Cock Robin's Decease
IN an admirably pugnacious pamphlet, Cock Robin's -I- Decease, Mr. Edward Thompson assumes that poetry is dead, and holds an inquest on the fair corpse. Nobody has a better right to speak. For, though he professes no longer to be a " practising poet," those who read his collected Poems 1902-1925 will hardly believe, or at any rate wish to believe, him. While in the invention of the Augustan Series of Sixpenny Poets, and as their first Editor, he has performed a signal service to English poetry.
When, therefore, he maintains that verse is dead, hc is entitled to a respectful hearing. He makes the following- assertions, based either on experience or on observation: He says of the publishers that there is " at the present- moment no publisher who would at his own expense publish a new poet." He states that with the certain exception of Edmund Blunden there has been no new poetic reputation since the War, and he imputes that in part to- the " slimness " of most of the volumes of verse that appear. He states then that the public have their considerable share in the blame, because he avers that if the- net sales of the twelve leading poets for the last five years were stated the average would be- nearer 200 than 500. But these are all minor, though contributory causes ; the real weight of the criticism falls on the Press and the reviewers. So far as the Press is concerned Mr. Thompson maintains that the space allotted, except to poets with news-value, is ridiculously small, so much so that " one leading publisher told me that he had now given up the practice of sending out verse to review." Moreover, within the narrow limits left available poets are disposed of in batches of half-a- dozen or a dozen to 600 lines. Not only this, but the space for periodical- publication of verse has noticeably contracted.
We begin, therefore, with practically no space. But what use do the reviewers make of that tiny indulgence ? The worst possible, . replies Mr. Thompson. Verse, like books on India, is abominably reviewed. Mr. Thompson, not without side-reference to a contemporary reputation, singles out the orgy of adulation offered up to poor Stephen Phillips by his contemporaries, including some who still rule public opinion. He draws from that con- sideration the inference that poetry-reviewing is either dull, secondhand, or unreasonably emotional. He calls, therefore, for a revision of critical standards, not only as regards contemporaries, but as regards the great dead. Finally he propounds his remedies—for the publisher cheaper books, for the public a vow to buy four books of verse a year. For the reviewers honest and intelligent criticism, and for the Editors adequate space.
From a great part of this criticism and from the pre- mises on which it is based, it is impossible to dissent. It is true that very few publishers will publish the verse of a new poet at their risk, though there 'are honourable exceptions. 13ut it -goes further than that. Last year about 450 books of verse were published by new and by regular poets. I express the view that not more' than fifty books of original verse were published at the pub- lisher's risk. If that is so, what is the reason ? The reason is given by Mr. Thompson's figure of circulation, which again I believe to be true. Of the 450 books mentioned ilbovei do not believe five (apart from antholo- gies and reprints) exceeded a sale of 1,000.
But if all that is true, has Mr. Thompson truly diagnosed the cause ? I do not think so. The sinners are neithek the publishers nor the Press. The public, and therefore the poet, are to blame, as they always-have been. Poetiy is in essence difficult. It demands of the reader both training and intensity. It is not compatible with a pipe and carpet slippers : it exacts something of 'its own- ultimate asceticism. Necessarily, therefore, at any given moment the audience of a living poet -is less than that of • his more accessible prose rival. If we take, for example, the period of the Lake School, I imagine that Sir Walter Scott had five times the circulation of the whole school rolled together. Byron ? There is always in a great period room for one Byron—Tennyson for the Victorians, Kipling for the beginning of the century, and Masefield immediately before the War.
But there is something more marked in the present reaction against verse than the habitual indifference to the loftier flights of the human spirit. And that in my view is the poet's fault, because in an age of disintegration the best of them have too often permitted themselves to imitate the age. Poetry in the long run is affirmation - and not retreat.- But the poets most applauded by the ferocious young are in themselves a melancholy tribute to the spirit that denies. It is not a new spirit. The post- Napoleonic period knew it, and the nineties knew it.
But the public instinctively looking to their poets, as to priests, shrunk, as they shrink, from what they uncon- sciously yecognize as a betrayal. They do not want a leader in a rout. Disheartened, dispersed, and in flight, they seek, though they do not know it, a rallying-point. We may be sure that they will 'recognize and reward it; when at last 'they find it.
HUMBERT WOLBE.
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