Part 8

The last words of this statement are peculiarly significant in this connection. “By his aid alone we may get outside of our skins into the very heart of the world.” What is the heart of the world? I do not know it all, emotionally or intellectually, although if I were to trust one of these endowments in order to render judgment upon poetry, I should choose the first. On the other hand, Mr. Jones does not know the entire heart of the world; nor does Mr. Bodenheim. But we may each of us know some little corner of this heart that the other does not or cannot ever know. For some of us poetry remains but the supreme expression of mere external beauty, for others the expression in consummate form of a purely intellectual process; to others poetry is a weapon wherewith to pierce the veil of externality and to expose the hidden but the real reality. The late William James once declared that we were standing on the verge of new discoveries in feeling and knowledge; that just beyond us lies a world of new adjustments and new experiences. Of course, in this instance, James had reference to our new appreciation and estimate of the value of mysticism in the judgment of certain phases of religious experiences. But the thing holds true even in poetry; the line between the poet and the mystic has yet to be drawn. I, for one, should not want to think myself incapable of enlarging either my soul or my appreciation. If anybody can show me whether in new terms or not a hitherto unsuspected and unknown aspect of beauty, I shall be content to accept that person. I would go further; I should be very thankful that I had obtained a new point of view with which to regulate both my emotions and my intellect.

I, for one, saw and felt and appreciated the appeal of the much-discussed “sieve” poem. To be sure, along with Mr. Jones, I had previously thought of a sieve only in relation to ashes and garden earth—and even of that “little triangular sieve that fits into kitchen sinks.” But if some one can come along and convince me that this hitherto vulgar and despised implement has inherent in it the possibilities of metaphysical development, and that a certain person can be likened to a sieve, why, then I have learned a new aspect of beauty.

And hence, it would seem to me that Mr. Bodenheim has fulfilled every single requirement that Mr. Jones has put upon the poet. And the only reason Mr. Jones cannot appreciate these little poems is because, intellectually and emotionally, he is “born out of due season.”

After all, “All art is convention.” The Alaskan Indian, with his grotesque—to us—totem poles, cannot understand the smooth and plastic strength of much of classic sculpture. The African Negro, with his Campbell-soup-can earrings and his Connecticut-made curtain ring bracelets, cannot appreciate the effect of simple unadornment. Yet in any case the point of view, the impelling instinct that leads toward beauty, is the same for any person, any race, any civilization. Let us be honest and admit this. Let us sincerely seek and discover the philosophy that guides every new movement, whether in fashion or food or poetry.

Yet it seems to me that we are too prone to accept poetry and to judge it from a too utilitarian point of view. We would make it stand the same test that we apply to religion, to household furnaces, and other things that have been long tried. We ask ourselves when some new manifestation of it arises: “Will it do the trick? Will it comfort and warm and sustain us in the way that we have been accustomed to being comforted, warmed, and sustained by that which has already been accepted?” Yet if a new form discovers a new idea, if it tears away the covering with rough and clumsy hands in order to show the emotions, a fresh significance or a bold interpretation, we jump back in terror and horror.

So it is with _vers libre_ at the present moment. Because it shows us new things, and a new and perhaps at times an awkward manner, critics fed on the diluted sentimentality of Longfellow—or even the classic and obscure Meredith—revolt. Eventually they will accept it; they must. Those that are not fools must remember that history repeats itself; that to cite but a recent instance, Manet and Monet and Sisley, in painting, are accepted where forty-five years ago they were characterized as fools and madmen. After time has crystalized the unusual into the conventional, and the crystals are as common and as pretty as only time and much practice can make them, the critic, along with the man in the street, will be content to partake and to appreciate. It will be then too late; what was once unique and rare will be common and banally uninteresting; a new awakening will then take place, and once more the world will witness the same absurd attack of the critics.

In this connection, in our future judgment of _vers libre_, let us recall the wise and simple words of R. A. M. Stevenson: “The test of a new thing is not utility, which may appear at any moment like a shoot with the first favouring breath of spring. The test is the kind and amount of human feeling and intellect put into the work. Could any fool do it? Now, in this matter of depicting truth, there are eyesights of all grades and breadth, of grandeur, of subtlety, and art has more than the delicacy of a tripos examination in tailing out as in a footrace all the talents and capabilities of the competitors.”

Go to it, Mr. Bodenheim!

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