amazing variety, and almost as quickly by a certain distinctive quality
which gives all the varied specimens a kind of homogeneity. As we
analyse our impressions, we find that both of these qualities have a
common source--the complete objectivity and almost magical imagination
of supreme genius. Objectivity and imagination, the gifts of the epic
bards of classical antiquity, are today the rarest of blessings. We live
in an age of morbid emotion and introspectiveness; wherein the poets,
such as they are, have sunk to the level of mere pathologists engaged in
the dissection of their own ultra-sophisticated spirits. The fresh touch
of Nature is lost to the majority, and rhymesters rant endlessly and
realistically about the relation of man to his fellows and to himself;
overlooking the real foundations of art and beauty--wonder, and man's
relation to the unknown cosmos. But Miss Jackson is not of the majority,
and has not overlooked these things. In her the ancient and unspoiled
bard is refulgently reincarnated; and with an amazing universality and
freedom from self-consciousness she suppresses the ego completely,
delineating Nature's diverse moods and aspects with an impersonal
fidelity and delicacy which form the delight of the discriminating
reader, and the despair of the stupid critic who works by rule and
formula rather than by brain. There is no medium which the spirit of
Miss Jackson can not inhabit. The same mind which reflects the daintiest
and most gorgeous phantasies of the faery world, or furnishes the most
finely wrought pictures or refined pathos and sentiment, can abruptly
take up its abode in some remote Maine timber region and pour out such a
wild, virile chantey of the woods and the river that we seem to glimpse
the singer as the huskiest of a tangle-bearded, fight-scarred,
loud-shouting logging crew sprawling about a pine campfire.
A critic has grouped the poetical work of Miss Jackson into six classes:
Lyrics of ideal beauty, including delightful Nature-poems replete with
local colour; delicate amatory lyrics; rural dialect lyrics and vigorous
colloquial pieces; poems of sparkling optimism; child verse; and poems
of potent terror and dark suggestion. "With her," he adds, "sordid
realism has no place; and her poems glow with a subtle touch of the
fanciful and the supernatural which is well sustained by tasteful and
unusual word-combinations, images, and onomatopoetic effects." This
estimate is confirmed by the latest productions of the poetess, as we
shall endeavour to show by certain specimens lately published or about
to be published, selected almost at random:
"The Bonnet" is a characteristic bit of Jacksonian delicacy and
originality. We here behold a sustained metaphor of that striking type
which the author so frequently creates; a metaphor which draws on all
Nature and the unseen world for its basis, and whose analogies are just
the ones which please us most, yet which our own minds are never finely
attuned enough to conceive unaided. The swain in the poem tells of his
intention to make a bonnet for his chosen nymph to wear. He will fashion
it with "golden thimble, scissors, needle, thread"; taking velvet from
the April sky as a groundwork, stars for trimming, moonlight for
banding, and a web of dreams for lining. He will scent it with the
perfume of "the reddest rose that the singing wind finds sweetest where
it farthest blows," and "will take it at the twilight for his love to
wear." Here we have nothing of the bizarre or the conspicuous, yet in
the six little stanzas of quaintly regular metre there is suggested all
of that world of faery beauty which the eye can glimpse beyond the
leaden clouds of reality; a world which exists because it can be dreamed
of. The poem is "different" in the truest way; it is original because it
conveys beauty originally in an inconspicuous and harmonious vehicle.
But turn now to "Ellsworth to Great Pond" and marvel! True, we still
find the vivid delineation of human feelings, but what a distance we
have travelled! Gone is the young dreamer with his world of moonshine,
for here roars the Maine lumberjack with all the uncouth vigour and rude
natural expressiveness of the living satyr. It is life; primal,
uncovered, and unpolished--the ebullient, shouting vitality of healthy
animalism.
"Drink hard cider, swig hard cider,
Swill hard cider, Boys!
Throw yer spikers, throw yer peavies,
Beller out yer noise!"
We have drifted from the aether of Keats to the earth of Fielding, yet
under the guidance of the same author. Greater proof of Miss Jackson's
absolute objectivity and marvellous imagination could not be produced or
asked.
Yet who shall say that the Jackson pendulum is powerful only at the
extremes of its sweeping arc? In "Workin' Out" we discover a pastoral
love-lyric which for quaintness and graphic humanness could not well be
surpassed. Here the distinctive and spontaneous inventiveness of Miss
Jackson's fancy is displayed with especial vividness. The rural youth,
"workin' out" far from his loved Molly, enumerates the prosaic chores he
can perform with easy heart; but mentions in each case some more poetic
thing which stirs his emotions and gives him loneliness for the absent
fair. He can cut and husk corn, but the golden-rod reminds him of his
Molly's golden hair. He can milk cows, but the gentian reminds him of
his Molly's blue eyes. Aside from their intrinsic ingeniousness, these
images possess an unconscious lesson for the poet who can read it. They
expose with concrete illustrations the fallacy of the so-called "new
poetry," which disregards the natural division between beautiful and
unbeautiful things and rhapsodises as effusively over a sewer-pipe as
over the crescent moon.
"The Token" exhibits Miss Jackson in her airiest lyrical mood; a mood
original because it possesses the rare lyrism of pure music and fancy
rather than the common lyrism of unsubtilised emotion. There is bounding
music in thought and medium alike, whilst the naive plunge into the
theme without introduction or explanation is a stroke savouring of the
simplicity of genius. Equally effective is the simple metrical
transition whereby the chorus assumes the trochaic measure of a
childhood chant or carol:
"Lightly O, brightly O,
Down the long lane she will go!
Dancing she, glancing she,
Down the lane with eyes aglow!"
In "Assurance" and "It's Lovetime," the author displays a lyrical
fervour of more conventional type; adding the touch of originality by
means of melodious simplicity and reiteration in the one case, and pure
lyric ecstasy in the other.
The metrical originality of Miss Jackson, displayed in all classes of
her work, should not be slighted amidst the enthusiasm one entertains
for her magical mastery of thoughts and images. No other conservative
poet of the period is more versatile and individual in choice of
numbers, or in adaptation of measure to mood. "Driftwood," a wonderfully
original poem of imagination describing the fancies which arise from the
smoke of logs wafted from far mysterious lands where once the trees grew
under strange suns, moons, and rainbows, is as remarkable in form as in
idea. One may judge by a sample pair of stanzas:
"You warm your hands
And smile
Before the fire of driftwood.
"I feel old lands'
Wan guile
That writhes in fire of driftwood."
We have so far viewed poetry which would lead us to classify Miss
Jackson as a delineator of moods rather than of character; yet knowing
her versatility, we naturally expect to find among her works some potent
character studies. Nor are we disappointed. "Joe," a song of the Maine
woods, describes in admirably appropriate verbiage--as simple and as
nearly monosyllabic as possible--the typical Anglo-Saxon stoic of far
places, who faces comfort and disaster, life and death, with the same
unemotional attitude which Miss Jackson sums up so skilfully in the one
ejaculatory bit of colloquial indifference--"Dunno!"
"The Song of Jonny Laughlin" is a highly unusual ballad relating the
history of a peculiarly good and self-sacrificing river character. The
story is simple, but the piece gains distinctiveness from its absolutely
faithful reproduction of the spirit of frontier balladry. In words,
swing, and weird refrain, there exists every internal evidence of
traditional authenticity; and that such a bit of Nature could be
composed by a cultivated feminine author is an overwhelming testimonial
to Miss Jackson's unique gifts.
That Miss Jackson can reflect the spirit of the most dissimilar
characters is further proved by the two immensely powerful studies of
the vagabond type entitled "The Call" and "John Worthington Speaks."
These things are masterpieces of their kind; the self-revealing
narratives of restless wanderers by land and sea, crammed to repletion
with details and local colour which no one but their author could
command without actual experience as a derelict of five continents and
as many oceans. They leave the reader veritably breathless with wonder
at the objectivity and imagination which can enable a New-England
poetess to mirror with such compelling vividness in thought and language
the sentiments of so utterly opposite a type. Not even the narrowly
specialised genius of such rough-and-ready writers as Service and
Knibbs, working in their own peculiar field, can surpass this one slight
phase of Miss Jackson's universal genius.
It remains to speak of the singular power of Miss Jackson in the realm
of the gruesome and the terrible. With that same sensitiveness to the
unseen and the unreal which lends witchery to her gayer productions, she
has achieved in darker fields of verse results inviting comparison with
the best prose work of Ambrose Bierce or Maurice Level. Among her older
poems the ghastly and colourful phantasy "Insomnia" and the grimly
realistic rustic tragedy "Chores" excited especial praise, a critic
referring as follows to the latter piece:
"It has all the compelling power which marks Miss Jackson's darker
productions, and is conveyed in an arresting staccato measure which
emphasises the homely horror of the theme. The phraseology, with its
large proportion of rural and archaic words and constructions, adds
vastly to the general effect and atmosphere."
This reference to Miss Jackson's unusual vocabulary deserves
elaboration, for one of the secrets of her effective poetry is the wide
and diverse array of words and word-combinations which she commands.
Recondite archaisms and ruralisms, together with marvellously apt and
original descriptive compounds, are things which perpetually astonish
and delight her readers. Of recent specimens of Miss Jackson's darker
verse, "Finality," "The Song" and "Fallen Fences" deserve especial
praise. The horrible picture conjured up in the closing lines of the
first named piece is one well calculated to haunt the dreams of the
imaginative.
As we conclude this survey of rich and varied poetry, our dominant
impression aside from admiration is that of wonder at the tardiness with
which the author has been recognised by the non-amateur public. As yet
the name of Jackson is a comparative novelty to the literary world, a
thing explainable only by the reluctance of its possessor to adopt that
species of trumpeting which helps less modest and less genuine poets
into the glare of celebrity. But genius such as Miss Jackson's can not
remain forever hidden, however slight be her striving for fame; so that
we may reasonably expect the next few years to witness her establishment
among the leading literary figures, as one of the ablest, broadest and
most original of contemporary bards.
Ex Oblivione
WARD PHILLIPS
When the last days were upon me, and the ugly trifles of existence began
to drive me to madness like the small drops of water that torturers let
fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their victim's body, I loved the
irradiate refuge of sleep. In my dreams I found a little of the beauty I
had vainly sought in life, and wandered through old gardens and
enchanted woods.
Once when the wind was soft and scented I heard the south calling, and
sailed endlessly and languorously under strange stars.
Once when the gentle rain fell I glided in a barge down a sunless stream
under the earth till I reached another world of purple twilight,
iridescent arbours and undying roses.
And once I walked through a golden valley that led to shadowy groves and
ruins, and ended in a mighty wall green with antique vines, and pierced
by a little gate of bronze.
Many times I walked through that valley, and longer and longer would I
pause in the spectral half-light where the giant trees squirmed and
twisted grotesquely, and the grey ground stretched damply from trunk to
trunk, sometimes disclosing the mould-stained stones of buried temples.
And always the goal of my fancies was the mighty vine-grown wall with
the little gate of bronze therein.
After a while, as the days of waking became less and less bearable from
their greyness and sameness, I would often drift in opiate peace through
the valley and the shadowy groves, and wonder how I might seize them for
my eternal dwelling-place, so that I need no more crawl back to a dull
world stript of interest and new colours. And as I looked upon the
little gate in the mighty wall, I felt that beyond it lay a
dream-country from which, once it was entered, there would be no return.
So each night in sleep I strove to find the hidden latch of the gate in
the ivied antique wall, though it was exceedingly well-hidden. And I
would tell myself that the realm beyond the wall was not more lasting
merely, but more lovely and radiant as well.
Then one night in the dream-city of Zakarion I found a yellowed papyrus
filled with the thoughts of dream-sages who dwelt of old in that city,
and who were too wise ever to be born in the waking world. Therein were
written many things concerning the world of dream, and among them was
lore of a golden valley and a sacred grove with temples, and a high wall
pierced by a little bronze gate. When I saw this lore, I knew that it
touched on the scenes I had haunted, and I therefore read long in the
yellowed papyrus.
Some of the dream-sages wrote gorgeously of the wonders beyond the
irrepassable gate, but others told of horror and disappointment. I knew
not which to believe, yet longed more and more to cross forever into the
unknown land; for doubt and secrecy are the lure of lures, and no new
horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace.
So when I learned of the drug which would unlock the gate and drive me
through, I resolved to take it when next I awaked.
Last night I swallowed the drug and floated dreamily into the golden
valley and the shadowy groves; and when I came this time to the antique
wall, I saw that the small gate of bronze was ajar. From beyond came a
glow that weirdly lit the giant twisted trees and tops of the buried
temples, and I drifted on songfully, expectant of the glories of the
land from whence I should never return.
But as the gate swung wider and the sorcery of drug and dream pushed me
through, I knew that all sights and glories were at an end; for in that
new realm was neither land nor sea, but only the white void of unpeopled
and illimitable space. So, happier than I had ever dared hope to be, I
dissolved again into that native infinity of crystal oblivion from which
the daemon Life had called me for one brief and desolate hour.
OFFICIAL ORGAN FUND
Providence, R. I., July 1, 1921.
RECEIPTS SINCE APRIL 1, 1921
From Treasurer, up to July 1, 1921 $18.50
Verna McGeoch (2 instalments) 10.00
E. Edward Ericson 10.00
Mr. and Mrs. Leo Fritter 2.00
John Milton Samples 1.00
Balance on Hand, April 1, 1921 8.50
------
Total Receipts $50.00
EXPENDITURES
To E. E. Ericson, for March U. A. $46.00
Balance on Hand, July 1, 1921 $4.00
H. P. LOVECRAFT,
Custodian.
THE UNITED AMATEUR SEPTEMBER 1921
THE UNITED AMATEUR
Official Organ
of the
UNITED AMATEUR PRESS ASSOCIATION
H. P. LOVECRAFT _Official Editor_
E. EDWARD ERICSON _Official Publisher_
Issued bi-monthly by the United Amateur Press Association.
Subscription Price, 50 cents per year.
Published at Elroy, Wisconsin.
Entered as second-class mail matter at the post office at Elroy, Wis.
_SEPTEMBER 1921_
* * * * *
OFFICIAL BOARD
_President_--Mrs. Ida C. Haughton, 1372 E. Long St., Columbus, Ohio.
_First Vice-President_--Frank Belknap Long, Jr., 823 West End Ave., New
York City.
_Second Vice-President_--Eleanor Beryl North, 316 Beaver Ave., State
College, Pa.
_Secretary-Treasurer_--Alma B. Sanger, 667 Lilley Ave., Columbus, Ohio.
_Official Editor_--H. P. Lovecraft, 598 Angell St., Providence, R. I.
_Official Publisher_--E. Edward Ericson, Elroy, Wis.
_Laureate Recorder_--Howard R. Conover, Route 1, Cozaddale, Ohio.
_Manuscript Manager_--Grace M. Bromley, 1432 R St., N. W., Washington,
D. C.
_Historian_--Myrta Alice Little, Westville, N. H.
_Supervisor of Amendments_--(To be appointed.)
_Directors_--Paul J. Campbell, Route 2, Ridgefarm, Ill.; Anne T.
Renshaw, 2109 F St., N. W., Washington, D. C.; Jay Fuller Spoerri, 304
House Office Bldg., Washington, D. C.
_Department of Public Criticism_--Alfred Galpin, Jr., Chairman, 830 W.
Johnson St., Madison, Wis.
_Department of Private Criticism_--Maurice W. Moe, Chairman, 2812
Chestnut St., Milwaukee, Wis.
_Recruiting Committee_--Frank Belknap Long, Jr., Chairman, Paul J.
Campbell, Leo Fritter, Alfred L. Hutchinson, Gavin T. McColl, Maurice W.
Moe.
_Ladies' Auxiliary Committee_--Eleanor Beryl North, Chairman, Mary Faye
Durr, Jennie Eva Harris, Winifred Virginia Jackson, Margaret Mahon, Anne
T. Renshaw.
* * * * *
LAUREATE TITLES
_Poetry_--S. Lilian McMullen; Honourable Mention, Mary Carver Williams.
_Story_--H. P. Lovecraft; Honourable Mention, Alfred Galpin, Jr.
_Essay_--Anna Helen Crofts and H. P. Lovecraft; Honourable Mention,
Alfred Galpin, Jr.
_Editorial_--(To be awarded.)
* * * * *
LITERATI
_Poetry_--Arthur Goodenough, Olive G. Owen (deceased).
_Story_--Eleanor Barnhart Campbell.
_Editorial_--H. P. Lovecraft.
* * * * *
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* * * * *
The fullest of apologies is due the membership for the lateness of this
issue of THE UNITED AMATEUR. A prostrating and overwhelming flood of
professional duties, coupled with a state of health permitting only the
shortest of working hours, has forced the editor to delay transmission
of this copy to the publisher until November 4: a date which should be
remembered in justice to the latter official, who is equally handicapped
in the matter of conflicting duties.
THE EDITOR
Editorial
In the excellent October _Woodbee_, Mr. Leo Fritter criticises with much
force the attempt of the present editor to conduct THE UNITED AMATEUR on
a tolerably civilised plane. He points out that the appearance of a
journal representing a fairly uniform maturity of thought and artistic
development may perhaps tend to discourage those newer aspirants who
have not yet attained their full literary stature, and thus defeat the
educational ends of the Association.
Mr. Fritter gathers his material for complaint from the opinions of
certain amateurs with whom he has held communication, and on this basis
alleges a "wide-spreading dissatisfaction" with the present editorial
policy. We have ourselves received numerous and enthusiastic assurances
of an opposite nature, especially since the Fritter attack, so that we
must rebut at least his charge that we are ignoring the membership's
wishes and "trying to conform them to a mould we have arbitrarily cast
according to ideas of our own." To adopt a lower standard would, indeed,
be affronting a more influential element than that which may at present
be dissatisfied; an element which has possibly gained higher claims to
consideration through the _continuous_ nature of its services to the
Association during trying times when others were silent and inactive.
But in determining the question of editorial policy, the abstract merits
of the case are more important than the act of pleasing this or that
person or group. Were we convinced that the existing order hampered the
sincere novice, we would abandon it without pride or ceremony. That we
do not, is because we are certain that retrogression and decadence would
constitute a fatal mistake. The public we serve is assumed to be a
genuinely progressive one, a group bent upon attaining some measure of
proficiency in that sincere self-expression which is art. If it were
not, it would have joined some other association of different
purposes--the defiantly crude Erford pseudo-United or the complacently
social and stationary National. What justifies the separate existence
and support of the United is its higher aesthetic and intellectual cast;
its demand for the unqualified best as a goal--which demand, by the way,
must not be construed as discriminating against even the crudest
beginner who honestly cherishes that goal. With these objects in mind,
it will be seen that the self-satisfied exultation of the superficial,
the obvious, the commonplace, and the conventional, would form the
greatest possible tactical error. The goal would be unjustifiably
obscured, and the aspiration of the membership stunted, through the
enshrining of a false and inferior goal--a literary Golden Calf. We must
envisage a genuine scale of values, and possess a model of genuine
excellence toward which to strive. It would pay better to work toward a
high standard oneself, than to seek to drag the standard down to fit
whatever particular grade of ignorance one may happen to have at a given
moment. With proper effort any member may eventually produce work of the
UNITED AMATEUR grade, and such work will be certain of a cordial welcome
in this office. The official organ is not so narrow as it seems; if more
of our capable members would favour it with their literary
contributions, the range of authors represented would not be so
restricted. It is not the editor but the body of our _literati_ who must
bear responsibility for the constant reappearance of certain names. This
issue is headed by the same poet who headed the last two--but only
because another eminent amateur, so far unrepresented during the present
regime, utterly ignored our repeated requests for a contribution.
Mr. Fritter--who, I fear, wrongs etymology in his acceptance of the word
_amateur_ as meaning a tyro rather than a genuine and disinterested
artist--forgets that a relapse to cruder standards would totally unfit
the United for serving that staunch element which has contributed most
to its present welfare. Many would find a society of the lower grade
intolerable; certainly it could not hope to hold the very ones who have
given this organization its existing distinctiveness and pre-eminence.