American Poetry, 1922 Part 1

American Poetry, 1922.

by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Robert Frost.

A FOREWORD

When the first Miscellany of American Poetry appeared in 1920, innumerable were the questions asked by both readers and reviewers of publishers and contributors alike. The modest note on the jacket appeared to satisfy no one. The volume purported to have no editor, yet a collection without an editor was p.r.o.nounced preposterous. It was obviously not the organ of a school, yet it did not seem to have been compiled to exploit any particular phase of American life; neither Nature, Love, Patriotism, Propaganda, nor Philosophy could be acclaimed as its reason for being, and it was certainly not intended, as has been so frequent of late, to bring a cheerful absence of mind to the world-weary during an unoccupied ten minutes. Again, it was exclusive not inclusive, since its object was, evidently, not the meritorious if impossible one of attempting to be a compendium of present-day American verse.

But the publisher's note had stated one thing quite clearly, that the Miscellany was to be a biennial. Two years have pa.s.sed, and with the second volume it has seemed best to state at once the reasons which actuated its contributors to join in such a venture.

In the first place, the plan of the _Miscellany_ is frankly imitative.

For some years now there has been published in England an anthology ent.i.tled Georgian Poetry. The Miscellany is intended to be an American companion to that publication. The dissimilarities of temperament, range and choice of subjects are manifest, but the outstanding difference is this: _Georgian Poetry_ has an editor, and the poems it contains may be taken as that editor's reaction to the poetry of the day. The _Miscellany_, on the other hand, has no editor; it is no one person's choice which forms it; it is not an attempt to throw into relief any particular group or stress any particular tendency. It does disclose the most recent work of certain representative figures in contemporary American literature. The poets who appear here have come together by mutual accord and, although they may invite others to join them in subsequent volumes as circ.u.mstance dictates, each one stands (as all newcomers also must stand) as the exponent of fresh and strikingly diverse qualities in our native poetry. It is as if a dozen unacademic painters, separated by temperament and distance, were to arrange to have an exhibition every two years of their latest work. They would not pretend that they were the only painters worthy of a public showing; they would maintain that their work was, generally speaking, most interesting to one another. Their gallery would necessarily be limited; but it would be flexible enough to admit, with every fresh exhibit, three or four new members who had achieved an importance and an idiom of their own. This is just what the original contributors to the _Miscellany_ have done.

The newcomers--H. D., Alfred Kreymborg, and Edna St. Vincent Millay--have taken their places with the same absence of judge or jury that marks any "society of independents." There is no hanging committee; no organizer of "position." Two years ago the alphabet determined the arrangement; this time seniority has been the sole arbiter of precedence. Furthermore--and this can not be too often repeated--there has been no editor. To be painstakingly precise, each contributor has been his own editor. As such, he has chosen his own selections and determined the order in which they are to be printed, but he has had no authority over either the choice or grouping of his fellow exhibitors'

contributions. To one of the members has been delegated the merely mechanical labors of a.s.sembling, proof-reading, and seeing the volume through the press. The absence of E. A. Robinson from this year's _Miscellany_ is a source of regret not only to all the contributors but to the poet himself. Mr. Robinson has written nothing since his Collected Poems with the exception of a long poem--a volume in itself--but he hopes to appear in any subsequent collection.

It should be added that this is not a haphazard anthology of picked-over poetry. The poems that follow are new. They are new not only in the sense that (with two exceptions) they cannot be found in book form, but most of them have never previously been published. Certain of the selections have appeared in recent magazines and these are reprinted by permission of _The Century_, _The Yale Review_, _Poetry: A Magazine of Verse_, _The New Republic_, _Harper's_, _Scribner's_, _The Bookman_, _The Freeman_, _Broom_, _The Dial_, _The Atlantic Monthly_, _Farm and Fireside_, _The Measure_, and _The Literary Review_. Vachel Lindsay's "I Know All This When Gipsy Fiddles Cry" is a revised version of the poem of that name which was printed in _The Enchanted Years_.

AMY LOWELL

LILACS

Lilacs, False blue, White, Purple, Color of lilac, Your great puffs of flowers Are everywhere in this my New England.

Among your heart-shaped leaves Orange orioles hop like music-box birds and sing Their little weak soft songs; In the crooks of your branches The bright eyes of song sparrows sitting on spotted eggs Peer restlessly through the light and shadow Of all Springs.

Lilacs in dooryards Holding quiet conversations with an early moon; Lilacs watching a deserted house Settling sideways into the gra.s.s of an old road; Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom Above a cellar dug into a hill.

You are everywhere.

You were everywhere.

You tapped the window when the preacher preached his sermon, And ran along the road beside the boy going to school.

You stood by pasture-bars to give the cows good milking, You persuaded the housewife that her dish-pan was of silver And her husband an image of pure gold.

You flaunted the fragrance of your blossoms Through the wide doors of Custom Houses-- You, and sandal-wood, and tea, Charging the noses of quill-driving clerks When a s.h.i.+p was in from China.

You called to them: "Goose-quill men, goose-quill men, May is a month for flitting,"

Until they writhed on their high stools And wrote poetry on their letter-sheets behind the propped-up ledgers.

Paradoxical New England clerks, Writing inventories in ledgers, reading the "Song of Solomon" at night, So many verses before bedtime, Because it was the Bible.

The dead fed you Amid the slant stones of graveyards.

Pale ghosts who planted you Came in the night time And let their thin hair blow through your cl.u.s.tered stems.

You are of the green sea, And of the stone hills which reach a long distance.

You are of elm-shaded streets with little shops where they sell kites and marbles, You are of great parks where every one walks and n.o.body is at home.

You cover the blind sides of greenhouses And lean over the top to say a hurry-word through the gla.s.s To your friends, the grapes, inside.

Lilacs, False blue, White, Purple, Color of lilac, You have forgotten your Eastern origin, The veiled women with eyes like panthers, The swollen, aggressive turbans of jeweled Pashas.

Now you are a very decent flower, A reticent flower, A curiously clear-cut, candid flower, Standing beside clean doorways, Friendly to a house-cat and a pair of spectacles, Making poetry out of a bit of moonlight And a hundred or two sharp blossoms.

Maine knows you, Has for years and years; New Hamps.h.i.+re knows you, And Ma.s.sachusetts And Vermont.

Cape Cod starts you along the beaches to Rhode Island; Connecticut takes you from a river to the sea.

You are brighter than apples, Sweeter than tulips, You are the great flood of our souls Bursting above the leaf-shapes of our hearts, You are the smell of all Summers, The love of wives and children, The recollection of the gardens of little children, You are State Houses and Charters And the familiar treading of the foot to and fro on a road it knows.

May is lilac here in New England, May is a thrush singing "Sun up!" on a tip-top ash-tree, May is white clouds behind pine-trees Puffed out and marching upon a blue sky.

May is a green as no other, May is much sun through small leaves, May is soft earth, And apple-blossoms, And windows open to a South wind.

May is a full light wind of lilac From Canada to Narragansett Bay.

Lilacs, False blue, White, Purple, Color of lilac, Heart-leaves of lilac all over New England, Roots of lilac under all the soil of New England, Lilac in me because I am New England, Because my roots are in it, Because my leaves are of it, Because my flowers are for it, Because it is my country And I speak to it of itself And sing of it with my own voice Since certainly it is mine.

TWENTY-FOUR HOKKU ON A MODERN THEME

I

Again the larkspur, Heavenly blue in my garden.

They, at least, unchanged.

II

How have I hurt you?

You look at me with pale eyes, But these are my tears.

III

Morning and evening-- Yet for us once long ago Was no division.

IV

I hear many words.

Set an hour when I may come Or remain silent.

V

In the ghostly dawn I write new words for your ears-- Even now you sleep.

VI

This then is morning.

Have you no comfort for me Cold-colored flowers?

VII

My eyes are weary Following you everywhere.

Short, oh short, the days!