Requiem/Ballads for Sale

by Humbert Wolfe. New York: George H. Doran Co. 1927. 12mo. xvi+105 pp. $1.50.

by Amy Lowell. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1927. 12mo. xiv+309 pp. $2.25.

THE Atlantic may felicitate itself on having been among the early magazines to welcome the work of Humbert Wolfe. The promise of that rather astonishing poem, ‘Tidings of the Devil,’ is quite fulfilled in the present volume. Whether the fuel of Mr. Wolfe’s verse be satire, philosophy, or religious conviction, it has been kindled and transmuted into steady incandescence by the sacred flame. In a generation which gropes self-consciously for the revealing word, and often mistakes its defiantly recorded thrill of nerve for a universal emotion, there is refreshment in verse like this. Sometimes the verse is obscure, but the obscurity is ‘a deep and dazzling darkness,’ not a riddle. It is a darkness in which definite meanings are shrouded; and one recalls that Browning, who certainly presents no difficulty to-day except that at his worst he is smothered in his own rush of speech, was deemed obscure twenty-five years ago.

Mr. Wolfe is original, both in form and in substance. His technique, sophisticated and interesting, is of to-morrow; but the associations it arouses are drawn from the riches of our heritage. Evincing close intimacy with the workmanship of certain masters, it is yet full of grave new haunting beauty.

As to substance, the book is made up of independent lyrics, but these lyrics form a sequence, of which the closely knit unity becomes apparent as one rereads; and this is a volume to read many times. It deals with Losers and Winners — the Losers, ever presenting their apologia to the fallen archangels, Lucifer and Azrael (let us never mention their harsher names, of Sin and Death); the Winners, who do not reject or pervert life, but become its recipients and its glorious revealers. And the Losers are the common man and woman, the soldier, the harlot, the huckster, the anarchist, and, in bitter climax, the respectable woman, while the Winners are the lovers, the builders, the teachers, the saints, and the uncommon man and woman; but at the end, Losers and Winners alike, but especially the Losers, are shown as those who

. . . Having died,
Of life eternal are the Bridegroom and the Bride.

There is scant space to mention detail. But attention may be called to the variety of the poems, even of those written in uniform metre; to the wild ultimate negation expressed in ‘The Anarchist,’ to the relentless tenderness of ‘The Harlot,’ to the utter piteousness of ‘The Soldier — ‘Be very gentle, God, to soldiers.’ He is viewed at the present moment when, thank God, heroism manifest in destruction begins to be discredited, while yet the defense of its sacrificial passion can throb with actuality.

These are the Losers —and perhaps they are rendered with deeper insight than the Winners. But at long last the book conveys apprehension of life in its wholeness — an apprehension broad, disillusioned, yet unfaltering in faith. Mr. Wolfe’s genius is at once satirical and mystical — a rare combination. His use of Christian motifs is startlingly fresh; they are used, not for æsthetic effect, after a fashion long current, but for their unique power to meet human need. The book is a vision of life as seen by a new generation, emerging out of a great darkness into what we trust shall prove a more assured if sadder light than that of ages past.

There are other poets than Mr. Wolfe, poets of an earlier stage in transition — and here is another posthumous volume by Amy Lowell. It is to be welcomed. Yet alas! As one turns to this book from the other, the adjective which seems to express her central quality is rather a terrible one to apply to poetry. These verses are so clever! Now Mr. Wolfe is clever, too, when one comes to think of it, but the cleverness is embedded so deep in the imaginative passion that it does not obtrude itself. With Miss Lowell it does. It imparts at times an unpleasant self-awareness to the verse, which inhibits our surrender to it. Moreover, her work as a whole lacks any breadth or unity of vision. Is it cruel to accept her own statement?

Double-flowering trees bear no fruit, they say,
And I have many blossoms
With petals shrewdly whirled about an empty centre.
White as paper, falling at a whiff of wind.

Yet, when these severe things are said, there is much in her work to appreciate and enjoy. For one thing, the amazing versatility which can follow the weird romantic note of ‘Apotheosis’ by the dainty strain of ‘Behind Time,’ and the Other eighteenth-century studies, or can deftly render the quality of Pueblo Indians or Chinese. Then there is the admirable phrase-making (one longs to quote), the occasional fine enthusiasm, and — be it said swiftly, eagerly — something now and then which quite transcends cleverness. Intensity enough is here, albeit of the artist rather than the woman. Miss Lowell is at her most successful when she blends the sardonic and the romantic, as Mr. Wolfe when he blends the sardonic and the mystical. And again she is at her best, despite her delightful range of sensibility, when she treats of her own New England.

VIDA D. SCUDDER