The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1918-11-03
AMY LOWELL'S NEW BOOK.


and the lustres and arc lights of heaven to a
billion splinters and flashing fragments. In art
all unity is dead. Forms and rules lie murdered
in their moulds In poetry we stand, not at Ar
mageddon, but at Tower of Babel.
There is jangle Of schools and a jungle Of
isms. They come! they meEthc vorticists, the
ibrists, the pontillists, the imagists. There
is can-can of individualists. The indefinite, the
uncertain, the new the paradoxical, are the scar
let paradises of aesthetic intoxication. We have
gored the heart out Of every artistic certainty.
Each school has its own private Nine MUSES..
Unity sleeps; nothing remains but units.
Poets in the Great Crash.
Poetry is to-day matter of pure impression
ISM Mood breeds mood, feeling breeds feeling,
and our little poems are rounded with quarrel.
1t is the decadenee of an age Find the word,
find the nuance find the image. The theme is of
no consequence. Beyond VER1AINE, DEBUssY,
SYMoNs, MAETERLNcK, STRAUSS, MAILARAE,
REMY, De GoURMoNT, LAFcADIo HEARN, RICHARD
A1DNeroN there is nothing. They were the
fathers of the Tower Of Babel. They were the
navvies of the great Esthetic Crash. They
sucked the marrow out Of all their moods and
pared their thoughts to the quick. And the Jills
cane tumbling after
The ILLUMINATE are gone; only the phosphor from
their nimbuses remains. And the little Jills are
rubbing it in on their brows With some success. we
admit; for we have some beautiful hand turned
and engine turned verse to-day The Zeppelins of
science and scepticism have bombed our ceilings
over us, and from under the ruins of our Ilepolos
we are beginning to crawl out. 49,.
In Can Grande's Castle CThe Macmillan Com
pany. $15O) AMY LOWELL. has crawled out hold
ing in her hands a radiant surfaced treasure box.
II is as UNIQUE in its way in American literature as
EDGAR LEE MAsTERs's tremendous Spoon Riuer
Antholooy, which is the Coincide Humane of the
United States He has done what BAIzAc could not
have done If MASTERS is our BALzAc, AMY Low
ELL is our THBoPHnE GAUTIER. Her poetry is the
poetry of magnificent surfaces. For her, life is an
adventure in color sound and metals
It is what may be styled kind Of puritanicai
pagansm-or. rather puritanical pageantsm.
OSCAR WILDE said the world was invented to be
argued about. To AMY LOWELL it was invented to
be smeled tasted bitten sheathed in eye, in gullet
in the scabbards of the emotions-to be turned INTO
Mississippi of Light that has no Lake ltasca or
Gulf. t
Vistas and Deliriums
The mystery of surfaces, the eestasies of touch,
the clash of metals, sun-struck temples, FLASHING
waters. the paw of copper hoofs on porphyry cob
bestones foreheads pregnant with Dreams basilicas
that swim in the air, and wine tunnels hung with
Elacs-these make up the new Poetry of Surface.
We discern in this mad love Of matter the first
streak in this country of the New Day of Art. 1t
is the beginning of the reaction from Plymouth
Rock The Mayfower is ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS be
praised and the triremes and the golden galleons
have come-or are just discernible around the jut-
lands of realism. Miss LOWELL is pioneer in
leading us out of the Jungles Of Realism into the
seas where never comes Problem Freighter or the
fishing smacks of Socialism. She comes with loot
right out of life-and we have never discerned
message" in her work She seems to work for the
sheer pleasure of dabbling in natural things, of
weltering in daylight and sunlight, wading fanci-
full rivers and living the life of marbles and broken
columns and winged horses.
The World of Prismatic Planes.
Her style is cold, marmoreal, impersonal There
is sun-singe, but there are no heatstrokes. Excla
nation points are not passion She is poetical