Chapter 22. Poets And Playwrights

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_ CHAPTER XXII. POETS AND PLAYWRIGHTS

=i=

I have to tell about a number of poets and, regarding poets, I agree with a very clever woman I know who declares that poetry is the most personal of the arts and who further says that it is manifestly inadequate to talk about a poet's work without giving a sample of his poetry. So, generally, I shall quote one of the shorter poems or a passage from a longer poem.

John Dos Passos, known for Three Soldiers and for Rosinante to the Road Again, will be still more variously known to those who read his book of verse, A Pushcart at the Curb. This book bears a relation to Rosinante, the contents grouping themselves under these general headings:

Winter in Castile
Nights by Bassano
Translations from the Spanish of Antonio Machado
Vagones de Tercera
Quai de la Tournelle
Of Foreign Travel
Phases of the Moon

I will select for quotation the sixth or final poem dedicated to A. K. McC. from the section entitled "Quai de la Tournelle,"

This is a garden
where through the russet mist of clustered trees
and strewn November leaves,
they crunch with vainglorious heels
of ancient vermilion
the dry dead of spent summer's greens,
and stalk with mincing sceptic steps,
and sound of snuffboxes snapping
to the capping of an epigram,
in fluffy attar-scented wigs ...
the exquisite Augustans.

Christopher Morley is too well-known as a poet to require any explicit account in this place. I shall remind you of the pleasure of reading him by quoting the "Song For a Little House" from his book, The Rocking Horse, and also a short verse from his Translations from the Chinese.

I'm glad our house is a little house,
Not too tall nor too wide:
I'm glad the hovering butterflies
Feel free to come inside.

Our little house is a friendly house,
It is not shy or vain;
It gossips with the talking trees,
And makes friends with the rain.

And quick leaves cast a shimmer of green,
Against our whited walls,
And in the phlox, the courteous bees,
Are paying duty calls.

But there is a different temper--or, if you like, tempering--to the verse in Translations from the Chinese. I quote "A National Frailty":

The American people
Were put into the world
To assist foreign lecturers.
When I visited them
They filled crowded halls
To hear me tell them Great Truths
Which they might as well have read
In their own prophet Thoreau.
They paid me, for this,
Three hundred dollars a night,
And ten of their mandarins
Invited me to visit at Newport.
My agent told me
If I would wear Chinese costume on the platform
It would be five hundred.

In speaking of the late Joyce Kilmer, the temptation is inescapable to quote his "Trees"; after all, it is his best known and best loved poem--in certain moments it is his best poem! But instead, I will desert his volume, Trees and Other Poems, and from his other book, Main Street and Other Poems, I will quote the first two stanzas of Kilmer's "Houses"--a poem written for his wife:

When you shall die and to the sky
Serenely, delicately go,
Saint Peter, when he sees you there,
Will clash his keys and say:
"Now talk to her, Sir Christopher!
And hurry, Michelangelo!
She wants to play at building,
And you've got to help her play!"

Every architect will help erect
A palace on a lawn of cloud,
With rainbow beams and a sunset roof,
And a level star-tiled floor;
And at your will you may use the skill
Of this gay angelic crowd,
When a house is made you will throw it down,
And they'll build you twenty more.

Mrs. Kilmer is the author of two volumes of verse which have sold rather more than John Masefield usually sells--at least, until the publication of Reynard the Fox. Candles That Burn created her audience and Vigils has been that audience's renewed delight. From Vigils I take the poem "The Touch of Tears." In it "Michael" is, of course, her own son:

Michael walks in autumn leaves,
Rustling leaves and fading grasses,
And his little music-box
Tinkles faintly as he passes.
It's a gay and jaunty tune
If the hands that play were clever:
Michael plays it like a dirge,
Moaning on and on forever.

While his happy eyes grow big,
Big and innocent and soulful,
Wistful, halting little notes
Rise, unutterably doleful,
Telling of all childish griefs--
Baffled babies sob forsaken,
Birds fly off and bubbles burst,
Kittens sleep and will not waken.

Michael, it's the touch of tears.
Though you sing for very gladness,
Others will not see your mirth;
They will mourn your fancied sadness.
Though you laugh at them in scorn,
Show your happy heart for token,
Michael, you'll protest in vain--
They will swear your heart is broken!

I think I have said elsewhere that J. C. Squire prefers his serious poems to those parodies of which he is such an admitted master. It seems only decent to defer, in this place, to the author's own feeling in the matter. Mr. Squire is the author of The Birds and Other Poems and Poems: Second Series. My present choice is the beginning and the close of the poem, "Harlequin"--which is in both books:

Moonlit woodland, veils of green,
Caves of empty dark between;
Veils of green from rounded arms
Drooping, that the moonlight charms:
Tranced the trees, grass beneath
Silent ...
Like a stealthy breath,
Mask and wand and silver skin
Sudden enters Harlequin.

Hist! Hist! Watch him go,
Leaping limb and pointing toe,
Slender arms that float and flow,
Curving wand above, below;
Flying, gliding, changing feet;
Onset merging in retreat.

Not a shadow of sound there is
But his motion's gentle hiss,
Till one fluent arm and hand
Suddenly circles, and the wand
Taps a bough far overhead,
"Crack," and then all noise is dead.
For he halts, and for a space
Stands erect with upward face,
Taut and tense to the white
Message of the Moon's light.

He was listening; he was there;
Flash! he went. To the air
He a waiting ear had bent,
Silent; but before he went
Something somewhere else to seek,
He moved his lips as though to speak.

And we wait, and in vain,
For he will not come again.
Earth, grass, wood, and air,
As we stare, and we stare,
Which that fierce life did hold,
Tired, dim, void, cold.

Milton Raison is a young writer, known especially to readers of The Bookman, whose verse has appeared in various magazines. A Russian, Milton Raison went to sea as a boy--he is scarcely more than a boy now. His first book of verse, Spindrift, carries a preface by William McFee. I quote:

"There is a Latin sharpness of mentality manifested in these clearly, sardonically etched portraits of a ship's crew. The whimsical humour revealed in final lines is a portent, in the present writer's opinion, of a talent which will probably come to maturity in a very different field. Indeed it may be, though it is too early to dogmatise, that these poems are but the early efflorescence of a gift for vigorous prose narrative.

"Mr. Milton Raison has settled for himself, with engaging promptitude, that a seafaring career provides the inspiration he craves. The influence of Masefield is strong upon him, and some of his verses are plainly derivative. As already hinted, it is too early to say definitely how this plan will succeed. In his diary, kept while on a voyage to South America, a document remarkable for its descriptive power and a certain crude and virginal candour, one may discover an embryo novelist struggling with the inevitable limitations of youth. But in his simple and naive poems, whether they give us some bizarre and catastrophic picture of seamen, or depict the charming emotions of a sensitive adolescence, there is a passion for experiment and humility of intellect which promises well enough for a young man in his teens."

I find it particularly difficult to choose a poem for citation from this book. Perhaps I shall do as well as I can, with only space to quote one poem, if I give you "Vision":

Have I forgotten beauty, and the pang
Of sheer delight in perfect visioning?
Have I forgotten how the spirit sang
When shattered breakers sprayed their ocean-tang
To ease the blows with which the great cliffs rang?
Have I forgotten how the fond stars fling
Their naked children to the faery ring
Of some dark pool, and watch them play and sing
In silent silver chords I too could hear?
Or smile to see a starlet shake with fear
Whenever winds disturbed the lake's repose,
Or when in mocking mood they form in rows,
And stare up at their parents--so sedate--
Then break up laughing 'neath a ripple's weight?

It seems as if, The First Person Singular having been published, more people now know William Rose Benet as a novelist than as a poet. I cannot help feeling that to be something of a pity. I am not going to quote one of Mr. Benet's poems--indeed all his best work is in quite long and semi-narrative verse--but I will give you what Don Marquis was inspired to write after reading Benet's Moons of Grandeur. On looking at it again, I see that Mr. Marquis has quoted eight lines, so you shall have your taste of William Rose Benet, the poet, after all!

"Some day, just to please ourself, we intend to make a compilation of poems that we love best; the ones that we turn to again and again. There will be in the volume the six odes of Keats, Shelley's 'Adonais'; Wordsworth's 'Intimations of Immortality'; Milton's 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso'; William Rose Benet's 'Man Possessed' and very little else.

"We don't 'defend' these poems ... no doubt they are all of them quite indefensible, in the light of certain special poetic revelations of the last few years ... and we have no particular theories about them; we merely yield ourself to them, and they transport us; we are careless of reason in the matter, for they cast a spell upon us. We do not mean to say that we are in the category with the person who says: 'I don't know anything about art, but I know what I like'--On the contrary, we know exactly why we like these things, although we don't intend to take the trouble to tell you now.

"William Rose Benet has published another book of poems, Moons of Grandeur. Here is a stanza picked up at random--it happens to be the opening stanza of 'Gaspara Stampa'--which shows the lyric quality of the verse:

"Like flame, like wine, across the still lagoon,
The colours of the sunset stream.
Spectral in heaven as climbs the frail veiled moon
So climbs my dream.
Out of the heart's eternal torture fire
No eastern phoenix risen--
Only the naked soul, spent with desire,
Bursts its prison.

"Was Benet ever in Italy? No matter ... he has Italy in him, in his heart and brain. Italy and Egypt and every other country that was ever warmed by the sun of beauty and shone on by the stars of romance. For the poems in this book are woven of the stuff of sheer romance. There is nothing else in the world as depressing as a romantic poem that doesn't 'get there.' And to us, at least, there is nothing as thrilling as the authentic voice of romance, the genuine utterance of the soul that walks in communion with beauty. Moons of Grandeur is a ringing bell and a glimmering tapestry and a draught of sparkling wine.

"A certain rich intricacy of pattern distinguishes the physical body of Benet's art; when he chooses he can use words as if they were the jewelled particles of a mosaic; familiar words, with his handling, become 'something rich and strange.' Of the spiritual content of his poems, we can say nothing adequate, because there is not much that can be said of spirit; either it is there and you feel it, and it works upon you, or it is not there. There are very few people writing verse today who have the power to charm us and enchant us and carry us away with them as Benet can. He has found the horse with wings."

The Bookman Anthology of Verse (1922), edited by John Farrar, editor of The Bookman, is an altogether extraordinary anthology to be made up from the poets contributing to a single magazine in eighteen consecutive months. Among those who are represented are: Franklin P. Adams, Karle Wilson Baker, Maxwell Bodenheim, Hilda Conkling, John Dos Passos, Zona Gale, D. H. Lawrence, Amy Lowell, David Morton, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Carl Sandburg, Siegfried Sassoon, Sara Teasdale, Louis and Jean Starr Untermeyer, and Elinor Wylie.

Mr. Farrar has written short introductions to the example (or examples) of the work of each poet. In his general preface he says:

"Where most anthologies of poetry are collected for the purpose of giving pleasure by means of the verses themselves, I have tried here to give you something of the joy to be found in securing manuscripts, in attempting to understand current poetry by a broadening of taste to match broadening literary tendencies; and, perhaps most important of all, to present you to the poets themselves as I know them by actual meeting or correspondence."

I will choose what Mr. Farrar says about Hilda Conkling, prefacing her poem "Lonely Song"; and then I will quote the poem:

"A shy, but normal little girl, twelve years old now, nine when her first volume of verses appeared, Hilda Conkling is not so much the infant prodigy as a clear proof that the child mind, before the precious spark is destroyed, possesses both vision and the ability to express it in natural and beautiful rhythm. Grace Hazard Conkling, herself a poet, is Hilda's mother. They live at Northampton, Massachusetts, in the academic atmosphere of Smith College where those who know the little girl say that she enjoys sliding down a cellar stairway quite as much as she does talking of elves and gnomes. She was born in New York State, so that she is distinctly of the East. The rhythms which she uses to express her ideas are the result both of her own moods, which are often crystal-clear in their delicate imagery, and of the fact that from time to time, when she was first able to listen, her mother read aloud to her. In fact, her first poems were made before she, herself, could write them down. The speculation as to what she will do when she grows to womanhood is a common one. Is it important? A childhood filled with beauty is something to have achieved."

Bend low, blue sky,
Touch my forehead;
You look cool ... bend down ...

Flow about me in your blueness and coolness,
Be thistledown, be flowers,
Be all the songs I have not yet sung.

Laugh at me, sky!
Put a cap of cloud on my head ...
Blow it off with your blue winds;
Give me a feeling of your laughter
Beyond cloud and wind!
I need to have you laugh at me
As though you liked me a little.

This has been, as I meant it to be, a wholly serious chapter; but at the end I find I cannot stop without speaking of Keith Preston. No one who reads the Chicago Daily News fails to know Keith Preston's delightful humour and "needle-tipped satire." And his book, Splinters, contains all sorts of good things of which I can give you, alas, only some inadequate (because solitary) sample. Yet, anyway, here is his "Ode to Common Sense":

Spirit or demon, Common Sense!
Seen seldom by us mortals dense,
Come, sprite, inform, inhabit me
And teach me art and poetry.

Teach me to chuckle, sly as you,
At gods that now I truckle to,
To doubt the New Republic's bent,
And jeer each bookish Supplement.

Now, like a thief, you come and flit,
You call so seldom, Mother Wit!
Remember? Once when you stood by
I found a Dreiser novel dry.

One day when I was reading hard--
What? Amy Lowell, godlike bard!
You peeped and then at what you saw
Gave one Gargantuan guffaw.

Spirit or demon, coarse or rude,
(Sometimes I think you must be stewed)
Brute that you are, I love your powers,
But,--drop in after office hours!

Yes, Common Sense, be mine, I ask,
But still respect my critic's task;
Molest me not when I'm employed
With psychics, sex, vers libre, or Freud.

=ii=

The matter of playwrights is much more difficult than that of poets! A play cannot, as a rule, be satisfactorily quoted from. In the case of a play which is to be staged there are terrible objections (on the part of the producer) to any excerpts at all appearing in advance. The publication of the text of a play is hedged about by all manner of difficulties, copyrights, warnings and solemn notifications. As I write, it is expected that A. H. Woods, the producer of plays, will stage at the Times Square Theatre, New York, probably in September, 1922, the new play by W. Somerset Maugham, East of Suez. Pauline Frederick is expected to assume the principal role. Mr. Maugham's play will be published when it has been produced, or, if the theatre plans suffer one of those changes to which all theatres are subject, will be published anyhow! Shall we say that the setting is Chinese, and that the characters are Europeans, and that Mr. Maugham has again shown his peculiar skill in the delineation of the white man in contact with an alien civilisation? We shall say so. And--never mind! A sure production of the play for the Fireside Theatre is hereby guaranteed. The Fireside Theatre, blessed institution, has certain merits. The actors are always ideal and the performance always begins on time, as a letter to the New York Times has pointed out.

Arnold Bennett has written a lot of plays; The Love Match is merely the latest of them. If I cannot very well quote a scene from The Love Match,--on the grounds of length and possible unintelligibility apart from the rest of the drama--I can give you, I think, an idea of the wit of the dialogue:

RUSS (with calm and disdainful resentment). You're angry with me now.

NINA (hurt). Indeed I'm not. Why should I be angry? Do you suppose I mind who sends you flowers?

RUSS. No, I don't. That's not the reason. You're angry with me because you came in here tonight, after saying positively you wouldn't come, and I didn't happen to be waiting for you.

NINA. Hugh, you're ridiculous.

RUSS. Of course I am. That's not the reason. You took me against my will to that footling hospital ball last night, and I only got three hours' sleep instead of six, and you're angry with me because I yawned after you kissed me.

NINA. You're too utterly absurd!

RUSS. Of course I am. That's not the reason, either. The real reason is (firmly) you're angry with me because you clean forgot it was my birthday today. That's why you're angry with me.

NINA. Well, I think you might have reminded me....

NINA. I like sitting on the carpet.

(She reclines at his feet.) I wonder why women nowadays are so fond of the floor.

RUSS. Because they're oriental, of course.

NINA. But I'm not oriental, Hughie! (Looking at him with loving passion.) Am I?

RUSS. That's the Eastern question.

NINA. But you like it, don't you?

RUSS. Every man has a private longing to live in the East.

NINA. But not harems and things?

RUSS. Well--within reason....

NINA. What do you think of me? I'm always dying to know, and I'm never sure.

RUSS. What do you think of me?

NINA. I think you're magnificent and terrible and ruthless.

RUSS (with amicable sincerity). Oh, no, I'm not. But you are.

NINA. How? When? When was I ruthless last?

RUSS. You're always ruthless in your appetite for life. You want to taste everything, enjoy all the sensations there are. This evening you like intensely to sit very quiet on the floor; but last night you were mad about dancing and eating and drinking. You couldn't be still. Tomorrow night it'll be something else. There's no end to what you want, and what you want tremendously, and what you've jolly well got to have. You aren't a woman. You're a hundred women.

NINA. Oh! Hughie. How well you understand!

RUSS. Yes, don't I?

NINA (tenderly). Do I make you very unhappy? Hughie, you mustn't tell me I make you unhappy. I couldn't bear it.

RUSS. Then I won't.

NINA. But do I?

RUSS. Let's say you cause a certain amount of disturbance sometimes.

NINA. But you like me to be as I am, don't you?

RUSS. Yes.

NINA. You wouldn't have me altered?

RUSS. Can't alter a climate.

NINA. You don't know how much I want to be perfect for you.

RUSS. You know my ruthless rule, "The best is good enough; chuck everything else into the street." Have I ever, on any single occasion, chucked you into the street?

NINA. But I want to be more perfect.

RUSS. Why do women always hanker after the impossible?

J. Hartley Manners is the husband of Laurette Taylor and the author of plays in some of which she appears. His drama The Harp of Life has as its theme the love of two women, his mother and a courtesan, for a nineteen-year-old boy, and their willing self-sacrifice that he may go forward unbroken and unsmirched. The interesting thing, aside from the strength of the play and its vivid study of adolescence, is the portrait of the mother. And now his play, The National Anthem, which caused so much discussion, is procurable in book form.

Here I have been talking about East of Suez and The Love Match and have said nothing about The Circle or Milestones! But I suppose everyone knows that The Circle is by Maugham and was markedly successful when it was produced in New York; and surely everyone must know that Milestones is by Arnold Bennett and Edward Knoblauch--one of the great plays of the last quarter century. I must take a moment to speak of Sidney Howard's four act play, Swords. I think the best thing to do is to give what Kenneth Macgowan, an exceptionally able critic of the drama, said about the play:

"Swords is as remarkable a play as America has ever produced. It is a drama of action on a par with The Jest, fused with the ecstasy of inspiration and the mysticism of the spirit and the body of woman. It sets Ghibelline and Guelph, Pope and Emperor, two nobles and a dog of the gutters fighting for a lady of strange and extraordinary beauty who is the bride of one noble and the hostage of the other. With the passions, the cruelties, and spiritual vision of the middle ages to build upon Swords sweeps upward to a scene of sudden, flashing conflict shot with the mystic and triumphant ecstasy which emanates from this glorious woman."

American lovers of the drama have a special interest in the two volumes of The Plays of Hubert Henry Davies. At the time of his first success Mr. Davies was working in San Francisco, whither he had come from England. It was Frohman who made him an offer that brought him to New York and began the series of productions which ended only with his death in 1917 in Paris. These two volumes, very beautiful examples of fine bookmaking, contain the successes: Cousin Kate, Captain Drew on Leave, and The Mollusc. Among the other plays included are: A Single Man, Doormats, Outcasts, Mrs. Gorringe's Necklace, and Lady Epping's Lawsuit. Hugh Walpole has contributed a very touching introduction. _

Read next: Chapter 23. The Bookman Foundation And The Bookman

Read previous: Chapter 21. The Confessions Of A Well-Meaning Young Man, Stephen Mckenna

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