POETS AND POETRY.
SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN POETRY.—IV.
WE have said that at the b3ginning of the modern poetic move- ment a good deal of hesitancy, of intellectual modesty, and of experimentalism was to be found in poetic technique. One month a poet would employ an elaborate rhyme scheme and throw about a profusion of highly coloured syllables; the next he would confine himself to words of one syllable and lines of one word. He would be minutely introspective and meticulously objective by turns. Mr. W. J. Turner began by writing obscure, difficult lyrics about literal cave-man or the cave-man that lurks within us. Mr. Graves, to ease a war- harassed mind, wrote fantastic bucolic poems. Mr. Robert Nichols, confronted by the war, showed, in spirit and technique, almost the :journalistic reaction of the reporter; so did Mr. W. W. Gibson. The Sitwells (Messrs. Osbert and Sacheverell and Miss Edith) endeavoured, like Mr. Graves, to escape, but this time int) an atmosphere of commedia del ark. But Mr. Turner's latest piece of work is a smooth classical narrative poem. Mr. Graves has lately tried to get, back to the atmosphere of real life. Mr. Nichols' best work is now reflective and written in a flowing style, and we lately published Mr. Osbert Sitwell's " Neptune in Chains," a highly " reasonable " poem. The new movement, now feeling more secure in the needlessness of worship, dares a glance at the merits of the more regular of its predecessors.
Psychologists tell us that love and hate, or blind reverence and violent self-assertion, are opposite manifestations of the same emotions.
This is certainly true in the case of such group psychology as we encounter in the consideration of aesthetic movements. At first the po is of the new movement were, lik3 the rest of the world, inclined to feel a strong love-hate emotion in regard to such writers as Tennyson, and to feel the obverse of the general reverential attitude in regard to his morals and technical methods.
Now that the love and reverence have disappeared, so have the hate and self-assertion. For though the influence of these emotions on the new movement has been greatly exaggerated, they did exist, at least in certain writers. For example, Mr. Ezra Pound, one of the somewhat negative and sterile pre. cursors of the modern movement, seems to have felt them.
The new movement seems, in fact, in the last two years to have reached something like a state of equilibrium. There was a charming, invigorating freshness about the spring, and in some cases we may regret the " early manner " of this or that writer. But on the whole the movement is probably grown to a state more promising for the Production of good work than it was, say, in 1918 or 1919, though at the actual moment of writing there seem signs of a temporary slacking off in the production of good verse.
It is very difficult to say in what this state of equilibrium consists or how it varies from the earlier state of the poetic movement. The obvious thing would be to say that the new poets have become less extreme and that they now appreciate the value of " centralness." This no doubt is in part true, but it is also probably true that our—the reader's—. conception of the poetic " centre " has slipped more than a little. For when we come to examine the facts, there are plenty of ultra-modern poems being written—for instance, Mr. Sitwell'd " Parade " (which we publish in this issue). Is it that they are more urbane, or that even the most timid of us have grown accustomed to them ? At any rate, we believe that poets and critics have reached a stage in the movement where they hay.e achieved to the judgment of a modern poem on its merits.
We do not love or hate " Wheels " or " Coterie " ; we dis- tinguish between the bad and good poems which they contain. This is largely because the volume of modern verse now enables us to guess by a comparative process what the poet is trying to do, and to expect of a given poem only the particular qualities for which the poet 1 as striven :— • " When they said, Does it trot?' He said, Certainly not ; It's a Mopsican-Flopsican bear.' " We no longer say : " This poem is unlike The Dream of Fair Women,' therefore it is good " (or " bad," as the case may be). A poem may have noble qualities which are incom- patible with trotting. This critics and fellow-poets recognize. The poet is absolutely free to write Mopsican-Flopsican poetry, but with this warning, that we know now what heights such a poem ought to rise to. Being let off the trotting we expect of the creature performances of equ 1 difficulty.
We have, in fact, achieved a new standard of criticism, so flexible, so liberal, so well adapted to its purpose, alas ! that it must ossify like its unlamented predecessor and, after strangling a few promising infants of the next, the unborn poetic generation, be carted away amid public rejoicings. Is there positively no cure for human fallibility ? If not, let us at least not fall into the error of the Victorians who would honestly have declared that they suffered from no such malady.
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