I should, better than any of us would. It requires a singularly
unselfish and dispassionate devotion to run a paper and have it favor
all schools, and criticise all cliques, equally. Nobody is quite pleased
by that method, but the public gets what it pays for, and I, for one,
admire a man with this quality of justice in him. _Poetry and Drama_ ran
until December of this year, when it was suspended during the
continuance of the war, and the lack of it is so noticeable that it
shows very well what a position it had already achieved.
The Poetry Bookshop publishes as well as sells. _Georgian Poetry_ was
followed by _Anthologie des Imagistes_, _Poems_ by John Alford,
_Anthology of Futurist Poetry_, and various small ventures such as _The
Rhyme Sheet_ (the broadsides I have spoken of before), and a number of
little chap books called _Flying Fame Publications_, of which one I have
seen, _Eve_ by Ralph Hodgson, is enchanting.
Many though Mr. Monro’s activities were, the house was too big for them.
So Mr. Monro fitted up some of the attic rooms as bedrooms, and there
his clientele of poets hailing from the country find a welcome and
inexpensive lodgings. Other rooms are used as reading rooms, for
readings are held every Tuesday and Thursday at 6 P. M. Sometimes the
poets read their own poems, sometimes other people read them. Verhaeren
and Marinetti have read there and many other poets, well-known and still
unknown. Mr. Monro invites those he desires, and as he runs his readings
as he runs his shop there is great and stimulating variety. The
difficulty with this sort of thing is the hangers-on, the horde of the
sentimental of both sexes who fasten upon an artistic endeavor and
seriously hurt it. It is inevitable that some of these parasites should
drift into the readings, as I noticed on one occasion that I was there.
But time will weed them out, for such people can never bear to realize
that art is as hardworking as, say, stonecutting.
Since the war The Poetry Bookshop has been printing chap books,
published at sixpence. Among them are Maurice Hewlett’s _Singsongs of
the War_, _Antwerp_ by Ford Maddox Hueffer, _The King’s Highway_ by
Henry Newbolt, _The Old Ships_ by James Elroy Flecker; and for unmartial
relief, _Spring Morning_ by Frances Cornford, _Songs_ by Edward Shanks,
_The Contemplative Quarry_ by Anna Wickham, and _Children of Love_ by
Harold Monro.
Mr. Monro is so stern in his idealism that, although a poet of
originality and feeling, he willingly minimizes his own production for
the sake of advancing poetry “en masse.” That is remarkable, and his
enterprise deserves all the success which the poets and the general
public can give it.
America, 1915
JOHN GOULD FLETCHER
From the sea coast, from the bleak ravines of the hills that lift their
escarpments towards the sky that pours down pitiless threads of
sunlight, whirls over chill, clinging tentacles of rain, smashes hard
buffets of huge wind, sifts fine, quivering drifts of snow, thrashes
with thunder and with hail, uncurls its great sodden, flapping curtains
before the gale—from the marshlands, from the banks of slow rivers, from
the still brown plateaus, from the midst of steaming valleys, from the
wide bays ringed with peaks, a thousand cities reek into the sky.
Through a million vents the smell of cookery overflows. It rises upward
day and night in strange, tragic black rows of columns that glow and
make the stars quiver and dance and darken the sunlight.
Green rivers of corn, golden seas of wheat, white lakes of cotton meet
and fuse and inter-cross. Cattle string across in frightened procession:
multitudes on multitudes of horses, black, dun, grey, gallop away after
them, jarring the earth with their hoofs, beating up dust in heavy,
fluffy masses. Far away the sun lies still over broad patches of
silence, sparsely green, where an eagle hovers, or an antelope starts
up, or a sly, half-starving coyote is seen. The sun looks into yellow
castles wedged in the cliff that were old when the first explorers saw
them, and on white bulging palaces tinselled with marble and gold. The
sun sees engines that rattle and cough, black derricks that wave their
arms in arcs aloft, crazy log cabins that topple into the marsh. On
every side are symbols of man’s desire, made with his hands, hurried,
glorious, sordid, tragic, clashing, insane; the sun looks and does not
understand but pours over them its heat and cold, and rain and light,
and lightning, always the same.
Immense machines are clamoring, rattling, battling, wheeling, screaming,
heaving, weaving. The wheels bound and groan and roar and waver and
snap—and go on as before. Between the cities, over plain and hill, reel
double paths of shining steel, where screaming locomotives pass like
black shuttles leaving great trails of smoke amid the wheat, the cattle,
the corn, the cotton, the sordid, hideous factory shafts, the fleet
masses of plunging and galloping stallions. Their forces are never spent
or tired, for, nervously above them, earth is laced and wired with
crackling, chattering, singing, whispering electricity. They fly from
city to city, and the sky is scribbled above them with childish grey
gigantic scrawls, amid which the sun wabbles and crawls. And over all
shoot backward and forward words that walk in air, and perhaps not long
will the upper spaces be still, but soon be filled with racing lines of
strong black bird-machines bearing men on their backs. Purring autos
squawk and squeal, and spray and flutter, pale flashes through the rack.
Red, and black and yellow, the earth takes on its coat of colors, from
the struggle of a hundred million hands. It is a palimpsest which no one
reads or understands, which none has time to heed, a loom-frame woven
over with interspersed and tangled threads of which the meaning is lost,
from which the pattern hangs in shreds.
Amid all this, men struggle, surge, call out, fall choking, toil with
backs bent over the earth in black arcs. Crowds of them clatter,
scramble, bustle, push, and drift away. They creep, black, greasy
masses, out of the earth like ants; they swing out on great frozen
blocks of steel or marble; they saunter in some forgotten place; they
yawn with the weariness of little towns. Men, brown, black, yellow,
pallid with fatigue, ruddy with gluttony, blotched with disease, swarm
and waver back and forth, east, west, south, north. Crackling twigs of
dripping forests mark their feet. Red wet furrowed plains receive their
pains. Grey, hungry factory towns bellow out through steam-filled lungs
for them each morning. Prison gates grate slowly, hospital beds spread
stateliness, insane asylums gibber through their windows. They hustle
and shovel, piling heaps of hovels, and now and then, as if in mockery,
some coppery tower that seems as if it would split its sky with its
majesty. They are in a great shallow sea, crinkling uneasily as if some
giant’s body were wallowing beneath. Some single impulse creaks through
them, pouring out its breath through the chimneys, scattering itself
over the fields, closing itself in behind the doors. It is one great,
vague, inchoate organism, scarcely feeling its pulse as yet, rolling in
the belly of the world, waiting its hour of birth. Earth is heaped about
it; still it eats the earth away, red covering after red covering, day
on day. Now it half timidly peeps out, now withdraws itself again. And
ever the sky pours on it heat and rain, and wind, and light, and
lightning, and hail, shaping it, making it less frail, more fit to wake
and take its place in the world.
But over there, beyond the seas, where for years the war flags have been
stacked and furled, comes the crack of a pistol followed by faint
cheers. And now a smeary gloom appears; it seems to swell from out the
earth; it bulges in greenish folds above the horizon, and in its depths
are flashes from far-off guns. Suddenly from the heart of the cloud,
which the cowed world watches, holding its breath, come thick insensate
hammer-blows that split the core of earth asunder—the iron cannon
unleashed for the dance of death. Deeper and deeper the noise unrolls in
a vast salute to the new world from the old. It rises higher and higher,
covering the sea with its tumult, and filling the sky with gouts and
spatters of crimson fire. North, south, east, west, all the craters are
emptying out their vitals on earth’s breast. But the immensity of the
troubled continent stirs not, nor gives to the world the life that is
restlessly heaving beneath it.
The centuries sit with hands on their knees, wearing on weary foreheads
their iron-crowned destinies. The sun glares, the rain spatters, the
thunder tramples his drums, the wind, rushing, hums its scorn; but the
being—the thing that will master all the ages—still hesitates to be
born. The great derricks, black and frozen, lift their arms in mid air;
the locomotives hoot and mutter in despair; the shuttles clatter and
clamor and hammer at the woof day and night. The black flight of
priceless instants reels and rebounds and shivers and crawls, while
without the uproar of the cannon calls like black seas battering the
earth, grinding, sweeping, flickering, pounding, pounding, pounding, in
the increasing throes of birth. But still the thing will
not arrive. Still it refuses at the very gates of life.
America—America—blood-stained and torn with choked, convulsive sighs,
perhaps too late thou shalt arise, perhaps in vain shalt seek to rule
the earth!
Poems
MAXWELL BODENHEIM
Silence
The wordless dream of the fire;
The white clock dropping gray minutes from its placid lips;
The breathing of women, like the birth of little winds;
The muttering of the man in the next room, painting a landscape;
I threw them together with a jerk of my soul-wrist,
And had silence—a swaying sound
Made of the death of the others.
A Head
Her head was a morning in April.
Loose, livid mist arose from cold ground
And revealed two tired shepherds with lanterns,
Standing above the wrinkled red blankets they had lain on...
Then came the morning light—her smile.
The Operation
With eyes of radium, and beard the color of wet sand,
The doctor unlocked his instrument case as carelessly
As a child opens an old box of blocks,
And almost silently whistled something out of “Aida.”
And the nurses—bits of sky with thick clouds—
Chattered about patients and hummed frayed songs.
But when the still body on the little cart came,
The lips of the doctor became stiff and trim
(Bows of ribbon turning to circles of stone)
And the nurses were no longer women:
Were sexless, with tapering fingers and metal eyes...
The doctor made the incision and checked the blood:
And I thought of a miner, half-reverently, half-wearily cutting soft
earth,
Picking out lumps of dead silver...
But the picture changed when the doctor sewed up the wound,
And I saw a middle-aged woman gravely mending a limp rag...
The little cart disappeared,
And the doctor locked his instrument case as carelessly
As a child closes an old box of blocks:
And the nurses were once more bits of sky with thick clouds.
Some Imagist Poets
GEORGE LANE
Some months ago, in these pages, Mr. Witter Bynner pointed out that
“Imagism” was derived from a Japanese poetical form, the name of which
Mr. Bynner regretted that he had forgotten. This name is “Hokku,” and
undoubtedly the Japanese Hokku poetry was the model upon which much of
the work in the first Imagist Anthology was formed, notably the
contributions of Mr. Ezra Pound. There was Greek influence, too, in that
first collection. But the whole volume showed a remarkable desire
towards perfection and clarity of utterance, and a delicate perception
of beauty.
There were few poetry lovers who did not taste its fine, astringent
flavour, but its qualities were at once its faults. It was beautiful
work, but too tenuous ever to become a great art, said the objectors. It
was incapable of embracing many of the elements of life and poetry. The
Imagists must remain side-tracked, and therefore, clever though they
were, they could not be of real importance.
But it seems that Imagism was more virile, more capable of growth, than
was supposed. The jejune maledictions and assertions of their chief
spokesman, Mr. Pound, have done so much to make the group ridiculous
that it is with a feeling of surprise that we find this volume a great
advance upon its predecessor.
Here is the work of six poets, four of whom were represented in the
first anthology. In an interesting preface they state their poetical
theories, which are much the same as those printed so often in _Poetry_.
But here the tenets are soberly and sensibly presented, and the whole
preface is dignified and worthy of consideration. Clearly the Imagists
are growing up.
It is hardly necessary to rehearse here the Imagist creed. It has been
discussed, with more or less hostility, in many reviews. But certainly,
in reading this preface, the hostility suddenly vanishes, and the
reviewer finds himself wondering if perhaps, after all, this movement is
not one of most unusual significance.
Briefly, these poets call themselves Imagists because their object is to
present an “image”; they believe “that poetry should render particulars
exactly and not deal in vague generalities, however magnificent and
sonorous”; they desire “to use the language of common speech,” and “to
employ always the _exact_ word, not the nearly exact, nor the merely
decorative word.” They wish “to produce poetry that is hard and clear,
never blurred nor indefinite”; and, finally, they are convinced that
“concentration is of the very essence of poetry.”
Brave words, excellent aims and hard enough of attainment. Again, these
poets agree to allow absolute freedom of subject, and, with a little dig
at some of their contemporaries, they say, “It is not good art to write
badly about aeroplanes and automobiles; nor is it necessarily bad art to
write well about the past. We believe passionately in the artistic value
of modern life, but we wish to point out that there is nothing so
uninspiring nor so old-fashioned as an aeroplane of the year 1911.”
That is a wholesome point of view, but indeed the Imagists have hardly
erred on the side of too great a preoccupation with modern life. In fact
this volume is noteworthy as showing a more personal, a less literary,
outlook on life.
The first Imagist Anthology contained the work of ten poets. Some were
represented by a number of poems, some by only one. In this new volume
only four of those poets are represented. But what is remarkable is that
they are not all the one poem authors. On the contrary, Richard
Aldington and H. D. had more poems in the first anthology than anyone
else in the volume, yet here are Richard Aldington and H. D. subscribing
to an arrangement which gives each poet approximately the same amount of
space. “Also,” says the preface, “to avoid any appearance of precedence,
they (the poets included) have been put in alphabetical order.” So art
is to come before self-advertisement. Happy omen! With such ideals the
group should go far. Six young poets with so much talent, devotion, and
singleness of purpose, is a phenomenon to be noticed.
Perhaps this is the key to the “differences of taste and judgment” which
have divorced these poets from the others of the first anthology. They
go on to say that “growing tendencies are forcing them along different
paths.” We can only guess at the tendencies, as the poems in this book
show them, and it is not our business to probe farther into a schism
which is touched upon so lightly and quietly in this admirable preface.
The six poets of this little anthology are: Richard Aldington, H. D.,
John Gould Fletcher, F. S. Flint, D. H. Lawrence, and Amy Lowell. It is
quite easy to see why “mutual artistic sympathy” binds these young
people together. But how extraordinarily individual they are, just the
same! From the exquisite, gem-like poems of H. D., to the organ music of
Amy Lowell in _The Bombardment_, with the graceful, tender, often
humorous work of Richard Aldington and the tragic earnestness of D. H.
Lawrence, set off by the rich imagination of John Gould Fletcher, and
the poetic realism, touched with a charming intimateness, of F. S.
Flint.
Richard Aldington’s contributions begin with _Childhood_, a study of a
lonely little boy in a horribly dull English town. It is full of
wistfulness, for the little boy is very real, and the detail is
admirably managed. The little boy is shut up in the ugly town, like a
chrysalis in a matchbox:
I hate that town; ...
There were always clouds, smoke, rain
In that dingy little valley.
It rained; it always rained.
I think I never saw the sun until I was nine—
And then it was too late;
Everything’s too late after the first seven years.
That is very vivid. So, too, is the description of the contents of the
large tin box in the attic. But Mr. Aldington never allows the
descriptions to usurp the poem; he keeps them properly subordinated to
his theme, the loneliness of the child.
Fine as this poem is, it seems more experimental than Mr. Aldington’s
shorter work. Long poems require a different technique from short poems,
and perhaps Mr. Aldington has not yet become quite master of it. It is
in the short poems that he is so eminently successful.
_The Poplar_ is an almost perfect poem of its kind. A complete “image,”
and with that fine, poetic imagination which is the hall-mark of Mr.
Aldington’s best work. What could be more beautiful than this:
I know that the white wind loves you,
Is always kissing you and turning up
The white lining of your green petticoat.
The sky darts through you like blue rain,
And the grey rain drips on your flanks
And loves you.
And I have seen the moon
Slip his silver penny into your pocket
As you straightened your hair;
And the white mist curling and hesitating
Like a bashful lover about your knees.
_The Poplar_ is, on the whole, the best poem of Mr. Aldington’s in the
book, but _The Faun Sees Snow for the First Time_ runs it close. And
here we have that divine gift of poetical humor which is another of Mr.
Aldington’s rare qualities. Space alone prevents me from quoting it. But
if I put these two first, where shall I put _Round-Pond_, with its sun
“shining upon the water like a scattering of gold crocus-petals”?
Mr. Aldington has advanced in his art. In spite of the _Faun_ and
_Lemures_, he has sloughed off much of the Greek mannerism which marred
his work in the first anthology. The training which his Greek studies
have given him, is here put to excellent and individual use. One looks
for much from him in the future.
H. D.’s poems are undoubtedly the most perfect in the book. There is
nothing broad, nothing varied about her attempts, but what she tries for
she succeeds in doing, absolutely. But in her work, too, we find a
grateful change going on. The stage properties are no longer exclusively
Greek. In fact, only one poem of her seven has anything obviously Greek
about it. There is nothing specifically inartistic in this transplanting
of the imagery of another place and time into one’s work. But when an
English poet fills every poem full of Greek names and Greek devices, the
result is intense weariness on the part of the reader. The poems may be
beautiful, but this foreign flavour gives them a sort of chilling
quality. One cannot help feeling that the poet is straining after a
poetical effect, and that stands in the way of a complete sympathy
between poet and reader.
H. D. is too much of an artist not to have realized this, and in these
new poems (with the exception I have mentioned), there is no hint of
direct preoccupation with the Greek in title or text. Yet the poems are
so completely Greek that they might be translations from some
newly-discovered papyrus. And still, in reading them, one feels that the
sincerity of the artist is not to be questioned. Here is no striving
after effect, but a complete saturation of a personality in a past mode.
If one believed in reincarnations, one could say, and be certain, that
H. D. was the reincarnation of some dead Greek singer. The Greek habit
sits upon her as easily as a dress, loosened by constant wear. It is
undubitably hers. To adopt another speech would be an unpardonable
artificiality. Realizing this, and not making the mistake that so many
reviewers have done in considering her a copyist, we must admit that H.
D.’s poems attain a perfection which is not to be found in the work of
any other modern poet. This garland of sea flowers is a masterpiece of
pure beauty. I have only space to quote one of these poems, but it shall
be quoted entire.
Sea Iris
Weed, moss-weed
root tangled in sand,
sea iris, brittle flower,
one petal like a shell
is broken,
and you print a shadow
like a thin twig.
Fortunate one,
scented and stinging,
rigid myrrh-bud,
camphor-flower,
sweet and salt—you are wind
in our nostrils.
II.
Do the murex-fishers
drench you as they pass?
Do your roots drag up colour
from the sand?
Have they slipped gold under you;
rivets of gold?
Band of iris-flowers
above the waves,
you are painted blue,
painted like a fresh prow
stained among the salt weeds.
H. D. has her limitations, as I said before. They are the most obvious
thing about her, except her perfection. But it is so ridiculous to cavil
at them, as it would be to deny the loveliness of one of the sea flowers
she writes about, because it is not a forest of lofty trees.
To pass from H. D. to Mr. John Gould Fletcher is something in the nature
of a shock. It is a good deal like plunging into the ocean from a warm,
sunny cliff. One’s ears, and nose, and mouth, are filled with rushing
water. One feels in the grasp of an overwhelming power, and one
struggles to the surface, breathless, half-drowned, but wholly
invigorated.
To drop the figure, these two poems of Mr. Fletcher’s are so full of
potentialities, so large in suggestion, that one hardly knows what to
say about them. Does _The Blue Symphony_ mean life? I confess I do not
know. Is it merely a series of pictures? No, there is a vague
undercurrent to the poem which makes that impossible. It is the sort of
poem which a mystic might ponder over indefinitely and find new meanings
every hour. And yet it is all done with the precision and clearness of
the Imagist theory.
It is impossible to give any idea of the poem as a whole by quoting bits
of it. But little pieces, even divorced from their context, have that
succinct epigrammatic quality which is the stamp of genius. Here are
three lines:
I have heard and have seen
All the news that has been:
Autumn’s gold and Spring’s green!
It is evident in this poem that Mr. Fletcher has been much influenced by
the Japanese.
And now the lowest pine-branch
Is drawn across the disk of the sun.
is absolutely Japanese. But strangely enough it is a technique got from
a study of Japanese painting rather than from Japanese poetry.
Mr. Fletcher’s versatility is shown by turning from _The Blue Symphony_,
to his other poem, _London Excursion_. Here the note of mysticism of
_The Blue Symphony_ is entirely abandoned, and there is no hint of
Japanese influence. If _London Excursion_ follows any lead, it is the
lead of the new schools of poetry and painting in France. But I will not
insult Mr. Fletcher by suggesting that he is, in any way, a disciple of
Marinetti and the Futurists. It is nearer the truth to say that he has
realized the vividness of some of their methods, and modified them to
his own use.
_London Excursion_ is one of the most interesting poems in this volume.
It is a poem of a man going into London in the morning by ’bus, spending
the day walking about the streets and going into shops, and coming home
at night by train. It sounds simple, but it is really the most amazing
expression of light, color, and unrelated impressions that one can
conceive. This is his impression of a street from his ’bus-top:
Black shapes bending,
Taxicabs crush in the crowd.
The tops are each a shining square
Shuttles that steadily press through wooly fabric
Drooping blossom,
Gas-standards over
Spray out jingling tumult
Of white-hot rays.