Lapas attēli
PDF
ePub

The Technique of Modern Poetry

By ROBERT HILLYER

VIII

Temperament

EMPERAMENT is a strange subject itself. And I can not help wondering what the

TEMPERAMENT is a strange subject

dealing with poetic technique, yet I can not conclude the series without some discussion of the poet's attitude toward his work.

In the first place, ever since the Romantic Era a conception of the poet has come into being, which may be seen at its least objectionable on the comic stage and at its most objectionable at any large gathering of modern poets. It is a sad fact that poets have earned the reputation for foolishness with which the public has rewarded them. The rolling eye, the flung mass of hair, the absurd elocution, are no mere fancies; I have seen them within a few months on the lecture platform. They are among the symptoms of egotism which manifests itself in many ways.

result would be if all poets were compelled to publish anonymously. Note well that some of the greatest poems in our language are anonymous, and that not until comparatively recent times have poets considered their work in the light of a vehicle for self-expression.

It is very easy to prove the foolishness of self-expression. The self is only important in so far as it can be communicated to other selves. The emotion of an individual is only important in so far as it is the emotion of the race. Suppose a man with poetic talent has a peculiar mania for collecting tomato cans. He will compose love-sonnets to the tomato can, elegies for the loss of one of his favorites, great comedies and tragedies about them. His work, furthermore, will be worthy of most of the adjectives which today are sought after as high praise: it will be original, it will be striking, it will be unique. And, as poetry, it will be completely valueless, because no one without a passion for tomato cans will be able to share the poet's emotion. This is absurd enough, even as an example; yet the majority of modern poets are employing the underlying method. They are engaged in expressing themselves without any care as to whether or not their ideas are comprehensible even to a few. Since the ideal poetry would be the expression of a universal idea or emotion

Naturally, I do not intend, in this article, to deal with eccentricities of dress and manner. I intend, rather, to discuss certain states of mind which sometimes show themselves in such externalities. Much of the correspondence addressed to one in an editorial position is straightforward and interesting, but the larger part of it, I regret to say, shows rather a strong undercurrent of egotism. There is more often an appeal for advice on how to make oneself known than for advice on how to make the most of one's powers. Publication seems the great end in view, not composition

in universal terms, they may justly be accused of indulging their egos to the limit.

I am not, however, arguing for the banal, the trite. The poet's job is indeed to set forth an idea or emotion shared by the majority of the race, but he must present it intensely, in concentrated and heightened form. It is just here that his own temperament may play a legitimate part. The true poetic temperament is that faculty which perceives the most ordinary events of life as something wonderful and interesting, the most ordinary objects of life as something beautiful or significant. Without for a moment losing sight of that existence which he shares with his kind, the poet will, at the same time, observe it with a greater excitement than others and from a larger perspective. In like manner, he uses the same words as the rest of his race, but in rarer and more suggestive combinations. To change the figure: in the house of life the poet is the stained glass window which transmits sunlight, like the other windows, yet colors it as it passes through. Any poet should rest content with that; no man is great enough to be both the window and the light. And no man should be so small as to be merely a distorting glass.

The ambition to be "original" (in the false sense) has induced many to adopt strange diction and bizarre forms. The revolutionist who insists that his thoughts are too vast to be "trammeled" by traditional forms has much to prove. In his case we again perceive the exaggerated egotism which refuses to comply with universally accepted standards. If every writer is to be a law unto himself, criticism is superfluous; indeed, impossible, and not formal criticism alone, but informal opinion as well. Our objections, our requests for enlightenment are met with the contemptuous "Well, if you can not understand it, I certainly can not explain it." That disposes of us, but only for the time being. For as our

numbers increase, we become sufficiently bold to demand an explanation, and if still none is forthcoming, we have our own way. Hundreds of forgotten works, the unique products of individuals, may be dug from the ruins of the past by the enterprising seeker.

After all is said and done, the poet's function remains one of the simplest in the world: to lose himself in the object he is contemplating, to derive his pleasure from the work he is doing. There is nothing else. Publication is a secondary matter; recognition is nothing, or sometimes, in puffing up the too elastic ego, worse than nothing. Some of the finest poets and the noblest men have received no recognition at all and have not suffered in consequence. One of our best poets, Emily Dickinson, shunned not only publicity but even publication.

The acutest need of modern poetry is an intelligent audience. There are too many poets; and the critics, since the public is too indifferent or ignorant to check them, are indulging in the maddest riot of personalities, logrolling, and foolishness in the annals of literature. An intelligent audience would soon put an end to their antics, for it would be better informed than they, and they would fear it. To speak frankly, I hope that my readers will use whatever information they may have derived from this rather random series, at least as much in the service of criticism as of composition; that they will apply these principles of technique to the work of others as well as to their own.

Beginning with the May WRITER I Will criticise two poems every month, without mentioning the authors' names. Any subscriber to THE WRITER desiring to submit poems for such criticism may send them to me in care of THE WRITER, but no copies of poems will be returned, whether or not they are discussed.

An Agent Advises Beginners

By GERTRUDE BREVOORT TUCKER

HE most frequent remark that authors need a long period of time so that the de

this country is in a deplorable condition." And following this always comes the phrase that must have been in one of the old Spencerian copybooks since it is so well remembered, "Editors are not welcoming the new writers anyway!"

Taking a backward slant of this thesis, let us say first, that the second attitude is totally untrue, and the first one is even more of a misconception. It's easy enough to answer the second one; it is more subtle to disintregate the first fixed idea.

The mass thought has undergone a decided change in the last ten years. Whether we approve of or condemn the change makes no difference. It has occurred. The United States has passed through the pioneer stage of its history; its inhabitants know better how to meet and solve their commercial problems, and with the exigencies of frontier life reasonably far removed, they have at last come to the period where they can have leisure for educating themselves in the appreciation of the various forms of creative expression.

During the same decade a renascence of man's interest in his fellow-man and first of all in himself, has come to the front. This unusual combination of conditions both social and moral, has changed the complexion of the writers' markets.

Publishers are finding that the demand for "better books" is national; the proportion of the so-called psychological novel in comparison to the straight and simple love story is greater than ever before; people want to know, not alone what other pepole are doing, but why they are doing the particular thing that they are.

Readers want their lives or their imaginations touched by the stories they read. The character study and the problem presentation

people who are living within it may be carefully considered. And naturally the creative expression picturing this takes the form of the novel.

There is left for the short-story, the same subjects that have always been interesting to and in every age- the story of young love, and the story of freedom of action. The woman who reads the magazines that have enormous circulation, is happiest with stories that show her the reasonable side of conditions among the young people today or that recall the love-story of her own youth, or that fire her imagination to wing along the air-lane of romance that she has never satisfied. The author who touches the lives of these women is a circluation builder for the magazine which accepts such stories. Thus he helps that magazine tell thousands of women about the advantageous merchandise covered in the advertising pages of the publication. Not only has he given to a woman a pleasant half-hour of reading, but he has introduced her to some product which may lessen the arduous duties in her home. And because he has influenced the circulation because that woman asks for more of his stories - he profits in equal proportion with the magazine as regards the size of his remuneration check.

The story of action is the mecca of relaxation for the man who labors daily over some routine task. He is also the man who makes the western picture popular; he knows nothing of ranch, mining, sea, or foreign life, and he cares less for the accuracy of the presentation; what rests him and delights him is the heroic action in which he can submerge his tired personality until he forgets that tomorrow he must be a bookkeeper or a clerk again.

These people are not to be written-down

to, or reformed; they have understanding minds; they crave recreation. Writers certainly can do a big part in giving it to them. But what they are not interested in is that very quality that bubbles over in the beginning author; he has his personal inhibitions, his fixed ideas, he writes to satisfy his inner self. But, unless he has led an unusual life, readers are not licking up with any real zeal the output that satisfies his ego. He should learn to broaden these same experiences until they become universal ones; then he will be able to touch the lives of his compatriots.

Every editor of every publication is searching for the new writer. He has a business to build and he can build it only by accumulating new talent; his magazine is going on long after his present contributors are dead. He must buy, he must build, but, on the other hand, the writer must have something more to sell than just his own pet hobbies interpreted through characters.

It is in getting this meaning, this interpretation between the author and the reader that the agent can be of inestimable value if he happens to have an editorial mind. Very little of the material written is a waste product; most of it can be salvaged and many good manuscripts are lying in bureau drawers. Discouragement, lack of complete knowledge of the market, and often the inability to sustain his interest in his own production until that production is sold are the enemies of the

creator.

Today presents its own distinct problem to the agent in the corralling of material, for the trained writer of experience, the product of the traditions of the nineties and the early part of this century, can write, but oh, does n't he fight against the social ideas that are today! And the young writer, who has all the modern ideas, is often lost to public view because he cannot get himself out of the complex of plot, situation and characterization. This is not confined to stories; it is perhaps at its worst among playwrights. Not long ago a young man brought a play into my office (I can tell this because he "came

through" so beautifully) and announced that since he could not sell his idealistic romances he had decided to write a sex play, which he felt sure would be produced. The play proved to be centered around a seduction of the type used in melodrama of the early seventeenth century; had he done it into a book, he would have probably lined up with Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield." But he was sincere. He was a long time learning what a sex play really was. Since then he has produced two in the provinces.

The author who is difficult to help is that one who thinks he has a right to show his personal characteristics to the world through his characters. He creates a group of people who are brought together under artificial circumstances. Never in this world would they have normally followed one another into friendships, because they each represent the type that the author is himself; they are his facets. This particular author will always reiterate that he has the moral right to do this, just as he has the moral right to develop in his physical children the characteristics that resemble him.

The minute you have started the life of a character, you must let him live it. Fitting the right people into the place where they belong is the art of writing.

Only two quantities are to be considered in any writing; the situation, and the people who either dominate or are subdued by the situation. All the other elements are ramifications of this. But so many writers force their people to solve a situation that characteristically they are not capable of solving. If the situation is the predominating factor in the story, be sure the characters that would psychologically fit into it are there, and if the character predominates, take care that your situations are the right ones for him. If you do this you have, without much thought and with no effort, written a story that will touch the lives of the people . . . technically speaking, it will have "human interest," and you will have a story that can be visualized into a motion picture or dramatized into a

play. For these stories there is no end of a market.

Then there is the much-talked-about "inferior complex"; the author who thinks he must wait for inspiration to come with a gala entrance, and that without her, he can do nothing. He is generally the bureau-drawer man; he had one flare, and then when the editor did n't have the same flare, he succumbed to the complex.

The agent should function in another capacity. Many authors, the first time an objection is presented, stand up in defence of their brain-child. They are very human. The editor tries to tell them just why the particular magazine that he is editing can't run that story and the first meeting between these people who ought to be all-in-all to each other is one of annoyance on the one side, and keen resentment on the other. The agent can act as the go-between, because there is no personal feeling in the agent. He is in business to help the author to become a commercial asset to the editor.

Literature is the expression of life and as such it is an art; its art lies in the definiteness and the clarity of its expression. There is nothing degrading nor debasing about expressing the conditions of the period in which you are living. This is just as valuable a period to the future historians as any other era has been. The difficulty lies in presenting it without bias and with tolerance and understanding. People want to know about it, they want the reactions by and large. They are

not interested in whether you approve or disapprove.

One of the activities of the Community Church of New York is the Young Writers' Group, in which I have the privilege of leadership. It covers the fundamentals of the whole field of writing, for when a young man or woman has the "writing sense" it is very difficult for him to decide upon the form that is best suited to his temperament. Many short-story writers should be novelists, and never will they acquire the dramatic concept that is needed to make them short-story writers or playwrights. But they struggle along, because they have the idea that the novel "takes so long" or that the short-story brings "quicker recognition." I speak of this group because of the very interesting plan that Mr. Kennedy outlined in his recent article in THE WRITER. His plan is practicable because it puts the beginner in the group where he is not afraid of superior workmanship, or more trained opinion. It encourages him to give voice to his ideas. Several members of my particular group were not only unable to write but they were inarticulate when they joined, and now they are well started toward production. It has been a most satisfactory experiment, and in a recent public address John Haynes Holmes, minister of the Community Church, said that he was deeply interested in the potential writers that are growing up there, and he looked forward to the establishment of similar movements throughout the country.

« iepriekšējāTurpināt »