The Spokane woman. [volume] (Spokane, Wash.) 1921-1935, 1927-04-28
BY Edgar Lee Masters.

overlooked, is that the so-called new
poetry is new largely in virtue of its
fresh themes. The magazine poetry
of America for more than twenty
wears before 1912 | believe to be the
most dreadful piffle, the most emas-
culated trash, the most obvious wax
fruit that the world has ever seen.
Stedman's Anthology" furnishes the
proof of this statement and the maya
zines themselves after 1900 are abun-
dant evidence. The sonnets were in
good form, the lyrics were skillfully
turned-but the moods were deriya-
tive, the subject matter the mere hash
of former feasts. There was no vi
sion, and the art persisted. After
long reign by Pope, there was Cowper,
but he was not quite the expected
prophet. There were Crabbe and Scott,
there was Wordsworth who was long
obscure and so not to be considered
exactly as an influence. There were
then Byron, Shelley, and Keats.
There is much talk of movements,
as if poets and philosophers combined
to turn over a dead past. 1t does not
happen that way. The white dawn
precedes the red dawn, but the sun
makes them both. There must always
be the right man. He draws into him
self the struggling and struggling
lights of the hour, for the reason that
they belong to him. They in that
sense proceed from him. Much can
be said about the pastels in prose
which were written in France some
years before the advent of Lindsay;
about Whitman without whom Lind
say would have been; about Stephen
Crane; about the ragtime music which
came before jazz; about the restless
ness of men and societies seeking to
have done with old things, to invent
and to change. The fact remains that
all of this avails nothing without the
man. All these things must await the
man, inarticulate and incoherent, I'M
til he comes. No one makes the man;
he is born. The age and the material
may be ready, and doubtless often are,
but they mean nothing without the
man. 1t seems necessary to say these
things in order to combat the reitera-
ton that one poet is the son of anoth-
er, or write because another did, or
that he is the product of his age.
Rather the age is the product of him,
since it has neither form nor life
without him.
General Booth Enters Heaven
could have been written at any time
before 1912 and after 1900 if the mere
factuai circumstance of his blindness
and impending death had occurred III
that period, and provided there had
been Lindsay. What happened was
that Lindsay, paying no attention to
the themes that were supposed at that
time to constitute the only legitimate
material for verse, and with an eye
clear and keen for what was fresh and
vital, seized upon this everyday event
of religious leader falling into dis
aster as his theme and, setting IT to
the measure of sweeping anapaests,
long spondees, and energetic trochees,
awoke a bored America-bored to
death over the verse used as filters
by the magazines, Originality is al
ways sensational, and this poem OF
Lindsay's made sensation. 1t also
proved that America was full OF
themes that had been completely over
looked; that our American notables
were adapted to poetical use, likewise
our prairies, our cities, our neighbor-
hoods, our simplest lives, our byways
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