Spectra Part 1

Spectra.

by Arthur Ficke and Witter Bynner.

PREFACE

THIS volume is the first compilation of the recent experiments in Spectra. It is the aim of the Spectric group to push the possibilities of poetic expression into a new region,--to attain a fresh brilliance of impression by a method not so wholly different from the methods of Futurist Painting.

An explanation of the term "Spectric" will indicate something of the nature of the technique which it describes. "Spectric" has, in this connection, three separate but closely related meanings. In the first place, it speaks, to the mind, of that process of diffraction by which are disarticulated the several colored and other rays of which light is composed. It indicates our feeling that the theme of a poem is to be regarded as a prism, upon which the colorless white light of infinite existence falls and is broken up into glowing, beautiful, and intelligible hues. In its second sense, the term Spectric relates to the reflex vibrations of physical sight, and suggests the luminous appearance which is seen after exposure of the eye to intense light, and, by a.n.a.logy, the after-colors of the poet's initial vision. In its third sense, Spectric connotes the overtones, adumbrations, or spectres which for the poet haunt all objects both of the seen and the unseen world,--those shadowy projections, sometimes grotesque, which, hovering around the real, give to the real its full ideal significance and its poetic worth. These spectres are the manifold spell and true essence of objects,--like the magic that would inevitably encircle a mirror from the hand of Helen of Troy.

Just as the colors of the rainbow recombine into a white light,--just as the reflex of the eye's picture vividly haunts sleep,--just as the ghosts which surround reality are the vital part of that existence,--so may the Spectric vision, if successful, synthesize, prolong, and at the same time multiply the emotional images of the reader. The rays which the poet has dissociated into colorful beauty should recombine in the reader's brain into a new intensity of unified brilliance. The reflex of the poet's sight should sustain the original perception with a haunting keenness. The insubstantiality of the poet's spectres should touch with a tremulous vibrancy of ultimate fact the reader's sense of the immediate theme.

If the Spectrist wishes to describe a landscape, he will not attempt a map, but will put down those winged emotions, those fantastic a.n.a.logies, which the real scene awakens in his own mind.

In practice this will be found to be the vividest of all modes of communication, as the touch of hands quickens a mere exchange of names.

It may be noted that to Spectra, to these reflected experiences of life, as we perceive them, adheres often a tinge of humor. Occidental art, in contrast to art in the Orient, has until lately been afraid of the flash of humor in its serious works. But a growing acquaintance with Chinese painting is surely liberating in our poets and painters a happy sense of the disproportion of man to his a.s.sumed place in the universe, a sense of the tortuous grotesque vanity of the individual. By this weapon, man helps defend his intuition of the Absolute and of his own obscure but real relation to it.

The Spectric method is as yet in its infancy; and the poems that follow are only experimental efforts toward the desired end. Among them, the most obvious ill.u.s.trations of the method are perhaps _Opus 41_ by Emanuel Morgan and _Opus 76_ by Anne Knish.

Emanuel Morgan, with whom the Spectric theory originated, has found the best expression of his genius in regular metrical forms and rhyme. Anne Knish, on the other hand, has used only free verse. We wish to make it clear that the Spectric manner does hot necessitate the employment of either of these metrical systems to the exclusion of the other.

Although the members of our group would by no means attempt to establish a claim as actual inventors of the Spectric method, yet we can justifiably say that we have for the first time used the method consciously and consistently, and formulated its possibilities by means of elaborate experiment. Among recent poets in English, we have noted few who can be regarded in a sure sense as Spectrists.

ANNE KNISH.

ANNE KNISH _Opus 50_

THE piano lives in a dusk Where rich amber lights Quiver obscurely.

It exists only at twilight; And somewhere afar In the depths of a tropic forest The sun is now setting, and the phoenix looks Mysteriously toward the gold.

I think I must have been born in such a forest, Or in the tangle of a Chinese screen.

There is indigo in this music; This dusk is filled with amber lights; Through the tangled evening of heavy flower-scents Come footfalls That surely I can almost remember.

EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 41_

SPECTRES came dancing up the wind, Trailing down the long gra.s.s, Shooting high, undisciplined, To join the sun and see you pa.s.s . . .

The colors of the pointed gla.s.s.

Under a willow-maze you went Unsaddened . . . But a violet beam Fell on the white face, backward bent, Of a body in a stream.

Into the sun you came again, With sun-red light your feet were shod . . .

And round you stood a ring of feathered men With naked arms acknowledging a G.o.d.

Indigo-birds and squirrels on a tree And orioles flashed in and out . . .

The yellow outline of Eurydice Waited for Orpheus in a black redoubt

With a beaded fern you waved away a gnat . . .

And maidens, hung with vivid beads of green, One of them bearing in her arms an orange cat, Held palms about a queen.

Then you were lost to sight And locking trees became the clouds of you, Till you emerged, the moon upon your shoulder, and the night Bloomed blue.

ANNE KNISH _Opus 76_

YEARS are nothing; Days alone count; These, and the nights.

I have seen the grey stars marching, And the green bubbles in wine, And there are Gothic vaults of sleep.

My cathedral Has one great spire Tawny in the sunlight.

Gargoyles haunt its nave; High up amid its dark-arches Forgotten songs live shadowy.

Gold and sardonyx Deck its altars.

Its mighty roof Is copper rivering with the rain.

Tomorrow lightning swords will come And thunder of cannon.

They will unrivet this roof Of mighty copper.

Before the eyes of my gargoyles, In the sound of my forgotten songs, They will take it.

And as the rain sluices down I shall have to follow my roof into the war.

EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 15_

DESPAIR comes when all comedy Is tame And there is left no tragedy In any name, When die round and wounded breathing Of love upon the breast Is not so glad a sheathing As an old brown vest.

Asparagus is feathery and tall, And the hose lies rotting by the garden-wall.

ANNE KNISH _Opus 118_

IF bathing were a virtue, not a l.u.s.t, I would be dirtiest.

To some, housecleaning is a holy rite.

For myself, houses would be empty But for the golden motes dancing in sunbeams.

Tax-a.s.sessors frequently overlook valuables.

Today they noted my jade.

But my memory of you escaped them.

EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 7_

BEYOND her lips in the dark are a man's feet Composed and dead . . .