CERTAIN RADICAL POETS

An old rhetoric, used in schoolrooms about twenty years ago, defines a figure of speech as "an intentional departure from the ordinary form, order, construction or meaning of words, intended to give emphasis, clearness, variety or beauty." This definition might be paraphrased to define the radical poetry of the moderns. Indeed a radical poet, like his poetry, may be called a figure of speech! For he departs intentionally from the ordinary form, order, construction or meaning of words in poetry, intending to give his work a new emphasis, clearness, variety and beauty.

Conservatives say that departures of this kind are fatal mistakes. They even hint that radical poets do not depart intentionally, but perforce, because the traditional ways of English poetry are too strait for their errant temperaments. This is easy to say, but difficult to prove. We shall learn too little good of radicals from the conversation of conservatives. To learn about radical poets we must read their poems and ask ourselves whether we can find the new "emphasis, clearness, variety and beauty."

Who, then, are the radical poets? As defined for purposes of this discussion, they are the poets whose craftsmanship is new and experimental. They may be, also, poets whose ideas on social problems are radical. Or they may be conservatives in their thought of life, and radicals only in their ways of making poems. That sometimes happens. Sometimes, also, it happens that poets who use the traditional forms of English verse are as radical in their social beliefs as their brothers who write free verse. What is said here is intended to apply only to poets who make their poems in the new or radical ways.

It is impossible to discuss them all. Many of them, moreover, have been mentioned in other chapters. Amy Lowell, of whom much has been said already, is an arch-radical. The Imagists,

whose work was described in association with the discussion of images and symbols, have founded their important radical school. But no introduction to contemporary poetry would be complete without comment on the work of several other groups of radical poets.

The chief poets of the radical movement who are not Imagists can be classified together as oratorical, humanitarian radicals. They have much in common. Most of them are strong social democrats and to a certain extent propagandists in their poetry. They all seem to love life-even violently. They are possessed of strong emotions to which they give direct, eloquent, sometimes fulsome expression. To a certain extent they are iconoclasts. Their images and symbols are often vivid and impressive. Their diction is sometimes very good and sometimes very bad. Their rhythms are long, undulating, often broken and uncertain, sometimes very tiresome, at their best sonorous and beautiful. But all too often, in trying to create poems without using the traditional patterns, they have tried to create poems with no perceptible patterns. When they have tried to do this they have usually failed to make poetry.

The artistic ideal of the humanitarian radicals, if one can guess it from their work, is the ideal of oratory-a man pouring out his heart before his fellows. They would overwhelm us with torrents of emotion. They use language that the crowd understands. They are as eloquent as good political speakers. But they are seldom designers, makers. If their work is to live, it must be by virtue of the truth in it, by virtue of the value of the thoughts and emotions expressed (which value will be tested by time), not by virtue of pattern or melody.

The following lines taken from Clement Wood's perfervid apostrophe to the world in "Spring" are typical of much of the least interesting work of this group:

"Hey, old world, old lazy-bones, wake to the Spring-tune!

The music of the spheres is quickened to a jig,—

Wobble a one-step along your flashing orbit, with the moon for your light-tripping partner!"

Such lines as these, without melody, without coherent beauty of design, tossed off at random, apparently, attempt a crude sublimity, but succeed only in being saucy. They slap Life jocosely on the shoulder and chuck the Universe under the chin.

It is only fair to Mr. Wood to say that he has done much better things than this. He has written interesting poems and he says some things worth saying, like these lines from "A Prayer:" "Keep me from dream-ridden indolence,

That softens the sinews of my spirit.

Send me forth, adventuring,

From the quick mud of the gutter

To the clasp of the thin golden fingers of the stars.

Let me will life,

And its freshening, hearty struggles."

James Oppenheim, also a humanitarian radical, is a more mature poet than Clement Wood and his work has been before the public longer. There is more of it to be considered and it deserves more careful consideration. Mr. Oppenheim thinks. He feels. And he speaks. As he himself says, in the poem called "Before Starting" in "Songs For The New Age,"

"It was as if myself sat down beside me,

And at last I could speak out to my dear friend,

And tell him, day after day, of the things that were reshaping me." In this calm of sincere and profound soliloquy Mr. Oppenheim's best poems seem to have been written, for they carry the atmosphere of calm soliloquy with them. It sometimes happens that they are very short. Such a poem is "The Runner in The Skies."

"Who is the runner in the skies,

With her blowing scarf of stars,

And our Earth and sun hovering like bees about her blossoming heart? Her feet are on the winds, where space is deep,

Her eyes are nebulous and veiled,

She hurries through the night to a far lover."

The same virtue is in "The Greatest," "Quick As a Hummingbird," "No End of Song," "Larkspur" and "Said The Sun."

"Said the sun: I that am immense and shaggy flame,

Sustain the small ones yonder:

But what do they do when their half of the Earth is turned from me? Poor dark ones, denied my light.

A little brain, however, was on that other half of the planet
And so there were lamps."

Many of these short poems reveal Mr. Oppenheim at his best. They are concise, thoughtful, imaginative, and have the quiet charm of meditative speech. They make places for themselves in the minds of readers, and remain.

But Mr. Oppenheim does not always seem to be chatting quietly with himself about the things that are reshaping him. Often he is so vociferous that it is easy to picture him pacing a platform, talking with undeniable vigor to himself or to the multitude and making himself heard. In "Civilization" he is far more the orator than the poet. He is talking loud and scornfully.

"Civilization!

Everybody kind and gentle, and men giving up their seats in the car for the women . . .

What an ideal!

How bracing!

Is this what we want?

Have so many generations lived and died for this?

There have been Crusades, persecutions, wars, and majestic arts, There have been murders and passions and horrors since man was in the jungle

What was this blood-toll for?

Just so that everybody could have a full belly and be well-mannered?"

This is very interesting, but is it poetry? Here we have stimulating thought and honest feeling put into lengths of exclama

tory language. But that is about all. We find no pattern in rhythm, imagery, or symbolism. We are glad of the stimulating thought and honest emotion. They are refreshing and much better for us than an æsthetic composition in which specious thoughts and shallow feelings are masked. Such lines may serve to arouse us from intellectual and spiritual lethargy. But the chances are that we shall never repeat them to ourselves for the joy of repeating them. We shall not cherish and remember lines like these as we should cherish and remember poems by William Vaughn Moody, Vachel Lindsay or Robert Frost. They will not make their own places and abide with us as Mr. Oppenheim's best poems will.

By far the finest piece of literature that James Oppenheim has produced is a dramatic poem called "Night." At night a priest, a scientist and a poet are met together under the stars and they confer together, telling one another what they think of the universe and all that therein is. Then a woman enters, carrying a burden, her dead baby in her arms, and seeks of each of them in turn the answer to the riddle of pain and sorrow. She is not satisfied with any answer and turns away from them all to defy the Power that lets such things be. Then comes the man, her husband, and, because he needs her, she turns away from death and goes back to life with him. Her maternal pity takes her mate to be her child. The priest says, "Forgive these children, Lord God!" The scientist says, "Ignorance is indeed bliss!" The poet says:

"The secret of life?

He gives it to her, she gives it to him . . .
But who shall tell of it? Who shall know it?"

That is the story, a very simple story. The beauty of the poem is in the fact that it is an admirable piece of sympathetic imagination. Mr. Oppenheim knows the thought of the priest, the scientist and the poet; he has shown very clearly how these three typical personalities see life. He has known the emotions of the