written by
Walter Conrad Arensberg. Listen TO it:
From a determinable horizon
| absent
spectacularly from a midnight
| which has yet to make, public
| midnight
in the first place incomPatibly copied
the other
in observance of the GLOSSARY end
| guatantees
the simultaneous insularty
of structuye
| self-containe9
little longer
than the general Objection
| of goods
opposed tangentically."
what does it mean?" asked, owen.
"I can get no meaning out of it, but I
suppose it may be intended to produce
the same effect on you and me that we
received when we first tried to under
stand the axioms in our geometry 1t is
an abuse of language to call that sort of
stuff poetry. Language is misused in
the same way when Mr., Kreymborg calls
one of his own productions poetry. lHe
|, writes:
We have a room home.
You have two-room a three-room, four.
room
We have a one-room home
, because a one-room home is all We have.
1--WE have a one-room home
because a one-room home holds all we have
I We have a one-room home
| because we do not want
a two-room, three-room four-room.
"And so on for four pages. This il
sheer idiocy Mr.. Kreymborg Is the mar
who welcomed Alfred Watts new
free.verse poet of great promise. ALFRED
Watts is now known to be the join
creation of Joyce Kilmer and Margaret
Widdemer. Hho agreed to write in fret
verse the most meaningless things the,
could think of and send them to thu
$ magazines that printed that sort o.
thing. They were both surprised ant
Q gratified at the success of their plan
I for it INDICATED their own judgment o.
8 the quality of much of what faddists nov
3 accept ~ poetry"
Z. II think shall stick TO 6ld-fashione<
! verse as a steady diet" said DR.. McFpbre
III you take Miss Lowell ~ guide.'