The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1919-07-20
Michael Strange
By BENJAMIN DE cASsERES.

the near musical whooping cough that
passes for free verse-most of which IS
neither free nor verse, and certainly not
poetry Poetry is a compound of vision
and passion-a fusion of the emotions and
the intellect. Both should be at fever
heat or burn up the inner universe with
the glow of ether upon which is turned
the overwhelming fires of a thousand suns.
Loves little tattle, the caterwaulings of
Utopians, the fallals of kept Pierrots, the
passionate strophies of flying tomeats, the
meretricious metaphors and beer soaked
SMILES of the curly heads of free verse,
Middle West epilepsies, New England
rose water fresh from the parlor thermOs
bottles, garnet gargoyles from Greenwich
Village, the measured hydraulic pant
t'ward the Infinite and the Supra-Cir-
cumstantial of the California Yogi school,
the donkey engine Bolshevism Of the
Neir Republic and the Nation-thats what
the poetry sharks have got to slush
through to-day in the attempt to find a
Poet
The dreamers, the poets, the visionaires
have lost the art of sailing over the
suns and summarizing into the I'm
conscious. They are neither prenatal nor
post -mortem. They typewrite what they
see and feeI-and they see nothing be-
yond the chimney and feel nothing except
the sensations of their daily lives. Once
In a while jess Willard tries to play
Debussy, or war garden Oberon tries
to do a Hound of Heaven" La! La!
But, then, too. once in a great while,
even in the shadow of the Eighteenth
Amendment eclipse, different" poet
is born unto us-one whose Muse Is not
of the overworked Nine, whose expert
ences have been subjectively tremendous,
but not calliopie; one out of the shadow
land, who weaves strange visions and
memories from borderland threads, whose
meanings are obscure and androgynous,
whose temperament is nihilistic. l speak
of Michael Strange.
1t is refreshing to see that word
poems as a title for a book There is
something lordly, aristocratic and defni-
tive about it. 1t points nowhere, yet
every where. 1t is the invitation to an
adventure Different from "Greentree
Ditties," "The Passing Ghost" "The Green
Urn" "Tbe Wailing Lover" and other
Ffresidc Companion titles. Poems
well, that's what they are in this book
of Michael Strange, some rare and strange,
palimpsests of the spirit, messages done
with invisible ink ON the backs of ghostly
ambassadors on strange errands; others
not so great or strange, but of vital in
tercst because they tell us something Of
the exotic being who penRed them.
The poems of Michael Strange do not
"fy TO the eyes" There is a vast back
ground to them all. They do not poster
you with clarity. They are not showcase
poems, where the origin and manufacture
of the display are labelled. You cannot
read them quickly. They touch you re-
motely at first As with nightmare fingers.
You go back to study them. to concentrate
on them, to marry them. Like some of
the productions Of Poe, Francis ThOmp-
son, Blake, Nietzsche and MalIarne, they
show different face on each visit. Some
rhyme, some do mott makes little DIFF
ference. They arc all the record, of law
less moods-Iawless in the sense of not
being conventional; law abiding in the
way that a comet is or the whorls and
HOrlas of the Fourth Dimension.
From the poem Fifth Avenue-Twi-
light:
80 the tip-tap of these cver-becoming
steps
Clinking their infinite coin
Against counters irrevocsble.
Shod in ashes, in roses, they passing me
by
Palpitatc forever toward that which they
are not,