Let the candidate fill his mind with the finest cadences he can
discover, preferably in a foreign language so that the meaning of the
words may be less likely to divert his attention from the movement;
e.g., Saxon charms, Hebridean Folk Songs, the verse of Dante, and the
lyrics of Shakespeare--if he can dissociate the vocabulary from the
cadence. Let him dissect the lyrics of Goethe coldly into their
component sound values, syllables long and short, stressed and
unstressed, into vowels and consonants.
It is not necessary that a poem should rely on its music, but if it does
rely on its music that music must be such as will delight the expert.
Let the neophyte know assonance and alliteration, rhyme immediate and
delayed, simple and polyphonic, as a musician would expect to know
harmony and counterpoint and all the minutiae of his craft. No time is
too great to give to these matters or to any one of them, even if the
artist seldom have need of them.
Don't imagine that a thing will "go" in verse just because it's too dull
to go in prose.
Don't be "viewy"--leave that to the writers of pretty little philosophic
essays. Don't be descriptive; remember that the painter can describe a
landscape much better than you can, and that he has to know a deal more
about it.
When Shakespeare talks of the "Dawn in russet mantle clad" he presents
something which the painter does not present. There is in this line of
his nothing that one can call description; he presents.
Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way of an advertising
agent for a new soap.
The scientist does not expect to be acclaimed as a great scientist until
he has _discovered_ something. He begins by learning what has been
discovered already. He goes from that point onward. He does not bank on
being a charming fellow personally. He does not expect his friends to
applaud the results of his freshman class work. Freshmen in poetry are
unfortunately not confined to a definite and recognizable class room.
They are "all over the shop." Is it any wonder "the public is
indifferent to poetry?"
Don't chop your stuff into separate _iambs_. Don't make each line stop
dead at the end, and then begin every next line with a heave. Let the
beginning of the next line catch the rise of the rhythm wave, unless you
want a definite longish pause.
In short, behave as a musician, a good musician, when dealing with that
phase of your art which has exact parallels in music. The same laws
govern, and you are bound by no others.
Naturally, your rhythmic structure should not destroy the shape of your
words, or their natural sound, or their meaning. It is improbable that,
at the start, you will be able to get a rhythm-structure strong enough
to affect them very much, though you may fall a victim to all sorts of
false stopping due to line ends and caesurae.
The musician can rely on pitch and the volume of the orchestra. You can
not. The term harmony is misapplied to poetry; it refers to simultaneous
sounds of different pitch. There is, however, in the best verse a sort
of residue of sound which remains in the ear of the hearer and acts more
or less as an organ-base. A rhyme must have in it some slight element of
surprise if it is to give pleasure; it need not be bizarre or curious,
but it must be well used if used at all.
Vide further Vildrac and Duhamel's notes on rhyme in "_Technique
Poetique_."
That part of your poetry which strikes upon the imaginative _eye_ of the
reader will lose nothing by translation into a foreign tongue; that
which appeals to the ear can reach only those who take it in the
original.
Consider the definiteness of Dante's presentation, as compared with
Milton's rhetoric. Read as much of Wordsworth as does not seem too
unutterably dull.
If you want the gist of the matter go to Sappho, Catullus, Villon, Heine
when he is in the vein, Gautier when he is not too frigid; or, if you
have not the tongues, seek out the leisurely Chaucer. Good prose will do
you no harm, and there is good discipline to be had by trying to write
it.
Translation is likewise good training, if you find that your original
matter "wobbles" when you try to rewrite it. The meaning of the poem to
be translated can not "wobble."
If you are using a symmetrical form, don't put in what you want to say
and then fill up the remaining vacuums with slush.
Don't mess up the perception of one sense by trying to define it in
terms of another. This is usually only the result of being too lazy to
find the exact word. To this clause there are possibly exceptions.
The first three simple proscriptions[D] will throw out nine-tenths of
all the bad poetry now accepted as standard and classic; and will
prevent you from many a crime of production.
" ... _Mais d'abord il faut etre un poete_," as MM. Duhamel and Vildrac
have said at the end of their little book, "_Notes sur la Technique
Poetique_"; but in an American one takes that at least for granted,
otherwise why does one get born upon that august continent!
_Ezra Pound_
[Footnote D: Noted by Mr. Flint.]