which was not entirely devoted to the redwoods, but did pay its
respects to those great trees, “Close-massed as brothers in some
mystic rite, / With prayerful heads that search the blue unseen.”
The publisher was Arthur H. Chamberlain, who ran “Overland-Outwest
Publications” in conjunction with the revived _Overland Monthly_, of
which he was the editor, and into which he vainly tried to breathe new
life. I had never met Chamberlain prior to the acceptance of my book,
but was to meet him many a time afterwards, and was to number him among
my friends until his death sometime in the forties. I can still picture
him clearly: a small, slight figure, gray-haired and thin-faced, with
an overflowing, singularly ingratiating smile as he hobbled forward
to greet me in his hotel in San Francisco (he suffered from a chronic
foot complaint). Chamberlain was one of those gentle, lovable souls
who are willing to embrace the world in the circle of their confidence
and affection; he was also, like other magnanimous persons I have met,
the hatcher of rather grandiose undertakings, as when he planned to
resurrect the _Overland_ as a large national literary magazine, offered
to bring me into the scheme as partner and co-editor, circulated a
handsome prospectus, and failed--as was almost preordained--because we
lacked funds to put into the project and because no financier could
be induced to risk scores or hundreds of thousands of dollars in the
interests of literature.
The year 1933, again, marked the launching of my most ambitious poem.
Having gone to Mill Valley for the summer (this year we had come
early, at the end of May), I had begun a series of character sketches
in sonnet form, which turned out to be of indifferent quality, and
were eventually discarded. But one day, while I was still engaged on
the series, a message came to Flora by automatic writing--a method
which she had been employing for several years, and which, no matter
what one’s theories as to its source, has produced some extraordinary
results. “Tell your mate to discontinue the child’s play he is now
engaged on,” the message said in effect--I cannot quote it word for
word, but distinctly recall its import. “There is a bigger work waiting
for him, if he will but reach out and find it.”
How was that possible? I wondered. What bigger work could be
waiting for me? Was the message not merely the product of my wife’s
subconscious imagination? Yes, perhaps this was the explanation; even
now, I cannot prove the contrary; it may be that the message had put
me into the frame of mind to look for some other theme, and that this
accounts for the new train of ideas. In any case, something strange
and novel did overcome me an evening or two later as I stood on the
porch of the barnlike rickety old house we had rented for a short while
before moving into our redwood cabin. It was a weirdly beautiful night;
and the incoming sea-fog, flowing across the redwood-clad slopes,
threw luminous witches’ shawls about a moon that was near its full. As
I stared at the swift-changing fantastic scene, the plan for a poem
leapt into my mind--a poem of epic proportions, in which the present,
past, and future of man might be surveyed. The whole hatched itself
full-born, almost without effort; the outline of the entire work had
come to me before I stepped back into the house.
And thus it was that I began my most elaborate poem, _The Pageant
of Man_. Several months more than two years were to pass before its
completion; the whole of three summers would be given to the project,
in addition to all the time I could find during the rest of the year
while engaged in other types of writing (though the better part of the
work, in every sense of the term, was written in California). I did not
at first realize how much work lay ahead; I was to pass endless hours
in revising; and was to type the whole of the 11,000 lines three times
before I was satisfied to write _Finis_. On the other hand, there was
compensations; I can hardly describe the expansive feeling that comes
from contact with higher and wider planes of being, while panoramas of
wonder and pathos and glory spread out before one on a many-colored
tapestry. From the opening passage, this feeling never ceased to
possess me:
For half of man’s allotted years and more
I ranged the highways of this worried earth
Like some long pilgrim from a distant shore,
Baffled by men of foreign speech and birth.
I scarcely seemed to share
The fires, the swords and fevers of my land,
Was blinded when they saw, and saw when they were blind.
Because rhyme has real and sometimes invaluable advantages, and because
blank verse tends to descend to the level of prose--as a reading of
some of our best poets will convince you--I had decided to rhyme the
poem throughout. But since I wished to express a great variety of
themes and moods and to avoid the rigidity of any one pattern, I aimed
to employ lines of varying lengths, and to let the rhymes fall wherever
they best suited my purpose. Thus, while not sacrificing the advantages
of rhyme, I would have almost unlimited freedom and flexibility. This
method, while it had been used by others in occasional shorter poems,
was, I believe, an innovation in a poem of epic length. And it has
therefore always seemed to me that _The Pageant of Man_ might be called
experimental in technique--experimental not in the sense of going back
to Adam and starting the art of poetry all over again, but in building
in unexplored directions upon known and tried devices.
All this, to be sure, will not interest those who maintain that the
day of the long poem is over--those who hold that, in this hurdy-gurdy
age of motor fever, television monomania, and the wear-and-tear of
grab-and-get, we no longer have time for verses of more than fifteen or
twenty lines if even that. For the proponents of such views, poems of
fifteen or twenty lines are doubtless too long (by fifteen or twenty
lines). Yet it may be that the very furor and distractions of the age
highlight the need for long, contemplative works in which the mind may
find repose and the spirit may refresh itself at fountains old as time.
But to return to 1933. The spring of that year brought me still another
poetic event which, in the course of the decades, has had repercussions
upon many another verse-writer.
Occasionally, as I have mentioned, a friend and I had discussed the
possibility of starting a poetry magazine, though our talks had never
reached the stage of serious intention. But it was quite otherwise in
the case of a man who came to me with a proposition early in 1933;
for reasons that will be obvious and because he still moves in the
publishing world (when I last heard of him, he was connected with
a large subsidy house), I will not give his actual name, but will
christen him Melvin J. Post. He was a thin-faced, wily-looking man,
with something just a little hungry in his aspect; our acquaintance
had begun in 1932, when his small firm published, in book form, at its
own expense, a sequence of forty of my sonnets, _The Enduring Flame_
(sonnets that, revised and reduced in number to thirty, were reprinted
years later in my book of selected poems, _Garnered Sheaves_). Though I
do not know how many copies Post bound and distributed, and though this
project, like most poetic ventures, was fruitful neither in money nor
in fame, I had cause to be grateful to him--what poet is not grateful
to the man who has opened new paths for him amid the great world of
print? Therefore, when he came to me with his project, I was receptive.
The idea, he told me, was to start a poetry magazine, one of national
scope, which would mark a milestone in its field. He would be the
publisher, and assume all the financial responsibility; and he hoped
that I would officiate as editor. The thought did, I must confess,
appeal to me, though the position, like most tasks in the poetic
world, was to be without benefit of a salary. However, a question
thrust itself upon me. If I was to be the editor, I must really be the
editor; I must formulate the policy, and must decide the contents of
the magazine beyond possibility of contradiction. Would Mr. Post agree?
Definitely! stated Mr. Post. He would control the publishing end, and
I would be the editorial Lord Absolute. Under such circumstances, the
arrangements were quickly made. Post and I held several conferences,
at which plans were threshed out: the magazine was to be a quarterly,
for which he accepted my suggested title, _Wings_; and the first
issue would contain thirty-two pages in addition to covers, and would
be printed on a good grade of heavy book paper. All that remained,
therefore, so far as the editor was concerned, was to plan the various
departments, and obtain contributions.
In the case of a long-established magazine, contributions flow in,
sometimes with embarrassing profusion; but not so with an unborn
periodical, which no one has ever heard of before. Therefore I wrote to
friends and acquaintances in the poetic world, and obtained suitable
poems from Witter Bynner, David Morton, and other established poets,
as well as from a number who were still to earn their laurels. I also
planned a prose section; applied to publishers for books for review;
and wrote an editorial of about three pages setting out the policy
of the magazine, in addition to a note on _Reviews and Reviewers_,
and a five-page article, the first of a series on _Neglected Poets_
(the author chosen in this case was Arthur O’Shaughnessy). Finally
my labors were completed, and I turned all the material over to the
publisher, who had been advertising the forthcoming magazine by means
of circulars. By now it was early March, and I was ready to leave on
that Caribbean cruise already mentioned; upon my return sixteen days
later, the magazine would be awaiting me.
At the scheduled time I returned, but the magazine was not awaiting
me. With vague and all too justified premonitions, I telephoned Mr.
Post, who assured me that an oversight must have occurred; _Wings_
was indeed out, and copies should have been sent me--he would put some
immediately in the mails; I should receive them next day.
Mr. Post was as good as his word--the copies did reach me next day.
But what a blow as I took them out of their envelope! There are, as we
all know, some shocks that cannot be absorbed all at one stroke. Those
pale-blue covers, printed in dull black and looking like a drug store’s
wrapping paper--were they actually the covers of my _Wings_? And what
had happened to the part of the magazine between the covers? The least
was that the paper was thinner than Post and I had agreed upon, and
the type smaller, making certain portions and particularly the prose
difficult to read. But how had the poems come to be printed with such
originality?--sonnets divided after the seventh line, and four-stanza
poems with no divisions at all? And how had it happened that our
stipulated thirty-two pages had shrunk to twenty-two?
A swift survey of the contents told me that Post had omitted six of the
eight book reviews (a fact more painful to me than a series of needle
thrusts, since I had assumed a responsibility to one or two authors,
and had obtained their books under promise of comments on the work).
And as if to add insult to injury, the _Neglected Poets_ had been still
further neglected, and had been left out, along with the editorial note
setting forth the reviewing policy of the magazine.
My fury was slow in dying down as I contemplated the sadly clipped
_Wings_. After all I had expected, after all the labor I had given to
that first issue, I felt compromised and betrayed. But two things,
amid all the confusion, were luminously clear. The first was that
Mr. Post’s motives for cutting down the magazine had been financial
rather than literary. And the second was that, by deleting material
without my knowledge or consent, he had himself been acting as editor,
and therefore had violated his agreement. Moreover, in beginning our
association with this gross breach of his word, he had proved that the
two of us could never harmonize. Therefore the sooner I disconnected
myself from him, the better.
But to disconnect myself would not be easy. I was weighed down with
obligations--obligations to the contributors who had confided their
poems to me, to the authors whose books I had promised to review,
and to the subscribers (an unknown number, aside from several of my
friends) who had sent in their dollar a year, perhaps in part because
of the belief that I was to be the editor. If I were merely to resign,
and leave all these persons to the tender attentions of Mr. Post, I
would be betraying them, almost as he had betrayed me. However, I
had no desire or intention to resign. The fault, in the maimed and
mutilated version of _Wings_ that lay before me, had not been mine;
therefore, if there was to be any resigning, let it not be on my part.
After a sleepless night, I rushed down to the offices of the Authors’
League, whose representative, upon deliberation, informed me that I
had some legal rights--yes, undoubtedly I had, though unfortunately
they were not worth asserting. Then, at wits’ end, I telephoned Mr.
Post; and he, obliging and amiable as always, consented to visit me
on a specified evening. I do not know just how much intimation he
had of what was in my mind; but when he arrived, it was with profuse
apologies for the curtailment of the magazine, which, he said, had been
unavoidable owing to a temporary financial embarrassment which he was
suffering. I reminded him, in reply, of my own embarrassment in regard
to a broken contract, and broken promises to authors. And I proposed
that, since he was embarrassed financially and I was embarrassed
editorially, he resign to me all rights to the magazine. This demand
he at first violently resisted; but two hours later, after one of the
stormiest sessions of my life, he had capitulated on every point.
And before leaving my home that evening, he had put his signature to
an agreement. I have managed to unearth my copy, typed on my private
letterhead, and dated March 31, 1933:
1. Whereas the Editor agrees to undertake the financial control and
management of the magazine known as “Wings, A Quarterly of Verse,”
the Publisher agrees to relinquish all property and other rights in
the said magazine and all claims against it and to turn over to the
Editor the full and unqualified right of publishing said magazine,
and furthermore,
2. The Editor agrees that the Publisher shall retain all funds
hitherto turned over to him for subscriptions. But it is specifically
understood that all moneys turned in to the Publisher henceforward,
will be turned over by him to the Editor, and that all subscription
lists held by the Publisher will be turned over to the Editor.
3. The Editor agrees to discharge all obligations to subscribers, and
to relieve the Publisher of all responsibility to such subscribers.
There was, I thought, a measure of justice in permitting the publisher
to retain all sums theretofore received for subscriptions, since he
had made a considerable financial outlay. And there was, besides, the
practical consideration that the amounts received were certainly not
large, and that by no conceivable means, short of an undesired lawsuit,
could I have forced Mr. Post to part with them.
What was I planning now that the magazine--or, rather, the half-born
magazine--was exclusively my own? My one clear intention was to reissue
the first number as I had originally conceived it; beyond that, I had
vague ideas of continuing publication as long as seemed practicable.
But that _Wings_ would still be printed, with unswerving regularity,
ten years later, twenty years later, twenty-five years later; that a
total of many tens of thousands of copies would be distributed during
this time, that contacts would be established with poets and poetry
lovers in many lands--these were possibilities that never for a moment
occurred to me.
My immediate task now was the publication of the second version of
Volume I, Number 1, which I wished to distribute to all who had
received the first edition, as well as to newspapers and libraries,
and as sample copies to all poets and lovers of poetry whose addresses
I could obtain. A thousand copies in all were to be printed--truly, a
formidable number, though actually all but a handful would be sent out,
and even this handful would be reduced by requests that would come in
for years to come.
What, however, did I know about publishing a magazine? Very
little--nothing, in fact, aside from what I had learned during my
disillusioning experience under Mr. Finnegan on the _Overland_. Here,
indeed, was a case of the tyro leaping in where experienced men might
have feared to tread. I did not even know any printer, and was not
at all familiar with printing methods; but at this point, as I must
record to Mr. Post’s credit, my erstwhile partner on _Wings_ came to
the rescue by putting me in touch with his own printer (whom I was to
employ only for the first issue), and also voluntarily stepped over to
the new editorial office--in my apartment--in order to give me some
valuable pointers when I made up the issue.
I wish that I could add that he was equally helpful in all other
respects. Weeks later, and in fact months later, an occasional letter
to the following effect was to arrive: “Dear Editor: A long while ago
I sent your business office a dollar for a subscription, and have
never received a copy. What has happened?” Unfortunately, I could have
answered what had happened. The “business office,” before the time of
our final agreement, had been Mr. Post’s establishment; and later, when
any stray dollars reached him, he had presumably been too preoccupied
to remember to turn them or the subscribers’ names over to the new
editor. In all such cases, of course, I would put the person on the
list without further charge; but I was never to know how many failed to
make a report.
In any event, the reconstructed first issue did appear, with a cover
design contributed by my friend Ignace M. Ingianni, and with all the
material originally intended; glancing at it today, I see that it
contrasts most favorably in appearance with the earlier edition. For
a long while I was busy answering letters from subscribers (though
subscribers were still far from numerous) who wished to know why they
had received two quite different-looking copies of the same issue.
In the first number, I set forth the goal of the magazine:
... to achieve its full power and effectiveness ... poetry must have
an audience schooled to receive it--and it is precisely here that the
modern world fails most signally, and that a magazine such as _Wings_
may play its most beneficial role....
So far as possible, _Wings_ will devote itself ... to the
encouragement of the poetic spirit; it will provide a medium for the
publication of the best poetry, and the best poetry only, regardless
of the name or reputation of the author; it will open a critical
arena for views and reviews on subjects pertaining to its special
field....
But more significant, perhaps, was the statement which appears on page
1, and has been reprinted in every subsequent issue: “Wings is an
independent poetry magazine, without patrons or outside supporters.”
Unless the magazine was independent, it seemed to me, it would be
valueless; _Wings_, whose birth-throes had witnessed a struggle for
independence, had better go down with colors flying than capitulate
and survive in bondage. It is understandable, of course, that many
little magazines should seek patrons, should even find patrons
indispensable; subscription lists, for such journals, are invariably
small; advertising revenues are slight or non-existent; and unless
there is some outside financial source, the printer cannot be paid.
But all this, if unavoidable, is highly unfortunate. Very few human
beings are so constructed that, having given with a free hand, they
will not expect some return: even though Mr. X has provided funds with
benevolent intentions, he may happen to remember a niece or a cousin
or a grandson who has written some “wonderful poetry”--and how many
editors would be over-scrupulous about fine points of literary quality
when a large, deeply desired annual donation is hanging in the balance?
The only way to avoid such problems, it impressed me, was to avoid
donors and patrons. And if the magazine could not exist without such
benefactors--then let it be decently interred.
Another point--which I mention only because I have frequently been
questioned about it--was my decision to publish none of my own verse
in _Wings_. This decision was not made because of false modesty, or
because none of my work was available; the reason was that, when there
is competition for space, the editor who picks his own poems is in
effect acting as a judge between himself and other aspirants--with
results hardly likely to err in favor of the others. With prose the
case was different; no great quantity of competitive prose was ever
to be submitted--and, besides, it is the function of an editor to
contribute articles setting forth his views and policies.
These were, of course, but preliminary considerations. When I embarked
blithely on the new venture in the spring of 1933, how much I could not
foresee!--the long, slow, wearisome ordeals of manuscript-reading, and
the eye-wearing strain of proofreading! the wrestling with problems
of make-up, when forty-six lines of type would not squeeze themselves
into a forty-three-line space! the letter-writing, the never-ceasing
letter-writing; the answering of questions; the acknowledgments of
courtesies; the commenting on submitted poems! the keeping of records;
the typing of envelopes; the sending out of the hundreds of copies
of each issue! But while much of this was tedious and irksome, how
much would be gratifying!--the contacts with other poets, by letter
and in person! the occasional unearthing of promising new talent! the
satisfaction of exerting an influence (a good influence, I naturally
hoped, even though a small one) amid the turmoil, the striving, and the
confusion of the modern poetic scene! It may, indeed, be that I had
come down with a form of insanity, which psychiatrists have not yet
analyzed; but if so, it was a form of insanity that could not only be
wearing and costly, but at times could add considerably to the variety
and even to the enjoyment of life.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Trials and Rewards of an Editor
Men of experience will tell you that nothing is much more difficult
than launching a new periodical. With a large staff, persistent
efforts, capable planning, and an ample budget, including immense sums
for advertising, it is sometimes possible to put a new magazine into
the field. But what, when no staff at all is available, and no funds
for advertising except through occasional circulars? This, in general,
is the situation for all poetry magazines, at least those not backed
by bountiful grants; and _Wings_, therefore, represented the rule and
not the exception. Of course, no poetry magazine aims at corralling its
readers by the millions; hundreds of subscribers look as numerous to
its publishers as hundreds of thousands would appear to the proprietor
of a more popular sheet; and there is no thought of the vast business
arrangements necessary for its larger cousins.
The distinction, however, runs even deeper than this, for whereas
the profit motive rules in most periodicals, it does not apply at
all for a poetry magazine. There is no profit motive, since there
is no prospect of a profit--I would not say, “no possibility,” for
I know that _Wings_, which for long periods has achieved the feat
of breaking almost if not quite even, one year actually earned a
surplus of $95.13. Of course, such a banner success is rare; and the
publisher, not expecting much if anything but debts to be left when the
year is over, must necessarily subordinate the profit motive to the
as-little-loss-as-possible motive.
Having made this dire confession, I must go on to report that _Wings_
was from the first an unexpected success. I say “unexpected,” for I had
not known what to anticipate, and had listened just a little doubtfully
to Flora’s prediction that the magazine would succeed. But let me point
out that it seems to me that the idea of success has been grossly,
vulgarly, ignorantly entangled in modern thought with the concept of
financial gain: few of the great successes of history, from Confucius
to Kant, and from Homer to Goethe, and Galileo to Einstein, and Gautama
to Gandhi, are in any way memorable for monetary triumphs. Not that
the motive behind a poetry magazine may be compared with the impulse
that ruled any of these great figures, but that they all have at least
one thing in common: their guardian star has been something other
than money. The pecuniary status of a poetry magazine is, of course,
irrelevant--irrelevant, that is, to anything but the owner’s pocket, a
matter of no importance at all to the world at large. What is relevant
is whether the effort has helped the cause of art or creation, whether
it has broadcasted pleasure or inspiration, whether it has aided
aspiring and worthy writers and given them a platform from which to be
heard.