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Technical Poetry Critique

By ROBERT HILLYER

HERE was a catch in the announcement of this critical series which I failed to notice until I received a twelve-page poem for criticism. I had forgotten to set any limit to the length of poems submitted. I shall be obliged hereafter to confine our discussion to short works only; a poem of twenty lines is reasonable.

The poem which brought this slip to my attention is a narrative entitled "Paradise," which deals with the life of a brother and sister. The climax of the story is his death in the late war. Up to that point, the diction was simple and crisp, the emotion was held in restraint, and the treatment in general was unaffected and straightforward. But at the climax - and here is a familiar weakness in modern verse— the author distrusted her own powers; she ceased to record the situation at first hand, and fell back on a secondhand phraseology which, since it had been used again and again to stimulate emotion, she thought would be serviceable in communicating her own. Of course it vitiates the whole effect of the work. Let us concede that her emotion was sincere, as it doubtless was. Yet let us remark at the same time how insincere, how trite, are the phrases by which she attempts to communicate it. The boy is described as setting off for "over there," and at his departure, "it braced us all to keep our heart throbs hid." He speaks of the war thus:

"Bully scrap! you bet I could n't bear
To keep hands off. I'll be back just as soon
As this job's done" . . .

If any young man spoke of the war thus, it was merely because, like this author, he had read half a dozen novels in which the heroes were made to employ such phrases, and so he considered them the proper ones for the occasion. After the brother has been killed in France, we are told that

"The sky is black, all but a gold star.” Again, the emotional effect of the gold star is second rate; it cheapens the climax because it brings to mind the dreary waste of sentimental songs, posters, and war stories which flourished during the overwrought period of a great conflict but withered at once in the clear, cold light of the aftermath. I am in no way implying that time can diminish the sombre power of the tragedy; I am pointing out that the war-time symbols of that tragedy must be discarded for others less shopworn. In repeating the superficial diction of the war, our author has destroyed the war's underlying significance, and, incidentally, capped a fine poem with a weak climax.

As it happens, the employment of secondhand phrases is the prevalent fault in most of the poems so far submitted. It seems that in regarding a landscape or undergoing an experience too many writers at once concern themselves not with what is happening to

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Enthralled I gaze on gorgeous view

As roseate dawn takes richer hue,
In panoply of lambent flame

The sun comes forth his throne to
claim.

Then far and wide o'er 'wakened world
His fiery banners are unfurled;

The clouds ablaze seem now to me
Like flaming isles in saffron sea.

Empyrean heaven's glories bright

Are now revealed to mortal sight
And ne'er since Time its course began

Did grander sight greet eye of man!
O wondrous pageant of the sky,

Symbol of future life on high!
Conceived in glory, radiant morn,

In fitting splendour thou art born! . .

Now here is a poem smoothly metrical, exalted in feeling, highly coloured. Why, then, are so many of the lines weak or bad? Because the diction is second-hand, third-hand, fourth-hand. Note the artifical contractions: weak'ning, o'er, 'wakened (which need not be a contraction anyway), ne'er. Note the strained word order: glories bright, since Time its course began. And, worst fault of all, the poeticisms: roseate dawn, panoply, lambent, saffron, empyrean, wondrous, on high, and many others. Let us rewrite that second stanza in simpler terms, otherwise making as few changes as possible.

I gaze out on the widening view
As dawn takes on a richer hue,
And now the sun comes forth to claim

His throne, armed with a sword of flame, And over all the awakened world

His fiery banners are unfurled. The clouds ablaze now seem to me

Flaming isles in a yellow sea.

I do not contend that this version is an improvement on the original; I have made the changes to point out a better method of composing the poem in the first place.

The same author submits a poem entitled "The Dying Year" in which the unhappy results of too "literary" composition are even more manifest; for here with the stock vocabulary he has unconsciously introduced the stock ideas of which that vocabulary is the outward and visible sign. And there lies the greatest danger of second-hand diction; it is sure to bring with it second-hand ideas. Since this author has a well developed metrical sense and a keen perception, his job, it seems to me, is to speak out loud and bold, in his own language, of his own impressions.

Echoes, however, need not always be unfortunate. Sometimes a paraphrase from some older work, deliberately introduced to heighten an effect, may be of great poetic value. In quoting the epigram entitled "Peace," I would call the reader's attention to the deft use, in the second line of the second stanza, of one of the epitaphs from the Greek Anthology:

Here where the tall grass waves
The fallen soldiers lie

In countless rows of graves
Under a sunny sky.

Here where the poppies dance

They obeyed the last command; And these, they died for France,

Those, for the Fatherland.

They struggle now no more

In any hour or weather:
The best their countries bore

Lie down in peace together. Slightly suggestive of the lyrics of A. E. Housman, this epigram, nevertheless, stands firmly on its own feet. Note that the diction is simple throughout; the author has no verbal tricks,

no blurred abstractions. Strangely enough, the clearness of it contributes to its power on second reading. A first reading informs us perfectly of everything the author wishes to say, yet we read it again with renewed pleasure. Simplicity, as always, is the magic. Only once, it seems to me, does this simplicity break down into banality. The author had done much better to choose some other flower

than those everlasting poppies. They have become almost as trite as a symbol of emotion as the gold star mentioned in connection with the first poem.

I am holding over until next month several of the poems which have come in. I would request that authors desiring criticism send me their manuscripts during the first ten days of each month.

Pressing the Public

-

By IVAN SWIFT

"'M troubled with misses misgivings, misinformation, and misanthropy. I'm not a journalist, not a collegian, not degreed or pedigreed.

I've had to make a bad name for myself, and take my own title. "Ivan Swift, Seven P's," is the way it goes. I confess to being a printer; but publisher, no; except as we are all publishers-more's the pity! — and except that I have published a few of my own books which no normally commercial publisher had courage to undertake.

We who can't do things may always have relatives who can a cousin or something who is a star performer-a natural-born genius who never had a lesson in his life.

My own experience at publishing a paper was brief. I set out to tell the world how much I knew, and how little they knew; and I thought more of phrases than facts. I pressed the public; press-agented myself. I went too far. An old German carpenter wrecked an artist's studio to build a shop. I saw an item there and wrote: "Thus the atelier of a great artist becomes the workshop of a humble carpenter." The carpenter stopped his paper because I did n't say "Goot carpenter."

Then next, the druggist advised me to write up "The old barber-shop bums and rub it

in." I told him if he were worth a couplet I'd write him up"- but he was n't. I lost his ad.

Then I went on the lecture platform, where one needs nothing but phrases. I told a town it was distinguished for many things, among them a newspaper that "made more mistakes than I did enemies." The editor knocked my show and did n't tell the truth. I did. He went to Congress. I went back to the woods (which gives a line on the kind of wood the legislative halls are built of).

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I edited a small magazine in New York once - to see the inside of the machinery. Most of the contributions had letters of explanation to my dull wit. I read the othersand put up a motto, "Don't write love-letters to the editor. He likes his own opinions. Some day his curiosity will ask for your biography. Make it snappy." I quit.

I found the item stronger than the editorial it takes the other fellow in. Most everybody values his own opinion. I read the Literary Digest because it is everybody's opinion; and I use my own to make sense of theirs but I could n't initiate any of them.

I hope to see a newspaper some day that gives the opinions of the neighborhood rather than of the editor. So much depends upon the point of view, and that upon the experience.

A lively rector once worked long to raise the debt on the village library. One day he blew into the barber-shop, clapped his hands and cried, "The debt is paid! The debt is paid! Civilization stands upon three legs - the church, the school, the library. The debt is paid!" When he had gone, after his interruption of the barber's best story, Jim stropped his razor rhythmically and remarked, "Gentlemen, civilization is a three-legged stool. When one of the legs gives out, the world is gone to the devil-a shave, a hair-cut, a bath! Gentlemen, is your debt paid?"

Orville, the fox-hunter, would n't listen to my opinions of the city. He opened his mouth for attention, and I attended. "Well, some folks takes a likin' to some things, and other folks takes a likin' to other things; but I'll tell you what I want, by George! I just want to live to see the day when I can own a horse that'll go along the road kind o' easy like, so as no one can tell how much powder they is in the old critter anyway-till something comes up and tries to git by. Then I want him to step right off-front foot, hind foot; left foot, right foot! - hell bent for election! and beat anything they is on the pike! That's the height of my ambition!" He had spoken.

His little wife overheard it, and called out, "Well, Orville, you'll have to get a hustle on. The fastest thing you ever owned so far was an ox."

He did n't like her opinion, either.

I learned a lesson. The public has penparalysis, but not opinion-paralysis. The average reporter is the complement of this. The public values its own opinion. It needs only our facile pens and stenography. Instead of pressing the public, I ask you to press-agent the public and get read occasionally.

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We are reduced to discreet selection, and go to college or abroad to get background for comparison. The trouble with the world is different definitions, and the trouble with literature is loose terms. A sea-captain asks me to write the Free Press for some nautical facts. I ask him where he thinks the Free

Press gets its information, if not from him? When we say "typical American," (100 per cent.), what do we mean? Organ-grinder or Admiral Prince? Some American travelers in California pulled the queue of an Oriental on the train and asked him if he were Chinese or Japanese. He politely replied in good English, "Beg pardon. Are you Yankee or monkee?"

An English reporter said to a Michigan Indian, "I don't like the American — he swears so much." The Indian replied, "Me American - don't swear 'tall'." Mistake in definitions.

The Indians moved to the swamp to make room for the "Babbitts." (Babbitt is a metal used to fill up the gaps left by departed aristocracy). I followed the tide of uncivilization, and got the legends of Nenawbozhu and the wonderful story of "Ascension." The Babbitts pressed. I press-agented.

Now we come to the business of the reporter, the editor, the reformer, and the gossip.

The reporter need not be a gossip - telling half-truths to thrill, a peddler of colored balloons. He should keep himself out of it and report.

The editor may blue-pencil what is against his purpose and policy, but he ought to have a purpose and policy.

The reformer may exaggerate, clip, color, lie; but he must have high motive and better the world needs to be Jesuitical.

The gossip lies to injure, the reformer to save, the reporter to please, and the editor to survive. Hic jacet!

I sent a story to a weekly paper and said I should not know whether the story was printed or not as I did not read the paper. I got a comment back, with the story: "For that reason we return it." That editor did not lie, but he won't survive-except as a humorist.

Our motive should be the measure of our liberty with the pen. I am opposed to the "freedom of the press" as now constituted,

and freedom of speech - without a license (and very possibly I should want to be the only license-holder). We value our own opinions. We shall learn to value others for what they are worth. My grandfather often said, "Think twice before you speak, and then keep still." But that would n't fill a newspaper or a library and we will assume they are necessary. Mark Twain was once asked by a little girl if books were good for presents. He replied, "Well, yes, a thin book like a geography is good to stop up a broken window-pane; a leather-covered book is nice to strop a razor on; and a big book with an iron clasp is a bully thing to throw at a dog." Also newspapers were once useful as pad

ding under carpets - but carpets are out of date, except for museum collections.

There are books and books; papers and papers. Your own land and your own people make the best ones. Do you know your plantation? Are you seeing clearly as a reporter, weighing carefully as an editor, visualizing as a reformer, or guessing at as a gossip? Is the pen a safe instrument in your hands? Do you go to original sources for your knowledge? Do you write with humility and justice, or with impudence and inebriation? Are you an asker or an autocrat?

The world is at your door and worlds of wisdom. "I said it in the meadow path,

I say it on the mountain stairs,

The best things any mortal hath Are those that every mortal shares."

The Store Cupboard

By MARISTAN CHAPMAN

WHEN our furnace man let the fire out

on the excuse that there was no more coal, we protested. He said that so long as the fire was burning he forgot about getting more coal. So here we sit in our overcoat, with our feet in a box, considering the allegory as it applies to the Improvident Writer.

He stamps and mails his great creative effort with a sigh of mingled contentment and regret. Then, realizing that he is written out, he tries to re-kindle the blaze from sparks in old notebooks, that contain, perhaps, a few tindery fragments of ideas. This failing, he is forced to tramp gloomily through days unproductive of heat or light. He may tell himself that he is "thinking out" his next story, but he himself does n't believe it. His mind knows better, and his state is a deplorable one for it undermines both self-respect and self-confidence.

cides to give up being an author and try something easy, like the consulship of Nicaragua.

No writer can live at a high pitch of creative emotion or sustained passion for a long time. The hotter the fire the sooner it burns out. So, when he is in cold and barren mood, when words are shy and metaphor is balky when the fire has gone out he must saw more wood, and see to it that in the future he has enough in the store cupboard to keep the fire in.

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And now, my gloves permitting, I will type enough words to explain How It Should Be Done.

Each literary unit, whether it be story, essay, or book, is a combination of two essential elements, plan and amplification, or, as some prefer, the technical and the artistic. The planning of a story is mechanical and scientific. It is a work of cold analysis, having

During these periods of anti-climax he de

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