could print it, and print it well, was evident from the expert samples
of his work which he displayed--but what about the price? He would have
to take the manuscript with him, he said, and try to reach a figure.
Several days went by, during which I was half resigned to the belief
that he would quote an amount far beyond my reach. And then, on one
never-to-be-forgotten evening, he paid me another visit. And as I bent
above the paper scrawled with his jottings, my heart gave a leap. The
quotation, for an edition of a thousand copies, was less than I had
feared; it would indeed be possible to bring out the book, even leaving
a little over for advertising!
I will not go into the problems that confronted a novice like myself,
except to say that since the new publishing medium would need a name
and would inevitably be connected with _Wings_, I hit at once upon the
obvious designation, The Wings Press. By June of 1936, _The Pageant of
Man_ was in print, though publication had not been set until September;
in the interval, copies were to be sent to various persons of note
in the poetic world, in order to get their comments for possible use
on the jacket. And comments were forthcoming, more pleasingly than
anticipated; and the reviewers also, after the book’s appearance,
were more generous, far more so, than I had felt any reason to hope;
and even the sales were not bad--that is, not for a book of poetry,
and one issued without the means of distribution available to a large
publisher. I felt fortunate that a hundred copies had been sold before
publication day, and that copies continued to sell year after year,
though of course at a slower rate. And while this experience would not
lead me to recommend self-publication as a means of getting rich, never
for a moment did I regret my plunge.
Originally I had thought of this publication as a single,
never-to-be-repeated venture; I did not realize that it would set off
a chain reaction, which would involve me more deeply and ever more
deeply. After the appearance of the book, which had been advertised in
_Wings_ and elsewhere, I began receiving letters from subscribers and
contributors: “Dear Editor: I have a book of poems, and hope you will
consider publishing it for me. If so, what would your price be?”
Though this was more than I had contemplated, it did give me pause.
And then I put the question to myself: Why, indeed, not publish a book
every now and then, provided that it was of good quality, and something
I could feel gratified to sponsor? True, I could not afford to publish
at my own expense--but had the authors themselves not indicated that
they did not expect this?
Before I go any further, let me make matters plain as to what has
come to be variously known as “subsidy,” “cooperative,” and “vanity”
publishing. While some persons, without knowledge of the facts, might
accuse me of being in the position of the thief who proclaims, “All
those other robbers are bad--I’m the only honest one,” I think that any
discriminating judge will admit that there are two kinds of publishing
projects which rely upon authors’ subsidies. The first, which has
become notorious, is practiced by firms--usually large firms--that
advertise extensively in magazines and by brochures. These firms, a
number of which the Federal Trade Commission recently found guilty of
deliberate misrepresentation, have no standards whatever, and accept
virtually everything--at least, everything that is paid for, and can be
distributed without danger of interference by the postal authorities.
Publishing of this kind cannot be condemned too strongly; and I,
who have examined book after book of verse of almost unbelievable
ineptitude, have more reason than most for joining in the denunciation.
But there is another sort of subsidy publication of worthwhile
titles; and this has been undertaken at times by specialized houses,
by university presses, and even, if I have not been misinformed, by
general trade publishers. I will admit that, ideally, this should not
be; ideally, no writer should be required to do more than write; it is
repugnant, and surely not in the best interests of literature, that
only the solvent author should be published. Yet what is one to do when
the work is something which--like certain scholarly monographs or like
long poems or collections of verse--may have high merits but small
sales possibilities? What when the prospective publisher is financially
unable to shoulder the responsibility? Is such work to remain in
oblivion? Or is it better that it be issued, under discriminate and
ethical auspices, even at the author’s expense? I think that there can
be no two answers to these questions when it is remembered that it
was this form of publishing that gave to the world the early work of
Shelley, Browning, and many another author now renowned.
When we turn to contemporary poetry, we find some special problems.
Paradoxically, while the art no longer enjoys its old-time popularity
with the reading public, it has apparently lost little if any of its
vogue with writers. It may not be that, as is sometimes asserted,
“everybody” is trying to write poetry; nor need we suppose that, as has
also been alleged, there are “millions” of poets in America. But it
does seem unquestionable, based upon the packs of manuscripts submitted
to editors, that thousands of people are seriously setting out to write
poetry; and out of this multitude, a fair proportion are producing work
worthy of being read and remembered. Even if the number of readers had
kept pace with that of writers, the facilities of all the recognized
trade publishers would be taxed to bring out the deserving books; but
under present conditions, when publishers either shun poetry as if it
were a bad debt, or issue it as if it were a bad habit (rarely more
than two or three books a year, and these often by writers already on
their lists), there is inevitably a large and worthy surplus that could
not conceivably find a home with any of the big royalty-paying houses.
What, then, shall the authors do with their intensely imagined, their
passionately conceived works, which in many cases represent the most
delicate and the most fervent and perfect flowering of their lives?
The authors themselves have answered this question; they have answered
it by their readiness to seek subsidy publishers. It is at this point
that the small publisher, who acts with an eye to poetic quality and
to writers’ needs, may perform a real service. In a negative way, he
may accomplish something by the very act of saving some of the poets
from the pirates. And in a positive way, he may aid by insuring the
author the joy and stimulation that can come only from seeing his
work in print; he may obtain for him a certain attention, even if not
celebrity; he may give him a memorial to hand down in pride to his
children and grandchildren. And he may--who knows?--rescue some capable
poet, even some outstanding poet from otherwise inevitable oblivion.
It may be worth adding that, apart even from the views of the authors
themselves, I am far from alone in this opinion. Consider the following
from an article by Aron M. Mathieu (_Writer’s Digest_, July, 1957):
One obvious category of writing that seldom finds a publisher, even
though it may be outstanding, is poetry. A poet, therefore, can
have much pleasure and gratification from a self-published book,
well-bound, often beautifully designed, and through which he will
reach at least a limited audience. There is always for him the hope,
too, that having reached print, posterity might wake to him.
There are, of course, possibilities of abuse in all subsidy publishing;
and for this reason, there were certain principles which, from the
beginning, The Wings Press felt bound to establish. It picked its
books, first of all, on the basis of merit already mentioned, that the
book must deserve publication for its own sake; rejections have greatly
outnumbered acceptances, as many writers throughout the country will
testify. It has never solicited any author for manuscripts; nor has it
ever advertised (except in a limited way, for one brief period years
ago, when Wennrich and I acted in virtual partnership, and announced
in _Wings_ that we would consider book manuscripts of verse). Not
less important! I have felt it necessary to dispel all illusions in
the poet’s mind; I have always stated frankly that fame is not to be
expected, that financial gain is unlikely, and financial loss the
normal thing; and I have left it for the writer to decide whether
the non-commercial advantages would offset the commercial losses. I
have not concealed the fact that bookstores, except sometimes in the
author’s home town, will not stock books by unknown versifiers, and
that, unless the poet has been widely published, he cannot expect
much of an audience outside the circle of his personal connections.
But while mentioning all this, I am not unaware that even the large
publishers could do little by way of sales, since not even they can
create a market where there is no reading interest. I remember cases
such as that of a certain skilled poet, whose work had been widely
published and who had just won a $5000 prize (the largest offered in
the world of poetry); despite the publicity attendant upon the award,
and despite the audiences presumably developed by her previous books,
her _Collected Poems_ was issued by a leading publisher in an edition
of only 750 copies, of which a considerable number were distributed
_gratis_ to the press--and this, incidentally, must not be taken to
mean that all the remaining copies were sold.
With such comparisons in mind, I do not think that The Wings Press
has done very badly by its authors. I know, in fact, that a great
majority, after publication, have professed themselves highly and
even enthusiastically pleased. And the complaints--for there have
been complaints, a very few--have mostly concerned minor matters. One
author, quite a few years ago, was understandably irked when a careless
binder smeared glue over the covers of many books (we overcame the
trouble by having the books rebound). Another author was justifiably
annoyed when a printer, disregarding a correction made in the proofs,
endowed her name on the book’s front cover with an extra letter. And
still another, whose book had in my opinion been beautifully made,
voiced two objections, the first of which she excitedly rushed to me
by long-distance telephone: the title of the book (which consisted
of four short words) had not been gold-stamped in three lines on the
face of the cover, as she would have liked, but consisted of one line
only! The other complaint, which occurred to her sometime later, was
entrusted to a letter: the jacket blurb had said that her poems were
“unpretentious.” This, after consultation with some friends, she took
as an insult, though the fact was that the poems _were_ simple and
unaffected, and had the merit of making no pretensions.
With most of the authors, however, my relations have been pleasant,
even cordial; the publications of The Wings Press have earned me many
friends-by-correspondence. However, on two occasions they have brought
me sharp grief, when the respective authors--Grace Nixon Stecher
and Garth Bentley, both of them able poets, and the latter a man of
exceptional promise--died suddenly before publication of their books.
The case of Bentley shocked me particularly: he fell dead of a heart
attack just two days before the first copies of his _Behold the City_
reached his office in Chicago.
After printing one or two Wings Press books, Joseph Wennrich made
a proposal: he would cooperate with me in bringing out certain
subsequent books, he to provide the printing, I to pay for materials
and incidentals, and any returns to be divided on a stated basis. This
proposal, as I look back on it, could hardly have been more impractical
had he himself been a poet; however, though he and I were to reap
nothing financially, we did have the satisfaction of much enthusiastic
conferring and planning. The first book to see the light under the new
agreement was _Flame Against the Wind_, by Florence Wilson Roper, the
Virginia writer whose work had first attracted me several years before
in the verse magazine _Kaleidograph_: in this case, the author had
to make no payment. Subsequently, Wennrich printed one or two other
books under the same arrangement, though neither of us, in view of
the limited sales, would have been able to endure the wear and tear
indefinitely. And then, in 1941, my association with Wennrich was
interrupted as an aftermath of Pearl Harbor. Though in his forties,
he was subject to conscription, for he was then unmarried; and being
drafted, he gave up his business, disposed of his equipment, and never
did return to book printing. After his discharge from the army, he
obtained work as the foreman of a printing plant in Middletown, New
York; but this plant did not produce books, hence we could not resume
our old relationship--a casualty of the war which I, for one, have
always regretted.
Today I feel that there is greater need than ever for publication
of the kind undertaken by The Wings Press and by the presses of
several other poetry magazines, whose editors are actuated less by
the desire to grow rich than by the wish to help poets. Though some
of the university presses have sponsored books of current verse, and
though here and there a prize committee has come to the rescue by
providing book publication, and though one or two publishers have
been experimenting with paper-backed editions of contemporary work,
the position of poets as a whole is darker than ever--particularly
those poets who honor the traditions of the ages. I think it not too
much to say that if Gray or Keats, Byron or Shelley were to come back
under other names, their work would be unceremoniously refused in
the present book market, perhaps without even a reading: not because
the work was not good (though few can recognize good poetry unless
it is neatly tagged and labelled), but because it lacked appeal to
the sales department. Under these conditions, Gray or Keats, Byron or
Shelley would remain in obscurity unless someone provided the financial
wherewithal. True, they might remain in obscurity even after such
publication; but the world of print is a miraculous world, and there is
always a chance that what has passed through its gateways will be seen
and heard, if not today, then possibly tomorrow. And if even one Gray
or Keats, Byron or Shelley is preserved (though incidentally a thousand
books sail down the waters to oblivion), then surely a service has been
performed which has more than justified all the agonies of publication.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
A Place to End
Since this story is one to which no one can write “Finis!” so long
as I live, it will be as logical to end at one place as at another.
And having already written about as much as I have any interest in
reporting, I will bow my exit after trying to shed light on a few
concluding matters.
Of the various books pertaining to poetry which I have put forth since
the appearance of _The Pageant Man_ in 1936, I shall mention only
one, not for its own sake, but for what it tells of other poets. In
the twenty years following publication of _Modern American Lyrics_, I
had observed a considerable amount of excellent new American poetry,
much of it by recognized poets, and much by little-known or unknown
writers. But whether it proceeded from established versifiers or from
the unestablished, it was insufficiently read; indeed, a large part of
it was not available at all except to the limited audiences of “little
magazines” and of minor presses. It seemed to me that this work, or
at least a representative portion of it, should be made accessible
to a wider public; and therefore, despite the horrors of obtaining
permissions and the mountains of clerical labor, I conceived the idea
of compiling an anthology--provided, of course, that a publisher could
be found to back it.
Such a publisher, fortunately, did present himself--and presented
himself on the first attempt, so far as I can recall, in the person of
Mr. Thomas Yoseloff, head of the New York firm of Bernard Ackerman,
Inc. (and, incidentally, Director of the University of Pennsylvania
Press). I had never met Mr. Yoseloff (though years later I was to
have that pleasure during a brief visit to New York), and I had no
introduction to him except through my letter; but he was interested
in the idea I suggested, and contracts were soon drawn up for the
appearance of the book under the title of _The Music Makers_--the first
of a series of volumes, both in poetry and prose, for whose publication
I am indebted to this gracious and able man.
In the introduction to _The Music Makers_, I point out that “the number
of published volumes of capable poems was not great compared with the
amount of such poetry written,” and “that many even of our better
known poets did not enjoy a public matching their merits.” Looking
back upon my remarks after the passage of years, and seeing how many
poems of real beauty written by Americans twenty or thirty years ago
have been overshadowed or forgotten, I feel more strongly than ever the
justification for these further statements:
Every reader of current verse will recognize, for example, the names
of Arthur Davison Ficke, Robert Nathan, Cale Young Rice, David
Morton, Witter Bynner, John Hall Wheelock and Jessie B. Rittenhouse;
but how many have stopped to consider that these authors may have
written poems deserving to be read and remembered a hundred years
from now? How many have wondered if William Ellery Leonard’s _Two
Lives_, issued a score of years ago, may not be among the immortal
long poems of the language? How many have asked themselves if, in the
whole history of American literature, any sonneteer has written more
nobly or any lyricist more tenderly than George Sterling, who died in
1926? At best, little more than a half recognition crowns many who
are regarded as among the most soundly established of recent American
poets; a half recognition of occasional praise and publication, but
of small audiences.
Unfortunately, an anthology such as _The Music Makers_, even if
it could do something for these poets, could do much less than
they deserved. And the reason, as I saw it, was twofold: first, a
materialism in the very age, which turned men’s thoughts outward rather
than inward, and diverted them from poetry to prose; and secondly, the
obscuring and confusing tendencies within literature itself, so that
opaque and rhythmless work could be exalted as poetry thanks to the
very fact that it was opaque and rhythmless, while an offering could be
defended as poetic on the ground, for example, that it gave a perfect
imitation of a drunkard at a bar (as in a critical note in one of our
widely circulated literary media). Faced with such a degeneration of
standards, how could one expect that the honorable singers of the
ancient high profession would continue to be respected?
In connection with _The Music Makers_, a curious incident occurred--one
showing how far afield and in what unforeseen directions a book of
verse may spread its seeds. I quote from the _New York Times_ of
November 25, 1952:
HONG KONG, Nov. 24. After spending almost two years in a Chinese
Communist jail, the Rev. Francis Olin Stockwell, a Methodist
missionary from Oklahoma, left Hong Kong for the United States with a
Bible and a book of poetry, to which he attaches special value.
While he was imprisoned in China, the 52-year-old Mr. Stockwell wrote
a 50,000-word manuscript on his prison experiences between the lines
of the poetry book--“The Music Makers,” by Stanton A. Coblentz.
When I read these lines--which were sent to me by several
correspondents--I knew that even if _The Music Makers_ had failed in
all other respects, it would not have been compiled in vain. However,
had Mr. Yoseloff not provided the book with a generous format including
exceptionally wide margins, it might not have served quite so well!
Because of the degeneration of standards which I mention above, and
which _The Music Makers_ aimed to combat at least in part, a group of
staunch traditionalists, in the mid-forties, formed an organization
known as The League for Sanity in Poetry. I have always thought
the name a poor one; one cannot, of course, obtain sanity by means
of a league or any other form of organization; a more appropriate
designation would have been, The League for Standards in Poetry. I
remember an earnest letter from Albert Ralph Korn, of New York (of
whom more later), pointing out that the principles of the poetic world
were degenerating as never before, and urging me to take the lead in a
counter-movement. At about the same time, a letter to a similar effect
arrived from Lilith Lorraine, the editor of a Texan verse magazine,
_The Raven_, and later to be editor of _Different_; she was then one
of the most convinced advocates of traditional poetry, a devoted and
energetic worker. I cannot say which of us originally conceived the
idea of the League; but certain it is that it was conceived, and was
established, with a committee consisting of Albert Ralph Korn, Lilith
Lorraine, Etta Josephean Murfey, and Lawrence Neff (the latter two,
former editors of poetry magazines) in addition to myself. (Mr. Korn
subsequently withdrew owing to a disagreement with one of the other
members, and his place was taken by Juliet Brooke Ballard). The League
began by putting forth a pamphlet, _The Need for Sanity in Poetry_,
and for a time it issued regular bulletins, under the title of
_Pinnacle_, which expressed itself as “For the Preservation of Poetry
at Its Topmost Pinnacle,” and printed these words of Shelley beneath
its masthead: “Poetry ... makes immortal all that is best and most
beautiful in the world.”
As an example of the sort of thing we opposed, we quoted the following,
from the beginning of a “poem” by the well-known “modernist” E. E.
Cummings, which the equally well-known anthologist Oscar Williams had
valued highly enough to include in his compilation, _New Poems, 1943_:
ygUGuh
ydoan
unnuhstan
ydoan o
yunnunstan dem
ygudug ged
unnunstam dem doidee
gyudug ged ruduh
dyoan o nudn
LISH bud LISN
I believe that the average reader will agree that when gutter trash
such as this is palmed off as poetry, and--worse still!--seriously
commended and anthologized, it is time that something be done, if not
by a league for sanity, at least by a disinfecting squad.
The League was not, as some of its opponents liked to imply, an
organization of bearded antediluvians established for the specific
purpose of choking freedom and bringing back the good old days of
Queen Victoria. It did, however, favor law as opposed to anarchy. Its
principles as to experimentation are summarized in two of the ten items
of belief listed in the second issue of _Pinnacle_:
While experimental forms of verse can and sometimes do serve their
purposes adequately, it must be borne in mind that experimentalism is
never permissible as a mere mask to hide ignorance of time-honored
and achievement-honored patterns.
Intelligent experimentation by competent craftsmen should be
encouraged, but it is insane to advocate junking the forms made
famous by the greatest masters of the ages. Experimentation can be
justified only for the purpose of adding to, not destroying, the
forms whose value has been proved by time and usage.
If this is conservatism, it is sober, moderate, and forward-looking
conservatism, of the sort that only the absolute iconoclast--which too
often means the absolute wrecker--can rationally oppose.
Letters, showering into the League offices from all parts of the
country, showed a widespread sympathy with our objectives. A typical
communication was one received from Chicago, from the managing editor
of the national magazine of a large fraternal organization:
From the nauseous messes which constantly appear in newspapers and
magazines on the pretense that they are poetry, I have been forced to
the conclusion that many editors do not know poetry from doggerel.
If your League is prepared to do something about it, if only to
call public attention to the situation, and ridicule the pretenders
who call themselves poets, and the ignorant editors who print their
outgivings, I am for you.