course received the explanation. His firm had sold the reprint rights
to Loring and Mussey, as it was entitled to do by contract, but had
forgotten to notify me of the deal. In due time, I would receive my
share of the returns, as provided by our agreement.
As I look back over the preface of _Modern American Lyrics_, I find
that same effort to distinguish poetry from pseudo-poetry which,
rightly or wrongly, has remained one of my preoccupations throughout
the years. In referring to pseudo-poetry, I was chiefly concerned, then
as now, with certain innovators who, it seemed to me, were abandoning
poetry for the sake of novelty, were turning out transparently
disguised prose, and so were spreading confusion over the poetic world,
and tending to make all poetry look ridiculous. Referring to certain
modern compilations then recommended as good, I remarked:
Page after page ... is devoted to formless effusions whose music is
less than the music of dignified prose; page after page is filled
with the sordid things of everyday, with kitchen sinks and bathtubs
and cobblestones and loveless adulteries. And if in the interlude--as
frequently occurs--one comes across a glowing sentiment or memorable
melody or flash of imagination that reveals wide vistas of the
sun-tinged storm-clouds or of the starry night-skies, then one is
likely to be plunged in the next page into the monologue of a real
estate agent if not into an epic of the hog-pens.
If I were to write this in regard to the anthologies of today, there
would not be a word I would have to reconsider, except that the phrase
“as frequently occurs” might now seem an overstatement.
Even before the appearance of _Modern American Lyrics_, I had made my
bid for recognition in a collection, _The Thinker and Other Poems_.
Doubtless I was as proud of this as most writers are of their first
published masterpieces; but let me hasten to add that I am proud of
it no longer, nor have I been for many a year. I would perhaps not
go so far as one poet I once heard of, who offered a handsome price
for copies of his first book; and having retrieved quite a few at
considerable cost and trouble, disposed of them all in one great
bonfire, in the hope of thus extirpating all trace of his youthful
folly. But if I would not seek to emulate this holocaust, the reason
is that I see no need for the poet himself to weed out what time is
certain to obliterate. I will not say that _The Thinker_ does not
truthfully embody much of the thought, feeling, and imagination of my
youth. But in glancing back over the poems (a form of self-chastisement
I rarely submit myself to), I find few if any that I would not present
in different garments were I writing them today. Then why do I not
revise them? Because life goes on to new impulses and expressions, and
it would be as difficult to return to the mood and outlook of yesterday
as to go back to the haunts of one’s childhood.
I must not give the impression that any publisher was waiting with
outstretched hands for this early darling of my heart. Then, as now,
no publisher was enthusiastic about the chance to lose money; then,
as now, it was difficult to find a market for poetry, though markedly
less so than it has since become. Even while in California, I had been
in contact with the firm of James T. White and Company, which issued
occasional books of verse, though its chief publication, if I remember
rightly, was an encyclopedia of American biography (which, I believe,
it still issues). One day sometime after my arrival in New York, I
stepped into the offices of the firm at 70 Fifth Avenue, and saw Mr.
White, a thin, aged, learned-looking man, whose hair matched his name;
and also met his amiable editor, James B. Kenyon, probably then in his
late sixties--the author of no less than nine books of verse and three
of prose not unfamiliar to an earlier day, though I suspect that few
nowadays remember him. The tone of his poems, which were not without
quality even though lacking that supreme element which makes one poet
soar above a thousand and surmount the generations, is indicated by
these lines from _Reed Voices_ (James T. White, 1917):
’Mid the dusk reeds that fledge the twilight streams,
Nature’s wild troubadours, the breezes, make
Such strange sweet songs as echo through our dreams,
And haunt our baffled memories when we wake.
To Mr. Kenyon, who received me in a friendly way, I showed some of my
own poems; and his approval, while perhaps over-generous, naturally led
to a discussion of the possible publication of a collection. It was
some time before a way could be worked out; but finally it was decided
that, if I could dispose of a certain number of copies, the firm would
undertake the publication. Do not suppose that there was anything
unusual or degrading about such an arrangement; it was then and has
since become even more decisively the rule among first books of verse,
most of which would otherwise never see the light--and if the first
book does not see the light, what of the second, and the third? As a
matter of fact, I did not stand to lose much (nor was I financially
able to lose much), for I knew where I could dispose of numbers of
copies, even though I did not yet realize that many acquaintances who
will buy a first book out of good will or curiosity would no sooner
purchase a second than they would subscribe for shares in a company
dedicated to raising white elephants. I did not, of course, personally
solicit sales; but the company circularized a list of names provided
by me. Bookstore sales counted for little if anything; but there was
one store that did sell quite a few copies--a store such as, I would
hazard a guess, has rarely if ever, before or since, dealt in books of
verse. A cousin of mine, a bright and literate woman who was always
especially kind to me, ran a sort of emporium of ladies’ goods on
Washington Heights; and what should be added to the stock in trade but
_The Thinker and Other Poems_! Recommended by the sagacious proprietor,
this book went off into more than one home where poems were ordinarily
in no great demand.
But already I was learning some of the trials of the young author. In
my inexperience, I had given no thought to so important a matter as
the size of the type to be used; and when I saw the proofs, I observed
with a shock that the print was minute (actually, eight point, whereas
nowadays I would approve nothing less than eleven or twelve point). So
hard was the book to peruse that its author, after it came out, could
never read more than a poem or two at a time, and rarely subjected his
eyes to this much strain. You may say that this had the advantage of
keeping down the number of readers, but I am sure no such precaution
was necessary. It may have been the small type, or it may have been
mere ineptitude that caused me to miss a number of errors; one of them,
in particular, seems considerably more amusing to me now than when I
originally discovered it: my poem of tender sentiment, _On My Mother’s
Photograph_, had come out, “On My Mother’s Phonograph.”
Despite the small print, despite the typographical errors, despite the
amateurishness of many of the poems, _The Thinker_ was extensively
and on the whole favorably reviewed; I received a gratifying wealth
of clippings from papers ranging from New York to Puget Sound. I
mention this, however, not with any sense of personal triumph, but
because similar good luck does not befall books of verse by unknown
writers today; a traditional collection such as mine, issued without
advertising and under the imprint of a relatively obscure publisher,
could now be certain to be ignored altogether outside the author’s home
town, or at most would be honored by one or two three- or four-line
notices from secondary organs. In this difference one can measure the
extent to which poetry, in the course of several decades, has fallen in
critical and general esteem.
CHAPTER
NINE
Blood Brother to the Epic
Certain writers, such as Poe and Baudelaire, have contended that there
is no such thing as a long poem. And these writers, consistently, have
never written any long poems--that is to say, compositions running to
many hundreds or thousands of lines; the cynical critic might, indeed,
accuse them of sharing the common blindness of men to accomplishments
beyond the scope of their own aptitudes. In any event, the case for the
long poem need not be argued, for it has been proved in action by not a
few writers, including Homer, Virgil, Dante, Ariosto, Camoëns, Chaucer,
Spenser, Milton, Goethe, and many others. An extended theme, after all,
requires extended expression; and it is hard to see why a long poem may
not bear the same relationship to a short one, as a novel does to the
short story or a full-length play to a skit or a sketch.
That long poems are unpopular nowadays is another matter; (what else
can be expected in a day when all poetry is unpopular?). But the
question of popularity never entered my head when I launched into more
than one composition whose lines could be numbered in four figures.
Truly, I wrote what I wanted to write, and naturally hoped for the
best, but never gave much thought to the possible reception of the
work (which might show the impractical nature of poets, if their
impracticality were not already proved by the fact that they write
verse at all). Nevertheless, what joy to pick a theme on which you
might sail away into gorgeous cloud-lands, filling page after page with
the ever-expanding story, setting down in succinct rhymed lines your
views on life and on man, and creating something which (to you, at
least) is vivid and living where previously nothing at all has been!
Characters that arise out of the mist to take on flesh and blood!
Scenes and places that assume visible outlines, though to be found
nowhere on earth except in one poet’s imagination! And the rhymes
themselves--they were a challenge and a delight: the challenge of
problems to master, and a delight when they seemed deftly to say just
what you wanted, even if sometimes you had not known you wished to say
precisely this until the words formed themselves in your mind!
Day after day, I learned, one can invoke the necessary mood of
detachment. Indeed, this mood comes the more easily for being sought
regularly, and sought at about the same time each day, seven days a
week; an interruption of even a day or two will make it more difficult
to regain. I found this to be the case when engaged, all one carefree
summer, in putting together the first of my long poems ever to see
print. This composition, _The Lone Adventurer_, was written mostly in
California, where Flora and I had gone in July and August of 1926 to
visit my father in the hot but delightfully green and spacious city
of Stockton. The preceding months had been among the most painful and
wearing in my experience: Flora’s father had died; she herself had
undergone a major operation; and I had been subjected to long-drawn
torments of dental surgery. And so the writing of the poem, “For him
who would forget awhile the noise / Of careworn cities, drenched in
sweat and steam,” constituted an inexpressible relief, though I would
not use the word “escape,” since to be in a quiet California town, with
its long elm-shaded streets, its unfenced gardens, and its walnut,
fig, and oleander trees, was to enjoy all the escape the city-wounded
wanderer needed.
Morning after morning, while I lay stretched out with pen and paper on
the lawn of the unfrequented block-square city park at Eldorado and
Acacia Streets, looking up at the palm trees or down at the robins
and sparrows hopping inquisitively about the grass, I spun out the
seven-line stanzas of the poem, which told of the search of Prince
Lodalga for the magical pool:
High on the highest peak of all the range,
In a chill fastness far from human sight,
Walled from the ruinous touch of Time and Change,
There is a pool that sparkles mirror-bright.
And he who peers in it, and sees aright,
May catch a phantom gleam, a flash of wings,
And read the hidden meaning of all things.
While I lay on the lawn in a far-off mood, letting the lines of the
poem tumble into my mind, Flora sat near me with a book. But her
presence caused no distraction; though not a poet herself, she had
an understanding of the needs of creation and never broke in with an
unnecessary remark. Ah, patient wife of a poet, who could restrain
herself and contentedly walk the ways of silence, when others less
sensitive would have burst out in irrelevant and destructive speech!
It was a rare morning when I did not put out seven, eight, nine, or ten
stanzas, which would be revised at my leisure later in the day (and
then revised again and again before their final typing). Hence it is
not surprising that the end of the summer saw the completion of the
poem, well over two thousand lines in all.
Having written _Finis_, I naturally thought of finding a publisher.
This might seem impossible in these later days, when many publishers
frankly proclaim that they are not interested in poetry of any type,
while others, apparently on the theory that if poetry must be endured
at all it had better be taken in small doses, throw up their hands
hopelessly at the very thought of a _long_ poem.--Even if _Paradise
Lost_ were to be submitted, or _Prometheus Unbound_, or _The Eve of
St. Agnes and Other Poems_, the verdict would be the same, without
benefit of one stray glance at the unpromising manuscript. But back in
the pristine days of 1926, the situation was different--at least, if
I may judge by the results. _The Lone Adventurer_ was not ready for
submission before my return to New York in September; and I do not
recall, nor do any records inform me, what publishers, if any, during
the next month or two, declined with thanks the privilege of adding
it to their responsibilities. But what I do know is that, as early as
December, publishing arrangements had been made.
One day I invaded the offices of the newly founded Unicorn Press,
on West Forty-Second Street (not to be confused with the entirely
unrelated more recent establishment of the same name). There I had the
opportunity of interviewing the young proprietors, Messrs. Kline and
Blum; and having entrusted them with the precious manuscript, I was
delighted--what poet would not have been?--to learn of the eventual
acceptance of my _magnum opus_. My joy, I should add, sprang largely
from the fact that the Unicorn Press was not--at least, not so far as
my own experience taught me--one of the so-called vanity publishers,
which act as purveyors of books financed by their authors. It was a
legitimate royalty house--too bad, therefore, that I did not foresee
the knots and tangles into which such a house can entrap an author!
Obviously, one reason for the acceptance of _The Lone Adventurer_ was
that the new and unknown Unicorn Press needed writers--prose writers
much more than poets. The following may seem a little apart from our
main theme, though there is a connection: within three or four months,
Kline and Blum offered me a contract for a long book dealing with
the history of warlike methods, of which at that time I had written
only about fifty pages. The title was to be _Marching Men, The Story
of War_, and I had to face a deadline only a few months ahead--a
deadline which I met after a concentrated seven-day-a-week effort that
need not be described here. Alas for an author’s hopes! the book was
indeed issued, in a handsome format, nearly five hundred pages of it,
embellished with copious illustrations by Arthur Zaidenberg; and it was
a book which, I was informed by persons in a position to know, should
have had a wide sale. But even before it was in print, events of which
I was then unaware were casting the shadow of disaster.
The owners of the Unicorn Press, as I was subsequently told, were mired
in deep financial straits. So desperately did they need immediate cash
that they committed the unpardonable, the ruinous act of selling over a
thousand copies of my book at reduced rates to used-book dealers even
before it had been placed on the regular market or reviewers had had
a chance to see a copy (they could afford to do this, since they had
omitted the formality of paying the printers). No book could survive
such a calamity; the least of my losses was that I received none of the
expected royalties. No other publisher would handle a book whose market
had been so undermined, though more than one told me that he would
have published it had it been submitted to him originally (actually,
one small publisher did offer me a contract for the book several years
later, but financial difficulties prevented him from carrying out the
agreement); while long afterwards, in 1946, an offer to reissue the
work came to me out of the void from a New York reprint publisher; but
the plates having been destroyed, the deal was never consummated.
All of this may seem like a digression, but it will indicate what
sort of a publisher I had found for _The Lone Adventurer_. Blithely
unaware of anything less than perfect in my new connection, I saw the
book appear, appropriately green-covered, with an appealing red and
black jacket, and large type; and if a poet’s chief aim is a published
volume, I had at least one satisfaction. The months went by; there
were reviews, comments from friends, and letters from readers (though
not many letters); but as in the later case of _Marching Men_, never
a penny in royalties. I am not suggesting that the sales were great
enough to pay for a steam yacht or a mansion on Fifth Avenue; but large
or small, I was treated to no definite report. The most that I could
obtain, after some unhappy sessions with Kline and Blum, was a document
signing all rights to the poem back to me. But sometime later, I had
reason to be glad even for this concession; chancing to observe the
books on the bargain counter of a large New York drug store, I was
astonished to see a familiar face: _The Lone Adventurer_, in a new
edition, with the original type and paper, but a reduced page-size and
a reduced price!
On inquiry, I was able to unravel the mystery. The cheap edition had
been put forth by the binders, who, being in possession of 500 or 1000
unbound copies which they had seized in partial satisfaction of the
debts owed by the Unicorn Press, had bound these at their own expense
and thrown them on the market. The last person to be considered, of
course, was the author; but as the author happened also to be the
copyright owner, he wrote to the binders, pointing out that they had
committed a copyright violation by an unauthorized act of publication;
and the binders, conceding the point, agreed to pay a royalty on the
books they had sold. Thus I came into possession of a small sum,
no more than fifty or a hundred dollars--the only case I have ever
known in which a poet, after going unpaid by his publisher, received
royalties from the publisher’s binders.
But perhaps all the above will further explain why I sought my living
by other forms of writing than poetry.
_The Lone Adventurer_, I will acknowledge, is a much less accomplished
work than I could wish; its theme and style, besides, would have
harmonized better with the age of Tennyson than with the staccato pace
of the day of jet planes and atomic power. Yet most themes and styles
are adjudged by the tastes of individuals rather than by absolute
standards; and this poem, with its basis in the quest for truth, has
always had a place in the affections of that highly prejudiced person,
its author. He has sometimes thought that he might someday revise it;
in fact, in _Garnered Sheaves_ (1949), he did present new versions of
a few short passages. Just in order to note the difference, whether
for better or for worse, it may be interesting to compare some of the
original stanzas with their later incarnations. Here, to begin with, is
an excerpt as printed in 1927:
Among the ice-crowned mountains to the west
Of Helmud’s empire, where the peaks of snow
Surmount the cloud-peaks, battered crest on crest,
And crookèd canyons ramble miles below,
Sometimes a sleety wind would snarl and blow
Round a slim figure that pursued alone
The snake-meanderings of a trail of stone.
* * * * *
And forlorn forests knew him, where the boughs
Made a dim twilight roof; and he would toil
Up rock-strewn summits, with a cave for house,
Where spitting geysers would erupt and boil
Amid scrub pines that sucked a beggared soil;
And in green bouldery gorges he would wander,
Where twisted streams poured with the roar of thunder.
And here are the same stanzas in the edition of 1949:
Among the ice-beaked mountains to the west
Of Helmud’s kingdom, where the spires of snow
Surmount the cloud-spires, pendent crest on crest,
And crab-armed canyons ramble worlds below,
Sometimes the sleet-wind and the rain would blow
Round a slim traveler who traced alone
The snaky wanderings of a trail of stone.
* * * * *
Wolf-threaded forests knew him, where the boughs
Gave noon a roof of twilight; he would toil
Up to the summits, with a cave for house,
Where spitting geysers bubble and fountains boil
Beneath scrub-pines that suck a beggared soil;
And in green gorges eagle-spaces under
Cascading streams that pour with the drone of thunder.
Another stanza may show the difference even more clearly:
And had he headed some rapacious band
To save the kingdom from its smaller foes,
And driven happy peoples from their land,
Slain babes and women with victorious bows
And left but ruins where had bloomed the rose--
Then fond disciples would have reared a shrine
Inscribed to “King Lodalga, the Divine.”
In the later form, this became:
And had he headed some fire-hurling band
To save the kingdom from its smaller foes,
Whipped screaming peoples from a smoking land,
Slain babes, felled women with bowel-ripping bows,
And left but ash-heaps where he found the rose,
Then fond disciples might have reared a shrine
Sacred to “King Lodalga, Lord Divine.”
There may be readers who would prefer the first versions, but these
examples will give some idea of the effect of revisions after more than
twenty years.
CHAPTER
TEN
Poets I Have Known
Inevitably, in the course of my adventures in poetry, I met other
poets, some of whom come back to mind with particular vividness--not
necessarily those I knew best or longest, but those whose individuality
makes them stand out most sharply.
To begin with, I think of a man whom I shall call Morris, and who has,
unhappily, made himself notorious. I first met him back in the fall of
1920, shortly after my arrival in New York. He was then the owner of
a small bookshop, near where the Sixth Avenue “L” trains thundered to
a halt at the station at Eighth Street in Greenwich Village. A proud,
handsome, insolent-looking, big-browed intellectual, he impressed me
with his announcement that a novel of his was to appear in the spring,
and that he was writing a book on current poetry (in what spring the
novel was published I do not know, but I am sure that the book on
poetry never made its bow). In the loneliness of my first months in
New York, I paid several visits to his shop, where I saw (but was not
introduced to) a number of literary celebrities, including Edna St.
Vincent Millay. I then lost track of Morris, until several years later,
when compiling _Modern American Lyrics_ I met him again in the office
of Earle Balch, who mentioned that he had some poems which might be
worth considering for my contemplated anthology.