The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1920-03-22

| boast that he would found a school OF poesy him
self, and moreover that he would fool his public into
accepting his spurious work Art. capitalized
For year and half Bynner and Arthur Dawson
Ficke fooled their public. chortling in glee when
the disciples of free accepted poems such as
these in all seriousness:
ITO some housekeeping is a holy rite;
For myself, houses would be empty
But for the golden notes dancing in SUM- beams
/ Il loved whose two eyes.
| One blue. gray.
| Would block
| Like cliffs my foothold in the skies -.
| She is dead, they say
Dead a peacock"
1
Candle. candle.
Flicker and flow
| / knew you once
| But it not long ago,
| Last night
When you spoiled my otherwise bright
evening"
Incredible it may seem, Bynner's public took
him seriously. and the spectra reviewed in the
highest class Of publication well known poets and
editors writing in praise of it,
When the hoax came out. Reedy's Mirror got back
at the graceless Bynner and his criminal. Fcke.
by declaring that their work in the Spectra was
far successful than anything they had done
beforei
1t must be said in extenuation of Mr. Bynner,
however. that the verse" published in Spectra,
showed that and finish, delicacy OF touch
with which Bynner invests all that he writes. What
could be more delicious nonsense than this, which
must appeal to every hack-writer:
Il have not written, reader.
That you may read
They sit in rows in the bare schoolroom
Reading.
Throwing rocks at windows is better.
And. oh, the tortoise-shen with the can tied on
l would rather be tier
Than writer for readers"
But laugh will: jeer may; throw
brick-ba bouquets, free verse is with us, /
the Amy Lowels the who have bank
counts pretty trolets and chaste sonnets sarve
in garrets else into the advertising business,
as did Richard Wightman, in order that may
make living. Richard Wightman is of the real
poets OF this day-but he makes his living writing
advertisements
But, to go back to Amy Lowell, from whom we
have wandered far-Afiss Lowell is to most of the
free yersists sunlight unto moonlight or as
water unto wine: (true. OF think the
water and the moonlight make a very good eombi-
nation)
For myself 1 have never been able to mentally
place Miss Lowell with the Free Verse clan in its
accepted classification, any more than I could put
Sara Teasdale there. Both are different" though
perhaps Miss Lowell is more different than Miss
Teasdale. We could hardly catalogue either with
Carl Ssndburg, though all three are of the new
school,
Miss Lowell lives in Brookline, Mass, and by all
the laws of tradition and heridty should have
conservative of the conservatives. Born of ia
nous New England family. with all the traditions
that wealth and culture and inherited environment
are supposed to bind about those born to the pur-
pie, for the past years she has been the de-
spair Of the reactionary critics and the delight of
many radicals. among the poets. who are kicking
against the pricks of precedent.
| Miss Lowell has had leisure. She has travelled
much She has had opportunity for observation and
study. and. most important of ALL to poet. time
Tor dreaming. Yet she is hard worker But even
IN her work she is radical according to those
who know her best. For she turns night into day
Like most people who do creative writing for much
that goes for creative work is merely mind me-
chanicsl she do her best work at nisht. when
the world is still and she isolated 1t is said by
her reviewers that when she is working hard She