The Poets’ Tragedy

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 17, 14 October 1933, Page 20

The Poets’ Tragedy

"So many pools to-day never see their audiences. They write away from their audiences in the solitude of rooms, and then when their writings have been perfected and printed in a book not many people have the faculty of reading poetry from a book, and not many people will find a poem when published. As a consequence, the poet is led to believe that his generation does not Deed him. “The poets of the tradition to which I belong, which began, I suppose, with the poet Gray, who wrote that matchless poem 'The Bard? have felt that they were not wanted at all, and so have plunged into dissipation and died despairingly. They have died in exile like Byron and Shelley. They have died in despair like Keats, thinking that their names were writ In water. They have died in seclusion like Gray, who wrote shortly before his death, ‘Brandy will soon finish what port wine has begun? “They have perished as so many of the later ones have perished, from drink, dissipation, despair and suicide. And all the time their generation was crying out for poetry, looking for any image of poetry that could be there, and not being able to find the poet or the poetry they ended by devising all manner of substitutes for poetry, such as going fast and faster still, all 'n the longing for that excitement that poetry can give you.”