Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 1

[The divorce of poetry]

[The divorce of poetry]

The divorce of poetry from the popular imagination arises in part from a diminution of vigour in expression, mainly from the habits of our civilisation. Great poetry must die – die to all save the poet, the critic, and the man born out of his time.

Its knell was rung when the phrase succeeded the word, when sentimentality succeeded in verse wit and philosophy. The sentimentality has gone, but with it has gone the last shreds of a popular appreciation of strong and complex thought.

We accept the merits of our greatest poets by hearsay; most readers, if it were written by a modern poet, would turn revolted from Milton’s ‘blind mouths,’ but recognise Milton and dare not criticise.

The greatest modern poet, W.B. Yeats, has unconsciously recognised a modern trend. Our eyes slide over a page; not words but phrases we read; the sound is unheard. Thus concentration of meaning evaporates. Yeats is the master of the phrase, and so for us there is magic in him.

The heyday of poetry lived when a word was still miraculous, when use and misuse had not dulled it to a smooth grey pebble. What force now has ‘light thickens’? The association is curded milk, I think. It is not understanding of meaning, we lack, though as interest dwindles that loss approaches; it is appreciation of concentration, of a transcendental meaning – in a word, of poetry.

1943 (4)