A Critical Fable - The Poets of the Day; An Account of the Times
by a Poker of Fun, , O.S., A. 1. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1922. 12mo. x+99 pp. $1.00.
A Critical Fable well shows the content. But why, when you have a new case to present, should you run such a pitiful risk of disbarment by clothing your thoughts in a man’s cast-off garment? Why should one resort to procedure so slavish, whose rhymes are so free and whose wit is so lavish? There may be a form for the song or the sonnet; but you need not do this because Lowell has done it. So I would advise your exchanging your damn metre for something more finished, if only pentameter.
Now as to the poets and all that he says of them, our author quite clearly has studied the ways of them. If disposed to find fault, I should call him diffuse. And at times, I admit, I cry out, ‘What the deuce does he mean by so madly exposing a fella to tempests of words without any umbrella!’ Yet again, he can hammer the nail on the head, and some things that he says some consider well said; as when he makes wild waves and green trees and wind say such very nice speeches about Vachel Lindsay, or subtly implies that a glittering vowel and clattering consonant make up Miss Lowell. But I cannot but think him a little bit lost in the subtle retreats and resources of Frost, and whether he well compares Sandburg to Gog or ill, those may say who distinguish divine verse from doggerel. As for some whom he idly takes down from the shelf, I freely confess, I ’ve not read them myself.
But what strikes me the most is the creature’s temerity in exposing himself to such mad folks’ severity: before you adventure the critical tomahawk, you should make very sure that you know a hen from a hawk. And I seem to behold a mad swarm of bards swooping, with rhyming and chiming and hissing and whooping — those he’s praised, those he’s blamed in a fierce flock together, and those he’s not mentioned much fiercer than either. They haul him and maul him and tear him and share him, with even the gentlest reluctant to spare him. He will have to take refuge in morphine or Morpheus, while his limbs are flung wide as the relics of Orpheus,
And as to his genius, I’m so much his debtor, I wonder sometimes why he did n’t do better. Lowell’s rollicking lines flow with exquisite ease; but this person’s do pretty much as they please. In fact, when I read him, I’m tempted to say, it’s a pure case of Pegasus running away. With his mane streaming wide and his golden heels flying, his rider scarce knows if he’s living or dying. He shoots through the zodiac, justles the Bull, gives the Virgin’s fine raiment a twitch and a pull, baits the Ram to despair, leaves the Crab with a carom, makes a rush at the Twins very certain to scare ’em, twists the orderly heavens insanely about, and then with a flare and a tumble goes out, like a traveler who comes in the dark to a bad ford, and plunges forever.
GAMALIEL BRADFORD.