The New York herald., 1922-04-23


And whose reads nay get him somt
shrewd skill:
And some improbable scorn resign
To praise the very thing that he
deplores;
SO, friends (dear friends). remembers
IL you will,
The shame win for singing is all
mine.
The gold I miss for dreaming is all
yours.
You cannot quarrel with a man
who smiles like that. Writing for
general clearness, have said that he
writes only for himself. But il
wrote Gas he does) for myself. / might
have said. perhaps. that he writes
only for God.
VII. I
These three are the outstanding
figures. After these. or beside them
IL you will, comes a company of
others who by some notable ideal
or strongly marked personal quaIs
ity in their work must certainly be
named in such a category as we
have imagined. Mr.. Robert Frost.
with his quiet traceries of New
England life, tinted in careful col.
ors, under pervading grayness.
like an April evening among the
Berkshire hills; so natural that the
dramatic action of their human fig
ures appears a little strange, like q
man gesticulating at a distance iu
some peaceful meadow; and so re-
strained in expression that the
reader almost wonders how much
there may have been to restrain. Mr..
John Neihardt. with his masculine
stories of the historic West, epic and
Saga in material. but less than epic
in their manner Of narrative. and
written in a style whose ambition
runs beyond sagacity. Mr.. vachel
Lindsay. at first the Tramp Poet"
nf the open road, and latterly hark-
ing back TO the ancient prevalence
of the speaking voice in poetry. the
declaimer of dithyrambic scenes and
songs. Mr.. Percy MacKaye, with
his masques and pageants and his
odes upon special occasion. There Is
no ending the list with one of them
for any better reason than that
somehow and somewhere it must
end. After these again. comes the
whole body of contemporary Wrists,
less than the leaders in the sheer
size and quantity of their work
rather than in any quality of its
excellence: of whom 1t could mean
nothing to name one or another in
this place or to leave the rest un-
named.
Indeed, strong case might be ar
gued for the idea that our so-called
Minor Poetry is our best: in imag-
ination more brilliant, keener and
more appealing in emotion, and of
an artistry more potently express
sive than the more celebrated work
which attempts more without achiey-
ing so fully the whole measure of its
attempt. Only time can tell whether
these people who mean less may not
turn out to have said more And
that brings us again to our starting
point, the critical demand for Amer
icanism or Modernism or Virility or
Originality or this or that. beside or
before sheer Poetry of whatever kind
may be-in a word, the demand for
Preoccupation. 1t is probably true
that we are not poetic people. ex-
cept SO far as we are English in race
and language and thereby partakers
of that great tradition of old songs.
Certainly it is true that we shall not
by taking self-conscious thought
add cubit to our poetic stature. To
do good work in any art is hard
enough to require concentration
upon that alone, without imposing
the additional difficulty of trying to
do work which shall be something
else before it can be thought good.
That is the curse of all the arts in
our uncomfortably introspective age
-preoccupation with manners and
models and schools, the leopard
clawing himself NANCY in the at
tempt to change his spots. And upon
mona daao tha O,,,ca faif ,,,nra e~ap