POETRY AND OUR TIME.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1265, 21 October 1911, Page 9

POETRY AND OUR TIME.

It is a little startling to hear America proclaimed as a land of poets, but tho editor of the "Rundschau Zweier Weiton" so characterised us in a recent address at the University of Berlin. He went on to explain that this esoteric America, wliero religion and poetry dwell, is an undiscovered country, needing missionaries for its own appreciation as well as for tho enlightenment of the rest of the world. But what of that? If a stranger had come to the shores of England in Queen Elizabeth's time, he points out, ho would have heard much of the conspiracies of tho Stuart party, of the discoveries of Sir Waltei Raleigh, and of tho menace—or destruction —of the Spanish Armada. But he would have had to seek long before discovering Shakespeare anil Marlowe in tho obscurity of the Mermaid Tavern. Even more difficult is it, says Mr. Vicreck. to discover the poets of America. He does not go on to assert that our hidden singers are as much greater than Shake.-ryare and Marlowe as they arc more obscure than these older poet's, but contents himself with explaining the naysstory nf their adumbration. In the first place, tho poet who writes Ihglish is hampered by his diction. The English language, unlike t.hc ficrman or the French, differs in its poetic vocabulary from its pros-?. Even an educated man cannot read an English book of verses without consulting AVebster. To this initial obstacle the American pcet adds another in his substitution of philosophic problems for primitive emotions. We betray beauty for ethics. Evon our younger poets do not care for the love motive, but lose their way between theology on the one hand and rhetoric on the other. In spite of all this, we have no less than half a hundred versifiers who snund a note distinctively their own. But Mr. Vicreek is not the only observer who has plucked out the heart of our poetic mystery. The problem is also solved by a writer in tho "North American Review." According to him, the trouble with our poets is that thoy care for nothing but the charming, the decorative, the- trivial. This is the dav of mere prettinws in our poetry,. anil. ho cites j such titles of volumes of verse as "ForgetI me-Nots," "Dreams," "The Man and the Rose," and "Lyric-s from Lotus Land." The contribution of modern poets to the progress of poesy has been a new poetic form indeed, but what h form!—tho "petty lyric," with which they have crowded the corners nf the magazines and the lavender-coloured bindings of tho publishers. A "orry substitute these, thinks this writer, for the grave, authentic voice of the Oracle. If this disagreement of the doctors perplexes the bystander, it cam hardly help tho patient. In one respect, however, the analyst are agreed. Both of them' see a great gulf between American poets.and the.American public. And th-7y are at one h putting p-'rt at least of the responsibility . for its existence upon the poets.', The German-American lecturer finds another «m c o in the turmoil of A'l'eriean life, but hero again he is at sharp variance with his fellowcritic. To the latter, no quality of our age seems more obvious thin the vast KkalNm aid leaping imagination which are the life-breath of its humanitarian ambitions and its material conquests." Hold the prc.-ent generation of poets as inferior as you will —and he does not hold it in the lowest estimation—still, there are the, illustrious poets of the past, whose writings are. easy of acccss to any who carc to seek them. But does one observe any very nnssinnats pilgrimage of modern readers back to these immortals? When one looks around for someone or something to blame for our low estate in literature, whether in por+ry. pro'o, or drama, ho sees three things. There is the writer, there is the piil>li«h»r or the producer, and there is fhe public. And ho distributes his rebukes among these in accordance with his CTafi or his preIf he is a writer, he blames the publishers, until one of them attempts to sell his work of genius; then he concentrates his scorn llnon the stupid public. The publisher cries aloud for writers. Tho public casts its eyes over the assortment of reading matter that it finds in the bookstalls, asks the learned clerk a learned question or two, and makes its choice very much a* a sneculalor makes his. If one is neither a writer nor a publisher, but a critic, unable to decide just where the trouble is, he lays the blame upon the age, which is only a polite way of blaming thorn all. Mr. Ficke, himself a. poet, apparently holds his fellows and the public about equally responsible. The part he thinks the public might play is indicated by his statement that, just as tho romantic school of English literature, meaning Wordsworth, Shel'ey. Byron, and the rest, camo into being to fill a "now and groping need" for a profounder conception of life, so a new school of poets will miraculously appear to formulate for us a new idealism. Whatever truth thore may be in the idea that great events mako great men, it is lamentably truer that the greatest events do not add a cubit to one's real stature. Tliey cannot bring out what is not already there. The writer is much closer to the fact when he sneaks of tho impression that was made by Markham's "The Man with tho Hoe." As lie discriminatingly observes, it is a work of no extraordinary profundity of thought or beauty of language, but it happened to voice a criticism and an ideal that were latent in the popular mind, and so "it touched the hidden spring which controls the prreat flood of popular emotien." Kipling teaches the same lesson. Hailed as the successor of the giants of' the nineteenth century, latterly he is regarded for. what lie was rather than for what he is or may be. Bnt who wi'l blame Markhim for not writing a. "Man with the Hoe" every rear, or ICipl'ng for failing to go on riving the world "Mendalays" and "l?ecessionals." even if it does not seem necessary that he should offer 11s tbird-rafe rhymes instead? The spirit of poef.rv bleweth wVro it lisrteth. An a.,go nf Tvetrv is born and not ma'V as trulv as reefs are. Te> a.sV Tvhy the mass of ponnlp do net read the of the past, if f.hev do ret care for Che-« cf the n re. sent, is beside tho peint. The ElizaWhaes. no more than the Victorians, or the people of any "«». were crir«n to strnvin? far from their own pa.st'ires. Nor were they am- mere responsible or to commenced for having Shakespeare or Tennyson than we to be ecnsi.ror] f o r not having them.—New York "Nation."