Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-05-07
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

as that attributed to Homer in the
"Iliad" was the first type, heroic,
grandiose, yet essentially simple.
1t dealt mainly with men in their
favorite occupation, that Of war. and it
was not until centuries later that the
lyric mood introduced itself into the
realms of verse. The fragments Of
Sappho, the odes of Horace, were some
thing new in the world. as distinct in
their way as the mighty pyramids Of
Egypt.
The songs of the troubadours, extol-
ling refined love, were but an interlude
a strange interlude, If one will. in the
main stream of poetry, which lowered
forth with tremendous vigor in q
Shakespeare and sank like brook in
Herrick.
During all these centuries the poetic
tradition was being built up until 1t
the work of such English poets as
Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson-eSpe-
cially Tennyson.
Certain themes were regarded as
standard. Certain words came to be
held by every reader to be poetic words,
without which no poem could really be
poem.
1t is to be realized what a pow-wow
such readers kicked up when writers
such as Whitman, wild and woolly, to-
tally needless of these fine traditions,
burst forth with their "barbaric yawp."
Call this stuff poetry?" choruSed
such readers. Never! 1t may be prose,
but I am not even sure of that. No
one shall ever convince me that 1t is
poetry or has any relation to poetry"
Many of those readers have since
changed their views. Poetry, they will
admit, was wider than they had
thought. Like Horatio's philosophy,
there was more in poetry than they had
been willing to accept.
Time and growing taste had forced
them to see that such things as when
Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed''
were indeed. poems in the sense that
Crossing the Bar" is a poem.
Yet poetry addicts are conservative.
Forced to yield on one man, they hedged
on others, and held back from giving
their approval to the "imagists" and
the "free-verse" makers.
In the anthology of which we have
spoken above are many queer efforts,
poems which the writer here is unable
to accept as poetry. To him they are
but absurditieS, a playing with words,
interesting to that extent. but not to
be compared in the same breath with
Vachel LlndSayS "ChineSe Nightingale,
included in the same collection ("Prize
Poems" Paper Book for ApriD.
X
The secret of verse, as of prose, is
many readers, many writers; and what
may appeal to one will not appeal to
another So all types of writer's have
their innings, and all kinds of readers
too.
The result of this happy state OF
things is that every one with a message
will find his readers, the sentimental
writer's the sentimental readers, the
scientific writers the scientific readers
readers of poetry who instinctively like
Longfellow will find delight in similar
work, while those who rave over the
poems of some of the more adven-
furious Of the younger poets will be
eager for yet more advanced" forms.
Thus poetry continues, as in the
days of ancient Greece, to be a power
and force in the world of letters. Be-
cause any one does not read it does not
mean that it does not exist; it simply
means that he is missing something
good, for at no time in history were
there more kinds of poetry to appeal to
all types Of readers.