New-York tribune., 1921-01-02
BY Theodore Maynard


sTrDIEs OF coNTEMPoRARY POETS.
Dodd. Mead & Co. -
a STUDY OF POETRY. BY Bliss Perry.
Published BY Houghton. MiTnn Com
pany.
IA a IsS STURGEON need not
IXH detain US long. The best
L ' IL things in her Studies are
the quotations from other
poets, and in this matter she is law
ish. Her critical comments, when they
are not positively inept, are colorless.
l cannot remember one penetrating re.
mark in her book. though there is
much foolish praise showered upon
quite unimportant versitiers. Never
tneIess, by castin. her net widely. she
has been able to bring some fine fish
10 iand OF the sort that usually escape
the anthologists. / do not think that
any ono except Miss Sturgeon has
given Ella Youngs fine sonnet the
recognition it deserves:
Now Days worn out. and Dusk has claimed
share
OK earth ard sky and all the things that
lay my tired head against your
And feel your fingers smooth MY tangled
| loved you once, when l Rad heart to
dare, ~
And sought YOU over many land and
Yet all the while you waited here for
IN sweet stiffness shut awsy from
hsye 10 longing nov, no dreams Of
But drowssd in peace through the soA
Until the stars bc hindied by God
breath:
For then you'll bend above mo vfsh cha
KISS ~ ~
Earth's children long for when tho hour
grows late.
Mother Of Consolation. Sovereign Death
The inclusion Of this and "a number
OF better known poems gives Miss Stur-
geon's Studies certain value which
her book would not otherwise possess
II Professor Bliss Perry has no very
new or very profound theory of poetcs
to offer (to do him justice he attempts
nothing Of the kind), he is successful
N his purpose Of restating the older
and the more modern theories in sucl,
q way as to make them interesting and
ineligible to the average reader who
is nc expert in aesthetics. He is espe-
cially happy in his illustrations. For
where critics of the more academic
variety would have tried to show from
the pages of Blackn1ore or Kingsley
how easily the prose writer, like Mr.
Boffin, can drop into poetry without
knowing that he is writing it, and
would, perhaps, have cited the case
Of Francis Thompson, who rctranslateo
a couple Of paragraphs of one Of his
! essays in strict stanza form with the
barest minimum of modification, Pro
fesor Perry makes his point far more
effectively by quoting sentence from
textbook on The Parallelogram of
Forces:
And hence no force, however great,
can draw cord, however fine, into a
horizontal line which shall be abso-
lutely straight" This, Of course, is
simply Tcnnyson's In Memoriam meter:
Ana hence no force, however erea;,
Can draw corG, however fine,
Into q horizontal limo
Which shall be absolutely straight.
In this particular instance the meter
is, no doubt, hardly more than a msthe-
matical coincidence; but it serves to
illustrate popularly that the English
language is 70 full of rhythmic posi-
bility that one Of the main difficulties
Of q prose writer is to keep his work
free Of poetry. 1t is this impinging of
prose and verse. moreover, that gives
the vers libre school their opportunity
though in the vast majority Of cases
they do not know how to take sdvan-
tage Of their opportunity. It is quite
arguable that there is third literary
medium in between prose and verse
and that it is peculiarly adapted to
certain moods. But in practice it
has, as yet. failed to produce the beauty
which must be its justification. Pro
fessor Perry treats it more seriously
than it deserves, though even he ad-
mits that. like freaksh plants and
animals, freakish free verse gets pun
ished by atorility. And while com
mending it he contrives to deal it a
deadly blow.
"Those OF us" ne says, who have
read with Keen momentary enjoyment
thousands of nages of the new verse
are frequently surprised 10 ind how
little Of it stamps itself upon the
memory. Intense feeling has gone into
these formless forms, very certainly
/ but the medium soaks up the feeling
like blotting paper In order to live
poetry must be plastic, stark cmbodi-
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