BOOKS OF THE DAY
What is a Poet ? •
Study of Wordsworth. By J. C. Smith. (Oliver and Boyd. 5s.)
IN these days, although little literary criticism of quality makes its appearance annually through the Press, there is a real and persistent
thirst for it in a surprising number of places. This ought not to surprise us, because pure literary criticism is, perhaps, the most refreshing spring of enjoyment in intellectual life ; yet if town- planners and bureaucrats are surprised when they discover that urban women and children enjoy and pay more attention to amenities—such as a balcony, a garden, or even the sight of a tree—than to wireless programmes, food calories and advertisements, we ought not to find it astonishing that, say, soldiers off-duty- whether in Africa, India, the Near East, Italy or at home—read persistently poetry and books about poetry—incidentally, I may add here, writing quantities of verse ; for, compared with what they hear on the wireless, or read in their newspapers, or find printed n the majority of books, poetry or pure literary criticism may be Ikened to a fresh green tree or some succulent citrus fruit compared ith urban council dustbins—in which no doubt there are often useful and valuable, but hardly recreative objects.
Here, then, comes a small book printed on decent paper at a moderate price which is a fresh, sound, enjoyable study by an author unknown to me, of Wordsworth ; but a study not of his raft, or his literary influences or values, or political or other ideas, but of the essence of him, his poetry. So, not unnaturally, Mr. Smith begins by directing us to the first fact about a poet, namely, s poetic sensibility, quoting Wordsworth's own radical remark away from whose rare and essential simplicity so many thousands f fountain-pens have for the last twenty years been poking fruit- essly.into byways) that a poet must be a man of "more than usual
ru
rgac sensibility." "Sensibility," as Mr. Smith points out, needs rom time to time to be re-defined, so that we may be clear about hat Wordsworth means. His poet is "not simply a Man of Feel- g,"sensibilite, but having the capacity in the first place "to receive pressions through the senses "—animal or organic sensibility. Is ordsworth right in ascribing this pre-eminence in the poetic ndowment to sensibility? Judging by their works one might think at during the last fifty years writers, if not poets, had begun to se sight, hearing or any other direct sense-impression of life, and ould now get only within a psychic, moral or political whiff of it. is may be an unhappy necessity for writers as such, condemned s they always must be to live in the dustbins of the world, rescuing, eserving, naming or destroying rubbish. That is what journalism s for, and most writing is no more. But it is precisely because oetry has always been considered more, considered something ifferent, essentially different, that it has been given such honour own the ages ; in recent times the poetic mantle has usually been n academic, political or philosophic robe mostly desirable for ropaganda for the sake of its illustrious origins and vestiges of auty, assumed for no other convenience than publicity ; so we ust not be surprised that so many young men in this country and hers during the period since the last war have called themselves ets who, if they had thought they were claiming to be men "of ore than usual organic sensibility," would have repudiated the otion hastily as being utterly inadequate to their ambitions. Lest this might mistakenly be thought of as a lack of modesty n them, it must be added that it has been a well-known phenomenon the same period for young poets consistently to moderate the at claims made in the past for poetry itself. There has been uch harmless effort at debunking poetry, but it might have been seful, not useless, if it had consisted in showing once again, fferently but as clearly as has been done before, what poetry is d is not. But if any of the Eliots, Audens, Richards or dozens others of our time had once stopped to test themselves in the light what Wordsworth considered indispensable to the poetic gift, and ed the question, "Am I a poet?" the answer (as near sponta- taus as such intellectual creatures as these are capable of) would ve for a generation gone up, "Only in so far as I am a Social phet or Political Planner."
Both these latter descriptions seemed to the 'twenties and 'thirties Itch the most highly respectable and desirable things to be. The thing during that time that a poet was never expected to be was a man of "more than usual sensibility" in Wordsworth's sense. Therefore, to apply such a test Would have seemed to all of them ridiculous because irrelevant. These poets of the new age were to be revealed by their knowing more about economics than Marx, more about sociology than the newest of the new professors, but never through having more organic or any other kind of sense.
Indeed, I would claim that the whole content of the words " poet " and " poetry " have in fashionable intellectual circles been beggared out of them for nearly fifty years now, and I .know of no place where any clear, correct, critical conception of poetry is maintained and exercised. And as we want to know what we are talking about to have any good criticism, it is not surprising that there is no longer a first-class literary review in England today. Much interesting matter is scattered everywhere, but no clear boundaries are set up. Every place is the same rubbish heap for everything ; publishers pour out omnibuses, compendiums, (minium gatherums by professors, poets and propagandists, but how rare is become a book. Here are civilisation's waste products, but where is civilisation's living tree? Incidentally, Mr. Smith's survey of Wordsworth provides an answer, and in his sections on Organic Sensibility, Memory, Pleasure, Fear, Love, Dream, Reverie, Vision, &c., these very words themselves indicate a new direction ; analysing the poetic equipment of a Wordsworth enables him to take us directly back to a few lost fundamentals. Here we can begin the search once more ; we need to, for writers of our time, faced with poetry, are in the position of an urban child who amidst nothing but gutters, pavements, iron-railings, dustbins and odd paraphernalia of an efficient borough municipal council should for the first time suddenly perceives a great natural force, such as the open sea. Poetry can only proceed from nature, not from a library, or a training col- lege, or a scientific museum. That is the meaning of the ancient saying, poeta nascitur non fit. Mr. Smith's perceptive examination of Wordsworth's nature is on the right lines and leads us to the real springs of poetry. But it needs taking much further ; for instance, " sensibility " must be seen in its positive, not merely its passive or receptive aspect. The sea, for example, is not only ex- tremely sensitive, but can be extremely violent. So, in poetic natures, power is infinitely linked with sensibility. W. J. TURNER.
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