Part 11
Along with the pricks and prods of those who would like to see the editorial and subscription departments merged, there have been the problems of submitted manuscripts in general. One of the first duties of an editor, of course, is to say “No!”; after all, it is difficult to find room for all the available good material. But “No!” is at all times a painful syllable to utter; the editor knows what warmth, hope, and even devotion have gone into many of the poems, and what a chilling blow a rejection can be. And if this is normally true, there are times when “No!” literally sticks on the lips. One of those times is when manuscripts are submitted or a book is sent in for review by an old acquaintance or friend, a writer whom one especially likes, or to whom one feels a personal obligation. Nevertheless, “No!” must be said just as firmly in these cases as in others--though the after-effects are sometimes disheartening. Thus, I remember that some poems were once submitted by another editor, toward whom I felt warmly disposed, and who had, some years before, accepted some of my own work for a college publication. But his own verses were not good--and so what could I do but return them with a friendly note, meant to be disarming? I had thought that an ex-editor, even though an editor only in a small way, would understand, but perhaps he was moved by higher principles, beyond my comprehension. In any event, I know that when, sometime later, I had occasion to speak to him over the telephone, he suffered a sudden attack of amnesia in regard to my name.
Another time when it hurts one to say “No!” is when an expectant contributor has been submitting again and again, trying very, very hard to produce acceptable material. “Why, _why_ do you not keep any of my work?” he may ask, plaintively. But can the editor help it if the writer has not mastered the problems of his craft? True, the editor can and does give hints and suggestions--at least, when the work seems promising. But there are many, very many cases in which hints or suggestions would be of no avail.
This brings me to the problem of criticism in general. Many contributors ask for it, and seem to look for it almost as a matter of course, as in the case of a letter (sent in with insufficient postage) in my current mail: “Enclosed please find copies of some poems. I do not necessarily expect that you would consider publishing any of them, but would appreciate criticism.” Unfortunately, if the editor heeded all the requests, he would not have time to eat or sleep. Even in the few cases in which he does attempt criticism, he proceeds at his peril--that is, when he deals with inexperienced writers (the “arrived” or professional author is invariably receptive to criticism). More than one beginner, having asked me for comments, has flared into fury upon receiving them, and has written in indignantly to put me in my place, assuring me, in effect, that I could not distinguish a poem from a potato. No wonder that editors become wary about criticizing!
Then there was the woman whose poem would have been acceptable except for one grossly inept word, for which it was easy to suggest a suitable substitute. Hence I wrote her, commending the poem, and returning it to her with the promise to accept it if it were changed as recommended. Back came the poem in an early mail, along with the author’s outraged assertion that her poems were put down just as God dictated them, and that to change a syllable would be sacrilegious. Of course, it is impossible to argue with God. And so the poem made its second return trip to the divinely inspired author. So far as I know, it has still not been shared with the reading public.
I shall never forget, likewise, the young man who, in the early days of _Wings_, made an impromptu and uninvited visit to my apartment, accompanied by a sheaf of poems, which he asked me to glance over. Being still greener than a cucumber, I took him at his word, and literally did glance over the material; a glance, in most cases, was all that was needed, since it is no more necessary to read all of a bad poem in order to know it is bad than it is necessary to swallow all of a bad apple in order to be sure it is not honey-sweet. But perhaps my speed of reading displeased the young author, or perhaps something in my expression was to blame (for I have never learned the art of the poker-face, a desirable acquisition for editors). Whatever the cause, he sprang to his feet, his cheeks flaming red; snatched the manuscript from my hand; and stormed toward the door. “If that’s how you read manuscripts, Mr. Coblentz--” was all he could sputter. Then, inarticulate with rage, he went stamping out, and slammed the door behind him. Since that day, I have made it a rule never, never to read a manuscript in the author’s presence.
And while on the subject of criticism, let me tell about Mr. Cooley. Who he was, I cannot say; I have never seen him, and do not even know if I spell his name correctly; all that I can say is that, during the fledgling days of _Wings_, he introduced himself to me by telephone as a native of the Bronx, and proceeded to read one of his poems, on which he solicited my comments. No one but a newcomer at editing, I am sure, would have given the comments: nowadays I would ask the writer to send the manuscript through the mails. However, I did yield to Mr. Cooley’s request, and thenceforth, unhappily, whenever he committed a poem, he would hastily telephone me. As his favorite time of composition was late at night, the telephone usually rang just as I was in the process of retiring; more than once, having no clairvoyant perception of who was at the other end of the line, I rushed out of bed, and hastily donned my dressing gown. But I was less elated than Cooley may have supposed when I heard his hearty voice, “I’ve just written another, and will read it to you!” Poor Cooley! I had then, as ever since, a great amount of sympathy for the creative fervor. But there were times when, yawning and hardly able to keep awake while he read some interminable bit of blank verse, I devoutly wished that the telephone had never been invented.
Another problem, affecting _Wings_ in its early days, was connected with another magazine, an aviation monthly which went by the same name. Whether it antedated my publication I do not know, but I have an impression that it had existed before, had been discontinued, and had been revived after the establishment of my own magazine. Though neither periodical ever questioned the other’s right to use the name, both were put to much inconvenience--I know this from the sets of poems occasionally forwarded to me from the other _Wings_ (which did not publish poetry), and from the long stories on flying experiences that sometimes added to my own mail, along with articles on subjects such as _The Problem of Air-Cooled Engines_ and _Projected Explorations of the Upper Stratosphere_. Many years later, after the rival _Wings_ had ceased to be, I still received an occasional letter inquiring in which issue we had published a discussion of _High Octane Gasoline and Cargo Planes_ or _Air Flight Records in the Southern Hemisphere_.
As if such problems did not add sufficiently to life’s spice and variety, there was the recurrent dilemma of the racketeer. You would suppose that, in a field like poetry, where idealism is supposed to rule and the prospects for financial profit are slight, the racketeer would be as unknown as the hired assassin. But such, I discovered, was far from the case. In a page of short comments and news items entitled _Wing Beats_, I like to give publicity to new enterprises of possible advantage to poets; but it was always difficult to be sure whether or not a given project would actually be beneficial. And in the callow early years of the magazine, I had several unfortunate experiences.
One case was that of the publisher who announced a forthcoming anthology, for which he was seeking contributions. He mentioned several well-known poets who would be represented, and requested a brief notice, which I was constrained to grant. What he had neglected to say, however, was that while the well-known poets did indeed appear and of course were not asked to pay, the rank and file of the contributors were required to subscribe for half a dozen copies each, at four dollars a copy.
A similar scheme, for which I was repeatedly asked to give space, involved composers who set poems to music, as the basis for promised public concerts that were never held; and collected fees of about ten dollars for each selection. This, it must be said, was hardly more reprehensible than the action of the publisher who, also inviting a free notice, issued a _Who’s Who in American Poetry_; it turned out that this “indispensable directory,” aside from listing a few of the obvious leaders, acknowledged the importance only of bards who would dole out four dollars and seventy-five cents each for a copy. I fear that I smiled just a little wrily to discover that many devotees of the Muse, who “just could not afford” one dollar to support a legitimate enterprise, had apparently no hesitation about investing in rackets of this type.
But for unblushing chicanery, the publishers of the alleged _Who’s Who_ were scarcely equal to a certain mid-Western authors’ review which solicited an exchange advertisement. As it claimed a considerable circulation and I knew of no good reason to distrust its statements, I thought it to my advantage to accept the advertisement--which announced that it would begin publishing poetry with its next issue, and would pay a specified sum. So far, so good! not only _Wings_, but six or eight other poetry magazines, ran the advertisement. And how deeply we were all to regret our rashness! Before long, our mailbags began to bear almost daily complaints; many readers had submitted manuscripts to the authors’ review--and invariably with the same result. One poem by each writer was accepted, but not by the magazine to which it had been submitted. The poem enjoyed the still more inviting fate of being kept for the _Thornwall Anthology_, a “beautiful volume” in preparation “on a cooperative basis”--which is to say that each contributor must cooperate to the extent of purchasing twelve dollars’ worth of copies.
I should add that the authors’ review, now long out of existence, never did publish or pay for any poem whatever.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A Challenge to Giants
There are magazines whose policies are as devious as a river; there are others that, like the proverbial arrow, aim straight toward their destination. Certainly, it is no exaggeration to say that I have tried to keep _Wings_ in the latter category, particularly with regard to the perennial controversy between traditional and “modernistic” verse. In this controversy _Wings_ has played a part that some would call conservative, or even ultra-conservative--which is a little strange, in view of the fact that the editor is not in other things a conservative. He has sometimes wondered, also, whether the true conservative is not he who drifts with the crowd; whether, in a world where the vast majority proclaims itself in favor of “modernism,” the independent who stands out against “modernism” is not the actual radical.
I will not deny that in some ways the situation in contemporary poetry is deeply confused. But in other regards, everything has impressed me as pellucidly clear. First of all, it has always struck me that certain elements are necessary in poetry, in this age as in all others. One is the ingredient of music: “She dwells with Beauty--Beauty that must die,” has a musical sound, as much today as when Keats wrote it, and therefore has at least one of the qualities of poetry; but “She dwells with ash-cans--ash-cans by a brick wall,” has no more music than the thumping of a garbage truck. In much the same way, poetry creates, and always has created, a magic or suggestiveness which is not that of prose; and in this respect also the line about beauty qualifies, but that about the ash-can does not. And, finally, poetry--like all writing--should be as clear as the subject-matter and the skill of the writer make possible; which does not imply that the meaning must always stand out like a steel engraving, but that it must be as lucid as the theme and the author’s ability permit, and that murkiness must not be sought for its own sake.
These are, in brief, the principles that I have espoused in editorials and reviews in _Wings_ ever since its first issue. But these principles, though they might seem simple and self-evident, run counter to the accepted mandates of the age, which have tended to abandon music, and to make poetry uninspiring as a cement mixer, and unclear as a fog-bank. And what do I mean by the “accepted mandates” of the age? I mean the mandates of the group in power--those who control the policies of our leading literary and sophisticated magazines, those who sit in authority in prize committees, those who act as poetry advisers for some of our major publishers, those who compile anthologies, and write articles and reviews for some of the more influential media. At no time have I denied that many of these are honest, capable, and convinced men; but it seems to me that not a few are bewildered, and ignorant of poetry, its nature and its history; not a few are but following the normal human tendency to embrace whatever happens to be fashionable, and commit the error of mistaking fashion and right.
Yet the fact is that much that is in style nowadays, and much that is generally called poetry, has none of the qualities by which poetry in past ages was recognized. Which majority, therefore, shall one be aligned with?--the great preponderance of all the poets and critics who have lived before our own century, or the few who within the past several decades have striven to undermine yesterday’s accumulated lore and skills? For my own part, I consider one thing self-evident: if “modernistic” critics and verse-writers are right in their dominant attitudes, then all of our famous predecessors, from Chaucer to A. E. Housman, were in error. But if all the latter were in error, that fact must be demonstrated by more cogent arguments than have yet been adduced.
Yet can it be that all the proponents of “modernism” are wrong? Before attempting to answer this question, let us ask whether history shows no other cases of mistaken majorities. What of the belief in witchcraft several centuries ago, when savants and nobles and common men alike, from King James I of England down to the most ignorant serving maid, were convinced believers in the reality of black magic? What of slavery, whose abolition, it was honestly believed by many a good man in England, America, and elsewhere, would bring inevitable ruin to the world? What of headhunting, ceremonial cannibalism, human sacrifice, widow-burning, and other dread rites, all of which were accepted by large masses and even fervently defended, in some cases in comparatively civilized lands? I do not, of course, mean to compare modernism in verse to any of these horrors; but I do wish to emphasize that mass acceptance of any theory, belief, or principle does not prove the validity of the doctrine.
And in the case of recent poetry, what do we find? That some, like Amy Lowell and John Gould Fletcher, came over to the new camp after unskillful efforts to write in the older forms; that others, like Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, and Marianne Moore, revolted against traditional verse without ever having shown that they could write it; that others again, such as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, formed an _entente cordiale_ of mutually expressed admiration; that still others, always ready to embrace the new, endorsed the “advanced” principles for the sake of showing themselves to be different and emancipated; that certain others, like “e. e. cummings” with his typical lines such as “goo-dmore-ning(en” and “sing thatthis is which what yell itfulls o,” performed the antics of circus clowns, and finding themselves taken seriously, performed still more bizarre antics; that many opportunists, of the sort who exist at all times and in every circle, joined the procession for the sake of personal advantage; that more and more bystanders trailed along out of fear or in order not to appear behind the times; and that the great majority, deeming themselves incompetent to judge and not daring to deny the word of authority, stood by in apparent acquiescence though actually in profound bewilderment and even in secret disgust.
Such, in a word, is my own interpretation of the rise of “modernism” in verse, and indeed in all the arts. And such has been the conviction behind the editorial policy of _Wings_. From the first, I realized that my stand was challenging giants. I realized that I might put myself under a personal cloud. But in the long run, all that counted was the truth, and the only truth I could defend was truth as it appeared through my own eyes. My judgment, like that of any human, might be blurred, distorted, or perverted; but such as it was, it was my own; it was all I had to go by, and it would have been despicable and cowardly to stand by and muffle the convictions burning within me. And what if I were to be penalized for speaking? In what period of history, and in what land, have men not been penalized for speaking? Not that I had any taste for martyrdom; but that I was convinced that the game of poetry, like every other game, was not worth playing except in one way. There may be those who can complacently accept whatever they believe to be the mood of the age, and adapt their style to that mood; but I must unhappily confess that I am not one of those pliable souls, and that I should hide my face in shame even were the high honor of a Pulitzer Prize or a Nobel Prize to come to me for work that I knew to represent a compromise with standards that were not my own, and a truckling to mere vulgar acceptability.
On the road which I have followed, followed perhaps with a mulish intractability but certainly without wide meanderings, there have been both penalties and compensations. The penalties have been those of shut doors--and of occasional abuse and misrepresentation. Once or twice a small “modernistic” magazine has honored me with a long article in which my purposes, principles, and methods were entirely misstated. And more than once a larger magazine has lent its pages to the controversy; in one case the writer even descended to language of the gutter in counter-attack when logic evidently failed him. And in other cases, as in Randall Jarrell’s widely circulated _Poetry and the Age_, my statements are subjected to a deliberate or unconscious distortion that make them look about as a man’s image would appear through a convex mirror. I do not wish to harp upon this point, but let me give an example. Mr. Jarrell, referring to the preface of my anthology _The Music Makers_, reports that I say that any poem must be, among other things, “easy to understand.” This could logically be taken to mean that I think that every poem should be on the level of Mother Goose; and if I meant anything like that, I would be even more of a fool than nature has made me. But what I say is the following:
Poetry may have both a satisfying rhythm and a touch of magic and yet not be completely satisfying if it be without a third factor, which for want of a better term we may call clarity. This is not to say that it need have the simplicity of a kindergarten exercise; complex themes by their very nature require complexities of utterance, yet since the purpose of all expression is communication, whether of a thought, a mood or an emotion, the consummate writer in any field will phrase his messages as clearly as is consistent with their thorough presentation.
There are more ways than one of damaging a reputation; and not the least effective is by misstating a writer’s position so as to make him appear silly. I should add that Mr. Jarrell’s publisher, though a man of the highest reputation in his profession, and though writing me that “I certainly would not want any reputable person like yourself to feel that a book published by us did him substantial injustice in any way,” refused my request for changes in the offending passages in subsequent editions of the book; nor did Mr. Jarrell at any time apologize or offer to make even partial amends.
In quite another way, I was to have a glimpse into the sharp and biassed discrimination that occurs in the supposedly high-minded and idealistic realm of poetry. The incident was a minor one, of no intrinsic importance; and would not be worth reporting except for its implications. There was a certain man (let me call him “Jones”) who had once briefly visited me at my home, and was editing a magazine of free verse--to which, naturally, I did not seek admittance. But one day I read that Jones had started a new magazine, to be devoted exclusively to traditional poetry. Since this was in my field, I had no hesitation about mailing him two or three poems, along with the usual stamped return-envelope. Sometime later the poems came back, along with a note: “Dear C.: I rather like your verses entitled _Compensation_ and would have ordinarily accepted them; but in view of what is being said as to the position you have taken in poetry, I am afraid I must send them back.”
Whether or not my poem was published by this particular magazine was, of course, a matter of no importance; I would not under normal circumstances have given a second thought either to its acceptance or its rejection. But Jones, by his naive words, had made immense disclosures; had unwittingly bared things which a shrewder editor would have hidden beneath a gloss of words. That any man could be such a craven as to refuse a manuscript because of what someone else was saying as to the position in poetry taken by the writer!--this to me was a notion so new, so startling that I had to read the sentence several times in order to make sure it was real. I doubt whether Jones had any idea at all how bitterly offensive his comment was; I will even give him credit for meaning the statement by way of a friendly explanation. But his attitude of mind, I thought, was exactly that which has been too familiar in the past, when men have been sent to the dungeon or the stake because of what someone else has said about their heretical views.
Then, for the first time, I fully realized that I too was guilty of heresy--yes, guilty of heresy because I had tried to uphold poetic standards against those who, I was firmly convinced, were the true heretics. I have since had reason to suppose that other editors, and more influential ones, have followed the same principles as Jones. But I still have not learned just “what was being said” as to the position I had taken in poetry. Against known and spoken charges I have never felt any incapacity to defend myself. But against unknown and concealed accusations I am helpless.
Sometimes I have wondered what is really desired by those critics and editors who seem to feel that the devil himself has smoked his way into any attitude of mind that happens to oppose their own. Perhaps their ideal is that which Matthew Arnold expresses in two lines--not, however, as an ideal, but in despair at the modern lack of faith:
Light half believers of our casual creeds, Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will’d.
These “light half believers,” surely, never find anyone who objects to their position strongly enough to blacklist them.