A Lesson in Modern Magic

THE confusion of ringing bells, tramping feet, and roll-taking was over. I rose to face my new class in Contemporary Poetry.

As my tongue began the lecture, my mind wandered off on a surreptitious tour of investigation. Who were these people before me? Could I possibly interest them in poetry? Could I weld their different personalities into an enthusiastic whole which would gladly follow me in the pursuit of beauty? Or should I have to drive them before me, with always the strain of feeling certain wandering, reluctant sheep lagging behind?

There in the back row was Arthur Wells. He would do steady, faithful work, I knew, and occasionally might have an idea of his own. I noted other former students of mine, some colorless, one or two unusually bright, several of average ability.

Then my eye fell on the occupant of the first seat on the end of the first row: Mynerd Peterhof! his square Dutch face gazing at mine with determined intensity, his pen and notebook ready to catch each word of wisdom that fell from my lips, the perspiration of despair on his brow as the words ‘Free Verse’ and ‘Polyphonic Prose’ smote his ears.

Inspiration seemed to leave me as I looked at him. Visions of prosy, badly written, albeit most logically developed themes in Freshman English stood before me in his place. Long hours spent in conference over the dangling participle and the comma splice came to mind to dim the sunshine of the spring day. The spectre of his personal essay, which just would n’t be light or amusing or personal no matter how long we struggled over it together, came back to haunt me. Mynerd Peterhof, whose tongue still stumbled over English words, whose broad back and big hands stood him in good stead every summer in the harvest field! Why, oh, why had he chosen to take Contemporary Poetry instead of Physics, and how could I ever plant the germ of poetry in his all-too-solid breast ?

I soon learned why he was taking poetry. His major professor had told him that he needed to develop the literary side of his nature; he was too scientific. So he was going to get this thing called poetry if it killed him. The zeal of the biologist following the contortions of a beetle under a microscope was in his eye as he told me about it.

The course began with that apostle of the New Movement, Amy Lowell. My misgivings at the thought of trying to teach poetry to Mynerd Peterhof gave place to curiosity as to how this conscientious son of Holland from Idaho would take to the unconventional daughter of the Puritans from Massachusetts. In the parlance of the day, he gave the lady the careful ‘once over.’ Every afternoon I would find him in the library doggedly tracking Miss Lowell through Sword Blades and Poppy Seed, trying to understand these lines in ‘ A Lady ‘: —

Or wondering why these lines from ‘Red Slippers’ got into a book of poetry:—

The row of white, sparkling shopfronts is gashed and bleeding, it bleeds red slippers. They spout under the electric light, fluid and fluctuating, a hot rain — and freeze again to red slippers, myriadly multiplied in the mirror side of the window.

He said very little in class. It was not until he handed in a paper on free verse that I read his verdict. He thus disposed of Miss Lowell: ‘Amy Lowell would be a better poet if she knew life better. She needs to mix with a little dirt and hard work. She ought to go through Hell. It would do her good to work in a harvest field. Her best poem is “ Patterns,” written after her lover was killed in the war. She needs more hard knocks like that to give her poems sincerity.’

I could not repress a smile at the picture of Miss Lowell, in coveralls, mourning for a dead lover, and I began to look forward to other literary criticisms from Mynerd Peterhof.

But nothing relieved the gloom of Alfred Kreymborg and Ezra Pound. He could n’t rise to the heights of Kreymborg’s ‘ Parasite ‘: —

Good woman.
Don’t love the man.
Love yourself,
As you have done so exquisitely before.
Like that tortoise-shell cat of yours
Washing away the flies; or are they fleas?
You’ve hurt him again?
Good!

Of Ezra Pound, a compatriot of his from Idaho who wants to conceal the fact, he only said that he agreed heartily with his line from ‘Further Instructions ‘: —

The next assignment was Vachel Lindsay. The class were discussing ‘General William Booth Enters into Heaven.’ We first read the poem in unison, out loud. I had given careful instructions just how each stanza was to be rendered, emphasizing particularly that I would read the last one alone. Lindsay’s directions are: ‘Reverently sung — no instruments.’ I began that pathetic last verse: —

But instead of the silence that I wanted, several voices carelessly broke in, then stopped, and giggled. The reverence was sadly marred by snickers. I looked up from the book in disgust — to meet the serious face of Mynerd Peterhof, his eyes shining with tears. A small girl with protruding eyes and thick ear-bobs piped up that she did n’t like Vachel Lindsay because he wrote about such ugly, disgusting things. ‘I don’t think a poem ought to describe’ — and she quoted: —

I tried to explain that this poem represented the point, of view and the triumphant spirit of the Salvation Army. It was Mynerd Peterhof who came to my rescue. With eyes in which anger had dried the tears, he turned upon the offended maiden with vehement finality in his voice. ‘This poem is worth a dozen of the other kind. A real poem does n’t have to stick to just pretty things,’ — with immense disgust in his emphasis of pretty.

Again the picture of Mynerd struggling over themes came to my mind. But this time the sun kept on shining. As I wondered at the change in him, I remembered Lindsay’s lovely poem, ‘The Chinese Nightingale.’ Mynerd Peterhof was like the Chinaman in that poem, ironing away all night in his hot little laundry, but with the magic nightingale singing songs to him that no one else could hear.

Mynerd, and with him the class, — for I now began mentally to centre the class around him, — liked Robert Frost, as I knew he would. ‘That fellow knows what he ‘s talking about,’ he said, as we were laughing over the discomfited farmer in ‘The Code — Heroics.’ To my surprise it was he who first caught the subtle magic hidden in the first lines of ‘Mending Wall,’ that touch of eeriness in nature of which Frost, the poet-farmer, is always aware.

To a farmer boy it was unnecessary to point out the simple, gripping realism, in ‘After Apple-Picking,’ of lines like

But it was John Masefield who won his allegiance, complete and absolute. In class we shivered and sweated through ‘Dauber,’ and shuddered at his ghastly death on the deck.

‘Is it a tragedy? ‘ I asked the class.

‘No, it ‘s a triumph! ‘ shouted Peterhof. ‘ Dauber failed as a painter but he got there as a man.’

Again there was that gleam in his eye, unknown in the days of Freshman themes, when I read from Masefield’s ‘A Consecration’: —

We swung through the Salt-Water Ballads and listened to the touching music of the Sonnets, and felt the solemn thrill of war in ‘August 1914.’ Then I assigned ‘The Everlasting Mercy,’ and a paper commenting upon it. Here is the criticism that came from Mynerd Peterhof, who a year before, to save his life, could not be interesting or personal.

‘The gripping realism of the “ Everlasting Mercy ” is what impressed me most with the poem. There is none of the doctrine of a poet of a former age who tried to avoid the low, the ugly, and the degrading in life and in life’s sufferings. John Masefield actually saw what he describes in this poem, is the conviction left in the mind of the reader. Perhaps he did not see these particular incidents, but he had lived the life of the sailor; he knew about the alehouses; he knew about the drunken crowd of “ sops” which usually frequent these places; he knew the degradation of the women at these places; he knew about the prize-ring and its participants; and above all he had the desire to picture these things as they actually were. He had undergone many sufferings, and also knew of the battle against religious doubt and of the final victory that he makes his theme in “The Everlasting Mercy.”

‘Masefield paints many beautiful pictures in the plainest of language. He seems to have a fine psychological understanding of people and their actions. His swinging cadence also perhaps aids in picturing the beautiful out of the ordinary. To me the picture of the continual knocking of Christ at the heart of Saul Kane who is the most degenerate among degenerates is beautifully done. At the end the picture of the ploughman, to represent the peace of perfect faith, is the height of simplicity but still exceedingly beautiful.’

I was not surprised to read on his examination paper that John Masefield was his favorite poet of the year.

The class in Contemporary Poetry had assembled for the last day of the term. How different I felt from that first day! How pleasantly tried and familiar those faces in front of me looked.

I quoted to myself. I felt a similar pang to that of Ulysses in saying farewell to them.

Mynerd Peterhof stopped for a moment at the desk after class. ‘I ‘ve decided to go out for that English Essay Contest you told us about,’ he said. ‘I want to write on the New Poetry. Will you help me? And say,’ he went on in an unusual burst of confidence about his personal affairs, ‘I was washing dishes last night down at the boarding-house. A Russian kid who’s been working there in the kitchen for a few weeks asked me if I had anything good to read. I told him I ‘d just gotten a book of poems from the library that I had n’t read yet, One Hundred Lyrics, edited by Sara Teasdale. I wanted the book to help me on my essay. So we read the book together. That Russian kid liked this poem the best. He said it had a big kick in it, and I agreed. Want to hear it ? ‘

With his Dutch tongue still hesitating over some of the syllables, he read this poem, ‘Gifts’: —

This time the shine was in my eyes, and the Chinese Nightingale singing in my heart. The walls of the classroom faded away, and Mynerd Peterhof, the Russian kid, and I were standing in the Elysian fields where poetry is truly loved because it is shared.