Part 10

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.

Before many issues of _Wings_ were out, approving letters, often accompanied by subscriptions, were arriving from all parts of the country; and floods of contributions, many of them from persons I had never heard of before, began to be addressed to “Editor, _Wings_.” Not that the great majority were of much value; but how eagerly I pored through the piles, hoping to unearth the rare divine contribution! I will not say that my search brought to light any latter-day Milton, or any new _Ode on a Grecian Urn_ or _Ode to the West Wind_; but many gratifying contributions were contained in those growing heaps of long envelopes, including poems that, I still believe, are of enduring value, though often the author was unknown and in some cases remains unknown.

I shall never forget, for example, the glow of discovery when Mary Cecile Ions, writing from Coral Gables, Florida, submitted to a _Wings_ contest her twelve-stanza poem, _Letter to the Dead in Spring_, beginning:

Do not be fretful of your old repose Though April sunlight warm your hearts’ dust through And fragrance of the everlasting rose Assail the grave and penetrate to you.

Who was Mary Cecile Ions? I do not know, except that she had graduated from the University of Alabama with Phi Beta Kappa honors, and subsequently taught English and French. But I cannot say what else she has accomplished, and in fact have seen little of her work. Nevertheless, the poem, which the judges agreed in putting first of all the submissions, has clung to my memory. I was gratified when the well-known British anthologist Thomas Moult confirmed our good opinion by reprinting it in _The Best Poems of 1935_; and ten years later, I had no hesitation in giving it a place in my own anthology, _The Music Makers_.

Or take the case of Otto Freund. Although he had contributed to various magazines, I had known nothing of him or his work until he began sending me, from Portland, Oregon, a series of poems of unusual depth and accomplishment. Rarely, for example, does one come across four lines with the finality of _Requiescat_, written in memory of John Barrymore:

Unanswered encores, rue, and requiems sung, Forgetful dust, the turning of a page, But still the voice of Hamlet rings among The silent galleries and an empty stage.

Whole elegies are contained in the above; and whole volumes of grief are compressed in _Heart Wound_:

The wound is healed, but still the pain is there, And stabs with anguish, like a sudden sword, When sunlight feigns the spun gold of her hair, Or music finds her lost voice in a chord.

With sorrow I report that Otto Freund has silently dropped out of the fold. One day, many years ago, he wrote me that he was leaving for the east; he did not mention any reason, nor give any forwarding address--and that is the last I have heard of him or his work, though I have never ceased to regret his disappearance.

Or consider Francis Vaughan Meisling. All that I know of him is that he was a journalist and foreign correspondent, who sent me a single poem from Los Angeles. And yet this poem, _I Dreamt She Came_, has a real lyrical quality--the sort that makes an editor feel that his labors have not been wholly in vain:

I dreamt she came as fire and as rose, Fragrance and light, and leaning o’er my head Whispered those burning words none other knows And took between her hands my peaceless head;

And kissed. There was a movement in the air As if the blossoms of the year had blown Their petals and their odors round us there, As I awoke, as I awoke alone.

Next my mind goes back to Celia Keegan, a Long Island girl whose work, as in the case of Miss Ions, I first noticed among the submissions in a contest, though I afterwards met her at a gathering of _Wings_ contributors in my apartment in New York. She sent _Wings_ some of the most poignant poems of love I can remember; I cannot forbear quoting the whole of _Renunciation_:

How more than blind the hooded fates to weave So sere a skein; to wing two hearts with fire Of ecstasy and melody ... then leave To human wills the quenching of desire! I did not hide love from your loving eyes, Nor do I whisper nobly, “I will go,” Then teach my lips such trite and songless lies As, “Happiness will come through doing so.” This way I give you up: Against the blades Rebellion lifts in myriad array, I raise a sword whose clean strength surges ... fades ... And wins again ... till I have cut my way Past you, and love, and toward Tomorrow’s mark Go stumbling, stricken, blinded, through the dark.

Miss Keegan, like Mr. Freund, vanished suddenly from my ken, and likewise from that of some mutual friends, who heard their last from her about twenty years ago. Whither has she gone? To join the songbirds of last spring?

Then there was the case of Florence Wilson Roper, formerly of Petersburg, Virginia, but now deceased, whose poems had first attracted me in the pages of the Dallas verse magazine, _Kaleidograph_, and who won one of the annual book-publishing awards of that periodical. She too contributed many moving poems of love, and many reflective pieces, as in the sequence of five sonnets, _Retrospect_, with some exquisite lines, such as

Remembering! It has a pleasant sound Like water falling softly over stone-- A phantom hand that holds with fleshless bone The present, past and future firmly bound!

But I have set out to write a narrative, and not to compile an anthology, and cannot go on to quote other excerpts. In any case, the occasional discovery of such material, more than anything else, made me feel that _Wings_ was indeed serving a purpose, and might be accounted a modest success.

Meanwhile, with the feeling of an inexperienced rider clutching at a balky steed, I was attempting to manage the new enterprise. The second and third issues were put forth in California, by a printer recommended by Arthur Chamberlain; but the following issues, during my remaining five years in New York and even for a time afterwards, all proceeded from the metropolis. But in New York, aside from Mr. Post’s connections, I knew no printer. I tried one who, due to an error, trimmed the magazine down so far as to give it a truncated appearance; I tried another, who inked the pages so badly that they were painful to read; and then one day, not knowing where to turn, I walked into the office of a small establishment in Washington Heights, the Artype Press, and made arrangements with its proprietor, Paul Grossman. Though picked merely by chance, he proved to be conscientious and capable, and did a good job so long as geographical considerations made it possible to leave the printing in his hands.

I need hardly add that our agreement provided for a price which, in these more expensive days, would hardly suffice for printing more than a few pages of _Wings_. Had present-day rates prevailed, I would have been blocked by unscalable walls, even before I started. And this makes me wonder as to the fate today of editors in approximately my former position. I should like to know just how the development of art, literature, and culture in general may be affected by our “higher” standards of living and the accompanying higher standards of inflation.

But let me go back to my problems as an editor. They were to be many, and seasoned with curious vicissitudes. Not a few of them, as I suppose is true for most editors, were to proceed from the daily mailbag, which was in a sense a grab-bag, since I never knew what I would pull out of it. In the course of the years, there were to be many sweet and beautiful letters, which I would value as among the chief compensations of an editor’s task; but there were also to be letters of various other types.

I will never forget, for example, the lady who mailed me a sentimental lyric on _The Old Plush Sofa_, and accompanied the manuscript with a strip of purple velvet. “I thought you might appreciate the poem better,” she obligingly wrote, “if you had a piece of the sofa before you.”

Again, there was the correspondent who, having sent me a page-long list of all the places where his work had appeared, from the Newtown High School _Quarterback_ to the Green Plains _Meteor_, followed it two days later with an air-mail apology: one of his poems had not actually seen the light in the _New Age Hardwareman_, as he had absent-mindedly declared; it had blossomed forth in the _New Era Hardwareman_.

Another case, which also earned an editorial smile, was that of the verse-writer who wrote in from a small Canadian town. He hoped I would publish his poems, but if so, would I not kindly pick a _nom de plume_? The reason, he explained, was that he could not let it be known that he wrote poetry: he was one of his city’s policemen.

Then occasionally a would-be contributor has sent a letter of several single-spaced typewritten pages, or, worse still, in largely illegible handwriting, devoted to personal reminiscences interlarded with questions. As well as I could, I have usually answered the questions, if they pertained to poetry; but time and eye-power are limited--and more than once an oversight has brought me another letter, of almost equal length, in which I am properly reproved: “Dear Editor: You have not answered the question in the third paragraph of the fourth page of my last note....”

The editor of a poetry magazine, I soon discovered, is regarded as the chief clerk of a public bureau of consultation and criticism, whose duty is not only to answer questions, but to give advice, and comment on manuscripts--all, of course, absolutely without compensation (not even in gratitude, since frank criticism is likely to win one nothing but an enraged correspondent). To an extent, the editor is willing, even glad to accept the mantle laid upon his shoulders--but there are, unfortunately, limits to his endurance. Those limits are reached, for example, when he receives a bulky manuscript, accompanied by a note: “Dear Sir: I am sending you herewith _Ruminations_, an epic of 4,700 lines, some considerable parts of which I hope you will publish in your next issue. If not, will appreciate detailed criticism.”

Again, one’s patience is severely tested by a letter such as this:

Dear Mr. Editor: I am a subscriber and well-wisher. I have sent you poems several times, but do not hold it against you that you have returned them. Of course, poetry is only a sideline with me; my business is fire and casualty insurance. I have just written a book of 179 pages on my experiences in this line, and am mailing it to you under separate cover. Would appreciate your going over it, and correcting all the mistakes in grammar and style.

Ah, if these people would only realize that the editor is not only engaged in running a magazine, but incidentally is trying to earn a living!

Beyond all the above, there is the aspiring contributor who goes out of his way to find ingenious means of attracting attention. An occasional method is to send a poem (one such, received not long ago, was exactly two lines long) in a huge envelope by special delivery; this usually arrives just when the editor is in the middle of dinner, and does succeed in drawing attention to itself--though not always the attention that results in an acceptance. Again, there is the versifier who mails a poem on each successive day for two or three weeks. One does, indeed, note the fact that he exists, and even gets used to him in a way; one rather misses him when at length the daily submissions cease. But alas for the assiduous poet! he gets just the same attention as everybody else, and if he stands out in any way, it is as just a sort of amiable pest.

More common are the decorative means of attracting attention. One poet, invariably a lady, will adorn her manuscript with graceful water colors in pastel tints--all very pleasant to look at, but, unfortunately, not in the least improving the quite hopeless verses. Another rhymester will submit poems in lavender or purple ink on goldenrod-yellow paper; still another will send poems typed in a glaring red, or typed all in capitals, or oddly letter-spaced--all of which do, indeed, give the poems a unique appearance, though the authors seem not to realize that their chances of acceptance are not improved by anything that makes the work harder to read.

But these are minor matters, which I can pass over with a smile. There is, however, one type of letter that causes me to glare. It arrives periodically, and is usually worded about as follows:

Dear Editor: Enclosed find three poems, entitled _Spring Flowers_, _April Sunshine_, and _First Love_. Immediately upon acceptance of any of them, my subscription will follow....

I need only say that the poems _Spring Flowers_, _April Sunshine_, and _First Love_ do not long clutter up the editorial office. Though I may be fiendishly eager for subscriptions, I am not quite so hungry for them as the correspondent evidently supposes. No, though I may be corrupt as old Boss Tweed himself, I am not to be tempted by bribes of one dollar. The author, by his supposed shrewdness, has insured an action I would not otherwise willingly take. Since I could not accept the poems without the imputation of having done so for ulterior motives, I have no choice but to return them without even a reading, and usually with a printed rejection slip.

In one of the several variations of the above letter, the author notifies me that he has just put out a book, and is sending it for review; immediately upon the appearance of the article, he will join the subscription list. He might be surprised to know that, after this letter, his chances for a review would be as great if the book were printed in Chinese.

Then there is the versifier--comparatively rare, it is true--who seems to imagine that a subscription dollar automatically provides a ticket of admission to the pages of the magazine. She (for I cannot recall any men who committed this particular indiscretion) begins with a fulsome letter of praise, telling how much the quarterly means to her, and how she would not be without it--no, not for the world. Accompanying the letter, is a dollar bill, and five or six poems. The dollar bill is accepted by the subscription department; the poems, being unworthy of acceptance, go back to the author, along with a polite note of thanks and regret. And thus the tempest is unleashed. By return mail, another letter arrives--one which, somehow, has lost the admiring tone of the earlier epistle:

Sir: What do you mean by sending my poems back? In your last issue, you published some poems that were not half as good as mine. Besides, better magazines than yours are glad to get my work So from now on I want nothing whatever to do with you. Return my dollar at once, and cancel my subscription.

Since it is worth more than the price to have the writer off the list, I do indeed return the dollar and cancel the subscription.

A less infrequent type of correspondent is the one who waits till the year’s end before making his feelings known. Then he vents his stored-up disappointment:

Dear Editor: I have just received a renewal notice. I am not renewing, and this is why. During the past year, I sent you six batches of manuscripts. They have all come back. That being the case, I am saving my subscription dollars for magazines that will print my work.

There is, of course, nothing for the editor to say in reply. But he cannot help asking himself why writers seem invariably to blame editors for the lacks in their own work; and he is inclined to wonder how many readers would be claimed by magazines such as _Harpers_, the _Atlantic_, and the _Saturday Review_ if they were expected to rely upon the subscriptions of contributors.

The sad fact is that there actually are some poetry magazines that publish only subscribers’ poems; I know of one that, some years ago, promised to print one poem a year by every subscriber. Such magazines, which cannot possibly maintain any standards whatever, have apparently given certain verse-writers the idea that they should be taken as models. And the results have not always been happy for other periodicals, as will be seen not only from the examples given above, but from a letter which reached me just today from a writer who, though never published in _Wings_, began by lauding the magazine, and went on to say:

When I get ahead of several subscriptions obliged by recent acceptances, I will certainly add _Wings_ to my wanted ones.

The thing I particularly note here is the word “obliged.” I can safely attest that no writer, whatever his complaints, has ever been able justly to use that word in connection with _Wings_.