The New York herald., 1922-04-23
If There Were an
American Laureate

al aTC WHICH QeCllucS TO interpret OF
to qualify itself as absolutely as it
refuses to moralize. Poetry for her
should exist simply because 1t is
created beauty, even If sometimes
the beauty OF Gothic grotesque."
1t is the creed of Keats: but her
practice of it is more severe than his.
Miss Lowell would never have con-
trasted the nightingale's emotion
with her own, "the WEAKNESS. the
fever and the fret" If she could not
imply that merely in what she said
about the nightingale she would
have let it go unsaid. Where Keats
is rapturous or enraged or mournful
over his imaginings she is content
to tell you what she has imagined.
She will describe with the passionate
precision of one who feels keenly,
but she will not describe her own
feeling. There is the image, and
you may feel about it what you will.
There are of course exceptions to
this, occasional pure lyrics whose
theme is of necessity the poets per-
sonal mood. But the rule of the i'm
personal and the objective holds for
her work in general, especially. as
against intellectualizing or moral
izing.
If Miss Lowell has preoccupa-
ton it is the preoccupation with
craftsmanship; not with technique
as such and in general, but with the
special technique by which she is the
leader and founder of school: the
Imagists, the New Poetry. "The poet
with originality and power is always
seeking to give his readers the same
poignant feeling which he has him.
self. To do this he must constantly
find new and striking images, delight
full and unexpected FORMS
There is the imagist theory in
Miss Lowell's own very sound and
comprehensive nutshell. But the
creation of new and striking
images" is, as she would eagerly
agree, contemporaneous with poetry
itself. When Homer spoke of "shad-
owy mountains" when Euripides
wrote of "the numberless laughter
of the sea-" when Shakespeare said
/ s.T i1h fhsnlrnnC n6 hn fol
wing to the rocky wood" they did all
that imagism is bent upon doing.
There is nothing new about this ex-
cept the setting it before all else
and founding school upon it. That
is in poetry almost exactly what the
pre-Raphaelites did in painting;
only they knew and said that they
were looking toward the past. AS
for the other desideratum, delight
full and unexpected FORMS" that now
means practically free verse: a form
at best informal, at worst formless;
of somewhat questionable delight to
the general reader, and certainly no
longer unexpected. This Is no place
to analyze the technical structure of
free verse. But it may be shortly
and correctly described as rhythmic
prose divided naturally into phrases
If you write out the Lords Prayer,
beginning a new line wherever In
reading it you pause for emphasis or
for breath, and then observe the
rhythm and the balance Of its
phrases so written as lines, you will
understand what free verse nova
days practically means in English;
how it differs from meter on the one
hand and on the other from mere
bad writing chopped into lengths
at haphazard.
Now Miss Lowell has not her high
and deserved prominence as an
artist merely by virtue of free versi-
flying and the mot juste. She has
been much occupied with these
things: 1t is the riffraff of her fruit
less followers who have been preoc-
cupied with them. Her champion
ship of the new poetry may have
been the making of her reputation,
but that is the fault of public which
beholds wonders under the auspices