Lindsay is essentially a people’s poet. He does not hesitate to express
himself in terms of the lowest common denominator; his fingers are
alternately on his pen and the public pulse. Living near enough the
South to appreciate the negro and yet not too near to despise him,
Lindsay has been tremendously influenced by the colorful suggestions,
the fantastic superstitions, the revivalistic gusto, the half-savage
Christianity and, above all, by the curiously syncopated music that
characterize the black man in America. In “The Congo,” “John Brown” and
the less extended but equally remarkable “Simon Legree,” the words roll
with the solemnity of an exhortation, dance with a grotesque fervor or
snap, crackle, wink and leap with all the humorous rhythms of a piece of
“ragtime.” Lindsay catches the burly color and boisterous music of
camp-meetings, minstrel shows, revival jubilees.
And Lindsay does more. He carries his democratic determinations further
than any of his _confrères_. His dream is of a great communal Art; he
preaches the gospel that all villages should be centers of beauty, all
its citizens, artists. At heart a missionary even more than a minstrel,
Lindsay often loses himself in his own evangelism; worse, he frequently
cheapens himself and caricatures his own gift by pandering to the
vaudeville instinct that insists on putting a noisy “punch” into
everything, regardless of taste, artistry or a sense of proportion. He
is most impressive when he is least frenetic, when he is purely
fantastic (as in “The Chinese Nightingale” or the series of metaphorical
poems about the moon) or when a greater theme and a finer restraint
unite (as in “The Eagle That Is Forgotten”) to create a preaching that
does not cease to be poetry.
Something of the same blend of prophet and poet is found in the work of
James Oppenheim. Oppenheim is a throwback to the ancient Hebrew singers;
the music of the Psalms rolls through his lines, the fire of Isaiah
kindles his spirit. This poetry, with its obvious reminders of Whitman,
is biblical in its inflection, Oriental in its heat; it runs through
forgotten centuries and brings buried Asia to busy America. It carries
to the Western world the color of the East, adding the gift of prophecy
to pragmatic purpose. In books like _War and Laughter_ and _Songs for
the New Age_ the race of god-breakers and god-makers speaks with a new
voice; here, with analytic intensity, the old iconoclasm and still older
worship are again united.
* * * * *
The new poets have won their way by their differences as well as by
their chance similarities. They belong to no one school, represent no
single tendency and, differing widely from their present-day English
fellow-craftsmen, are far less hampered by the burdens of traditions or
the necessity of casting them off. They are more nearly free. One sees
this even in the work of the more deliberately conventional singers.
Lyricists like Sara Teasdale and Edna St. Vincent Millay write in a
clean, straightforward idiom, an intense naturalness that is a frank
commentary on the tinkling and over-sentimental verse that used to pass
for genuine emotion. Robert Frost and E. A. Robinson continue to use the
strictest rhymes and most rigid meters and yet their lines are as
“modern,” as searching as the freest free verse. Form _per se_ matters
scarcely at all; all forms are employed. Conrad Aiken achieves a
flexible combination of rhyme and assonance. Sandburg, “H. D.,”
Kreymborg and John Gould Fletcher dispense, for the most part, with
rhyme, without sacrificing the beauty of sound or stress. Masters and
Amy Lowell use the old forms and the new ones with impartiality and
equal skill. A sweeping inclusiveness distinguishes our contemporary
verse; it embraces all themes, all cultures, all modes of expression.
America has become a melting-pot in a poetic as well as an ethnic sense.
The rich variety of its structure and subject-matter is in striking
opposition to the thin, specialized product of the transition poets. New
England is no longer the single literary center. As the country has
matured, the poets have grown with it, singing everywhere and, much to
Art’s confusion, in every key. It is as if submerged springs had burst
through stubborn ground; instead of one placid stream, there are a dozen
rushing currents.