[Editor, THE WRITER:

I have been interested in reading Mr. Hillyer's series, as what poet has not? He is one of the outstanding Moderates of the day and since he can instruct as well as create, perhaps their chief spokesman. It is the Moderates who have the whip hand; we of the revolutionary wing have only the cadaverous satisfaction of knowing that our predecessors had much to do with the coming into being of such as Mr. Hillyer. They are from the loins of Whitman and the womb of Victoria.

As for me, I'll have none of it. They challenge us for having no technique. But we have. Only our technique is different. If you cannot see it, we cannot show it to you. But -last fall during the Harvard-Yale game I wrote this thing:

A great echoing bowl

Lies open to the November sun;
The encircling sides weave and fret.
They are human, misted with smoke,

Dotted with hats of gayest red and blue.
The bottom is a field, level

And greyish green.

In the exact center

Two grim lines of robust numbered men Crouch face to face, red and blue.

(Three white figures hover near.) A sudden hush!

An unseen signal,

And the lines fuse in writhing grapple.
A gap widens, and through it
Plunges a robust runner, blue,
Blue in the November sun.

Hands challenge but fail to cling;

A hurtling red body strikes from the side
Ricochets from the blue runner,
Flattens on the green.

The blue runner spins, stumbles, balances,
Slants forward again in deathless gallantry
Then, from nowhere, three red bodies
From left, right, front,

Concentrate in headlong aerial dives.
One misses, two strike home
And all the mad flying bravery

Melts into a sodden lump

On the green.

A whistle blows;

The sides of the bowl warp and strain
As joy and pity sweep over the throng.

In pain the robust number-men
Stumble to their feet.

(Three figures hover near,

Snow-white in the November sun)

A ballet of boys leap to the edge of the green
And, swaying and dancing in unison, call forth
A staccato reverberation of cheers

In the great echoing bowl
Open to the November sun.

This is not a poem of words but of pictures. The words are unimportant relatively. I do not waste time in considering their individual phonetic values, or their scansion in combination. I do not rhyme dove with love but I do have a rhyme of ideas or impressions. For example, the three white figures of the referees are rhyming impressions, so is the whole panorama, with which I begin and finish the great echoing bowl, open to the November sun.

The point of all is this, if I had mechanics of sound to worry about, I could not paint my picture. The two theories of poetry are diametrically (Am I punning if I say also metrically) opposed. Therefore, in spite of Mr. Hillyer's kind admonitions to those who march under the red flag, I prefer to keep my place in the ranks.

Yours,

Robert Rappan.]

We shall take a vacation for a while from the forms of verse. In the above letter, Mr. Robert Rappan raises certain questions the answers to which must be sought in the principles of the art of poetry. Such parts of the letter as are purely personal we may pass over, though we can not let pass without comment Mr. Rappan's delightful, though fallacious, epigram that the Moderates in modern verse are sprung, from "the loins of Whitman and the womb of Victoria." No biography of these eminent persons mentions that such a conjunction was ever contemplated. To speak for myself (and though Mr. Rappan does me the honour of styling me the spokesman of the Moderates, I insist that I am speaking for myself only) I judge Whitman's writings to be merely a morass of that sentimentality in which Americans too often.

delight to wallow. In the old Harvard Library Catalogue there was an item, unhappily now revised, which to me has always seemed the supreme comment on "the good grey poet." He was listed thus: "Whitman, Walt (properly Walter)." But this is not the place to haggle over the Whitman myth. I would refer my readers to Mr. George Santayana's comments or to an article by Mr. Ernest Boyd (a critic with whom in most cases I am not in sympathy) called "The Daddy of Them All" which appeared in the American Mercury last autumn. As an autopsy of Walt Whitman it is unrivalled. As to Victoria, I am no subject of hers, but of a far greater patron saint of poets, Gloriana herself.

Nor will I presume to offer any criticism of the selection from Mr. Rappan's own writings which he offers as a persuasion to his theories. Indeed, it would be difficult for me to criticize this selection, for Mr. Rappan has set up individualistic criteria, detached from common artistic experience. The mastery of these criteria in order to render a sensible verdict would require the critical effort of a generation. Whether or not they are worth mastering is a more general problem, and with that we purpose to deal.

In the first place, Mr. Rappan assures us that "this is not a poem of words but of pictures." Unless my dictionary fails me, this statement is incorrect. I might as justly say of Holbein's portrait of the Princess Elizabeth, "This is not a picture of paints but of a Princess." Mr. Rappan has simply confused his subject matter and his medium, a very natural confusion in a modernist, I should say. His logic is exactly parallel to that illustrated by the old joke: "What is your new book about?" "Oh, about four hundred pages." It may be that Mr. Rappan wishes to convey images or pictures (subject matter) by means of words (medium), but that is as far as he can go this side of the lunatic asylum. He uses words: therefore, whether he likes it or not, his selection is words. It is no more a poem of pictures than of marble, mahogany, or broomsticks, though any of these

objects may be imaged by words. We conclude, then, that Mr. Rappan, wishing to convey a picture, subordinates his diction to the pictorial element. If he will consult my first article in this series, entitled "The Diction of Poetry," he will find that I am in complete agreement with him. He will find that my most emphatic advice was to employ as often as possible the exact, pictorial word, and to eschew abstractions and poeticisms (such as "deathless gallantry" or "mad flying bravery").

I believe we have shown with sufficient clearness that Mr. Rappan's medium is words. Then how can his artistic conscience permit him to consider words as "relatively unimportant"? If the medium be relatively unimportant how can he hope that the pictures, depending for their effect upon that medium, will be in any sense important? Though the design for my house be the work of a master architect, I can hardly hope for a habitable dwelling if, in my estimation, the material of which it is to be built is "relatively unimportant." To consider only the picture when we are working in words produces a confusion in the arts which, though common in modern productions, is wholly lamentable. Though we may insist on the necessity of clear images in poetry, why should we limit poetry to the creation of such images? My chief grievance against the "new freedom" in the arts is that, like all revolutions, it ends by imposing prohibitions far more numerous and dogmatic than those of the old régime. Says traditional poetry: employ metre as musically as you can, and say anything you want to say. Says Mr. Rappan: rhyme your ideas and impressions (the meaning of this is vague, but I suspect it to be nothing more than a restatement of the ancient tradition of poetic unity) and then convey nothing but pictures. Alexander Pope becomes a bold adventurer in the realm of æsthetics compared to Mr. Rappan.

Lest it seem that I am making a target of Mr. Rappan personally, let me hastily add that I am merely using his theories, gratefully

using them, as an example of general tendencies in modernistic writing. For instance, his rather naive, defensive statement that he does not rhyme dove with love is quite typical. The modernists are ignorant of traditional poetry. They take issue with elements in verse which are recognized as faults by the conservative poets themselves. No poet in his right senses would rhyme love and dove at this period of experience. I might just as well refuse to employ prose because bad prose writers use hackneyed phrases.

The only important point in Mr. Rappan's letter is his statement that he does not worry about the mechanics of sound. This attitude, not general but fairly common among members of the left wing, results from a fundamental æsthetic problem. Is poetry an art of sound? If not, we are justified in ignoring the sound of words altogether. We have always considered that poetry, being expressed through the medium of words, should enrich itself, should heighten its effect on the reader, by utilizing the various combinations of sound which the syllables of our language so generously provide. I pointed out, earlier in this series, that many poets have gone wrong by ignoring the meaning and depending wholly on combinations of sound. I believe the error may be just as great at the other extreme. Mr. Rappan, along with his confrères, announces that he could not "paint" his picture if he had "the mechanics of sound to worry about." The only reply to such a statement is that pictures as good as his, and a thousand times better, have been "painted" by poets who gave us, in addition to the picture, melodious and butiful sounds. If the modernists will permit us to invade their æsthetic dreamland with a little cold logic, they will be forced to admit that their new freedom has again shorn poetry of one of its possibilities. When we have had and still have poets who can with one breath sing, paint, feel, and think, why should we exchange them for those rather meagrely equipped intellects who can only paint? Have the modernists given us better pictures than these?

Beyond the shadow the ship

I watched the water-snakes;

They moved in tracks of shining white,

And where they reared, the elfish light

Fell off in hoary flakes. . . .

Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. . . .

To meet the sun upon the upland lawn. . . .

Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding, Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West. . . . Willows whiten, aspens quiver,

Little breezes dusk and shiver

Through the wave that runs for ever. . . .

The sun was gone now; the curled moon Was like a little feather

Fluttering far down the gulf. . .

Furthermore, would these pictures gain in power by the addition of detail after detail? In other words, is a catalogue more effective than an epigram?

No, no! The whole programme of the "picture-poets" is to isolate one recognized traditional element of poetry and insist that poetry must be nothing else. From that sort of freedom, good Lord deliver us! Any poet worthy the name wants to "speak out loud and bold."

To summarize Mr. Rappan's argument then, he would have us ignore the medium we are using and limit ourselves to one element which, in its fullest expression, does not belong to the art of poetry but to the art of painting.

"A great echoing bowl lies open to the November sun; the encircling sides weave and fret; they are human, misted with smoke, dotted with hats of gayest red and blue. The bottom is a field, level and greyish green. In the exact center two grim lines of numbered men crouch face to face, red and blue."

Surely the picture is quite as vivid when presented in lines as long as the column will permit!

The lesson to be drawn from Mr. Rappan's letter, as I understand it, is that the poet should present his material in a set of pictures. For example we

should not set down an idea like this of Milton's thus:

The mind is its own place, and of itself Can make a Hell of Heaven, a Heaven of Hell. But visualizing several pictures - a moth hovering over a flame, church chimes, and a flapper at a soda-water fountain we should write:

Who says there is no Hell? The Fool.

THE

THE

HE gambling instinct exists to a great or less degree in every human being; and as with other natural instincts its indulgence has stirred up a lot of moralizing. Is gambling morally wrong? There is no authoritative precept which says so. But if it is, we must certainly classify all publishers of fiction as erring souls; and of course every citizen who invests in a business not his own is joining the evil band. But gambling often leads into other things that raise a moral issue, and that is why the moralists have gotten a bit mixed up. And it is undoubtedly true that most gambling is economically wrong. So if we can keep morals and economics distinct, I ought to be able to say something about prize contests without preaching!

If an itinerant "carnival" pitches its tents in a little town, and sets up its Japanese roll-ball games, and its ring tossing, and its roulette wheels, with the old familiar prizes of cheap jewelry and china tea sets and kewpie dolls, it can take several thousand dollars in one night out of a community whose retail stores do not show that cash turn-over in a week. The first thing to consider is that this is not good for the business of the local merchants, and injury to them eventually reacts upon the economic life of the whole community. In the second place a lot of people have gained a false sense of values. Somebody on a tencent chance has won an umbrella that would cost him one dollar in a local store. It does not occur to him that the carnival people make twenty or thirty dollars out of that umbrella; he knows only that he got it for ten cents, and so it is foolish to pay more at any time for another. All the articles offered by the carni

val concessionaires that have actual value are sold in competition with the legitimate trading of the village stores, but the carnival people get for each article many times its actual worth; a very few citizens have purchased these articles for thirty per cent. of their actual value; and a lot of citizens have spent money and bought nothing. Economically this is poor business, though I can't see that it has anything to do with morals, unless it leads to theft or arson.

A lot of prize offers in the literary market are economically harmful in just this same way. For instance, the magazine or publishing house which offers a prize for the best book manuscript seldom if ever offers any larger amount than it would have to pay out in royalties on an unusual book if it secured it by the ordinary routine. But even if it does give prize money in addition to the normal royalty return upon such a book, it is securing at the same time by this unusual advertising a chance at a large number of other manuscripts which do not receive extra prize money but which may be purchased at the publisher's discretion.

Not long ago one often read of prize contests which promised to the winner a sum of money far smaller than any manuscript of winning quality was likely to earn in the ordinary routine of publication; moreover the conditions of the offer specified that the publisher should become the owner of all rights, and that he should also have the right to purchase at a low rate any manuscript which failed to win the prize. This sort of literary gold brick classed its proposer at once with the carnival concessionaire; and the one