MODERNIST POETRY.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 224, 21 September 1929, Page 1 (Supplement)

MODERNIST POETRY.

. " 1 AN EXPLANATION. ! I NOT A BAD JOKE. ! ' (By C. R. STRAUBEL.) Mention modem poetry to the average . literate person, and he thinks of such names as Brooke, Flecker and Mcsefield. Who does not know Brooke's "The Dead," or Masefteld's "Sea Fever," or Yeats' "Innisfree"? Mention modernist poetry to him and he either gapes blankly, not knowing what you mean, or says, "Oh, you mean that free verse •Stuff?"—implying that free verse is' a sort of childishness that won't deceive practical people. When such poetry does- appear in our New Zealand papers, it is cited either as a horrible example of what wrong thinking or a craze for originality will lead a man to, or as a bad joke—the joke being on the author, and on those who pretend to see any value in it. An old French proverb has it that "Tout savoir est tout pardonner," and if we came veil partly realise what such writers as T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, F, ,S., Flint,' E. E.Cumniings, the Sitwells and D. IT. Lawrence are aiming at, we shall cease to be revolted by the apparent eccentricities of their work. We need to cultivate a catholicity of taste. There Is no need to quote examples of tbe work of, the older school—we all have our favourites. But here - is a modernist poem —it appeared in "Cambridge Poetry, 1929"— and its author is comparatively unknown: "THOUGHT." ■ , , Jn the silence of this room it is, easy to catch the chequered sunlight under green boughs, to walk .. t crowned with the inevitable spring; easy to match « the thick air. and grey curtain pending over the wet loam of the misted fields. Silently x wander down long alleys of thought and suddenly at corners meet you— as if a lovely phrase had fallen in the furrowed plow of my fields. •t • Tou pass and touch my consciousness, waking a song in the silence breaking like sunlight through remembered trees. / As a shower you touch . ' the wandered fields of my thought with silver — ■ the long fields as a sudden shower ■ that goes over, that goes over. , In this there is an entirely strange , method of presentation, though not au extreme method. There is no rhyme, 1 nothing of which We can say, "This is ■; an iambic line, this a trochaic." There , is no stereotyped use of "poetical words, nothing that fits the preconceived ; standards of a reader brought up on ; Alfred; Lord Tennyson, on "The Sentimental Bloke," of 011 the deified ihomas Bracken. Yet there is beauty, and : beauty that is possible only because of the particular form employed. Influence of Tradition. To one accustomed solely to verse in traditional forms, this must seem a trifle meaningless, even ugly. Such a reaction is natural, for we like things because we have become used to them, or because it initially suggested to us that we ought to like them. Sav-age-peoples who have never tasted salt —and such peoples exist —cannot change , their habits and like it at' once. If they , never come into contact with people who , like salt, they will never receive "the : suggestion that they too should like it and will never acquire a taste for it. It is the same in matters of art and 1 literature. Our present tastes have been forming since childhood, have been influenced by this and that in our en- , vironment. So that we cannot enjoy any work that does not approximate to already familiar forms. We cannot acquire a liking for chamber music or for Japanese colour prints in a day, and we cannot expect to like modernist poetry the first time we encounter it. One thing, however, we must remember —we are not entitled to condemn it because we do not understand it. The reviewers of a hundred years ago, when the poems of Treats came to their notice, fell sn him and rent him,'* saying that his work was not poetry but mere childishness. It could not seem otherwise to those who had been brought up on the canons of the school of-Pope. Keats was something., strange inthat galley. There is an explanation for this new technique. Words in poetry have a double significance. Besides, their literal meaning they have an association value—a host of ideas which centre.

about the keynote, and,.more important, a subtle flavour which has nothing to do with the literal meaning. It is this indefinable something which is the substance of poetry—the- "meaning" is incidental. Acting on this, the modernists adopt a more significant use of words, and consequently, except in special instances, object, to the use of rhyme. Milton also objected to the barbarous tinkling of like sounds. Other things being equal, a word at the end of a line is-more forceful thau n word anywhere else. If the end word is rhymed its force is certainly added, to, but attention is drawn to the technique of rhyming—arid anything that makes technique unduly prominent is bad art. The modernists, desiring above all things to avoid artificiality, are sparing in the use of rhyme. As Thought Flows. This new poetry flows as thought flows —with 110 arbitrary interruptions of capitals, at,the beginning of each line, and without lines of regular length, each ending Avith a rhyme. Thought runs naturally in groups of words, in phrasings of unequal length. Our thought processes are never straightforward. Our minds play with words, and juggle with one idea incoherently before going on to the next. We think in a series of jerks. To represent this process literally would be to inflict a mass of useless material upon the reader. To recast ideas into a form such as the heroic couplet or the sonnet may be interesting as a feat of legerdemain, but it is'not art. The right line for poetry lies between 'the two. Some of the modei-riists have gone astray here, but most of them manage to steer between the Scylla of, Swinburne and the Charybdis of Gertrude Stein. In: rpadiiig ' modernist poetry, then, these, things a»? necessary: Fii*t, do not demand that each line or word shall have a literal meaning; secondly, do not become impatient with ".the ' novelty, of it; thirdly, read the whole poem several times before passing judgment. , Remember, finally,, as Rebecca West remarks, that' '-'the artist in the act of creation is satisfying himself, and the public is' permitted ' merely to peer over his shoulder." , •' '