Spring and All (5 page)

The social class with its religion, its faith, sincerity and all the other imaginative values is positive (yes)

the merchant, hibernating, unmagnatized — tends to drop away into the isolate, inactive particles — Religion is continued then as a form, art as a convention —

To the social, energized class — ebullient now in Russia the particles adhere because of the force of the imagination energizing them —

Anyhow the change of Baroja interested me

Among artists, or as they are sometimes called “men of imagination” “creators”, etc. this force is recognized in a pure state — All this can be used to show the relationships between genius, hand labor, religion — etc. and the lack of feeling between artists and the middle class type —

The jump between fact and the imaginative reality

The study of all human activity is the deliniation of the cresence and ebb of this force, shifting from
class to class and location to location — rhythm: the wave rhythm of Shakespeare watching clowns and kings sliding into nothing

XIX

This is the time of year

when boys fifteen and seventeen

wear two horned lilac blossoms

in their caps — or over one ear

What is it that does this?

It is a certain sort —

drivers for grocers or taxidrivers

white and colored —

fellows that let their hair grow long

in a curve over one eye —

Horned purple

Dirty satyrs, it is

vulgarity raised to the last power

They have stolen them

broken the bushes apart

with a curse for the owner —

Lilacs —

They stand in the doorways

on the business streets with a sneer

on their faces

adorned with blossoms

Out of their sweet heads

dark kisses — rough faces

XX

The sea that encloses her young body

ula lu la lu

is the sea of many arms —

The blazing secrecy of noon is undone

and and and

the broken sand is the sound of love —

The flesh is firm that turns in the sea

O la la

the sea that is cold with dead mens’ tears —

Deeply the wooing that penetrated

to the edge of the sea

returns in the plash of the waves —

a wink over the shoulder

large as the ocean —

with wave following wave to the edge

coom barrooom —

It is the cold of the sea

broken upon the sand by the force

of the moon —

In the sea the young flesh playing

floats with the cries of far off men

who rise in the sea

with green arms

to homage again the fields over there

where the night is deep —

la lu la lu

but lips too few

assume the new — marrruu

Underneath the sea where it is dark

there is no edge

so two —

XXI

one day in Paradise

a Gipsy

smiled

to see the blandness

of the leaves —

so many

so lascivious

and still

XXII

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

The fixed categories into which life is divided must always hold. These things are normal — essential to every activity. But they exist — but not as dead dissections.

The curriculum of knowledge cannot but be divided into the sciences, the thousand and one groups of data, scientific, philosophic or whatnot — as many as there exist in Shakespeare — things that make him appear the university of all ages.

But this is not the thing. In the galvanic category of — The same things exist, but in a different condition when energized by the imagination.

The whole field of education is affected — There is no end of detail that is without significance.

Education would begin by placing in the mind of the student the nature of knowledge — in the dead state and the nature of the force which may energize it.

This would clarify his field at once — He would then see the use of data

But at present knowledge is placed before a man as if it were a stair at the top of which a DEGREE is obtained which is superlative.

nothing could be more ridiculous. To data there is no end. There is proficiency in dissection and a knowledge of parts but in the use of knowledge —

It is the imagination that —

That is: life is absolutely simple. In any civilized society everyone should know EVERYTHING there is to know about life at once and always. There should never be permitted, confusion —

There are difficulties to life, under conditions there are impasses, life may prove impossible — But it must never be lost — as it is today —

I remember so distinctly the young Pole in Leipzig going with hushed breath to hear Wundt lecture — In this mass of intricate philosophic data what one of the listeners was able to maintain himself for the winking of an eyelash. Not one. The inundation of the intelligence by masses of complicated fact is not knowledge. There is no end —

And what is the fourth dimension? It is the endlessness of knowledge —

It is the imagination on which reality rides — It is the imagination — It is a cleavage through everything by a force that does not exist in the mass and
therefore can never be discovered by its anatomitization.

It is for this reason that I have always placed art first and esteemed it over science — in spite of everything.

Art is the pure effect of the force upon which science depends for its reality — Poetry

The effect of this realization upon life will be the emplacement of knowledge into a living current — which it has always sought —

In other times — men counted it a tragedy to be dislocated from sense — Today boys are sent with dullest faith to technical schools of all sorts — broken, bruised

few escape whole — slaughter. This is not civilization but stupidity — Before entering knowledge the integrity of the imagination —

The effect will be to give importance to the subdivisions of experience — which today are absolutely lost — There exists simply nothing.

Prose — When values are important, such — For example there is no use denying that prose and poetry
are not by any means the same IN INTENTION. But then what is prose? There is no need for it to approach poetry except to be weakened.

With decent knowledge to hand we can tell what things are for

I except to see values blossom. I expect to see prose be prose. Prose, relieved of extraneous, unrelated values must return to its only purpose: to clarity to enlighten the understanding. There is no form to prose but that which depends on clarity. If prose is not acurately adjusted to the exposition of facts it does not exist — Its form is that alone. To penetrate everywhere with enlightenment —

Poetry is something quite different. Poetry has to do with the crystalization of the imagination — the perfection of new forms as additions to nature — Prose may follow to enlighten but poetry —

Is what I have written prose? The only answer is that form in prose ends with the end of that which is being communicated — If the power to go on falters in the middle of a sentence — that is the end of the sentence — Or if a new phase enters at that point it is only stupidity to go on.

There is no confusion — only difficulties.

XXIII

The veritable night

of wires and stars

the moon is in

the oak tree’s crotch

and sleepers in

the windows cough

athwart the round

and pointed leaves

and insects sting

while on the grass

the whitish moonlight

tearfully

assumes the attitudes

of afternoon —

But it is real

where peaches hang

recalling death’s

long promised symphony

whose tuneful wood

and stringish undergrowth

are ghosts existing

without being

save to come with juice

and pulp to assuage

the hungers which

the night reveals

so that now at last

the truth’s aglow

with devilish peace

forestalling day

which dawns tomorrow

with dreadful reds

the heart to predicate

with mists that loved

the ocean and the fields —

Thus moonlight

is the perfect

human touch

XXIV

The leaves embrace

in the trees

it is a wordless

world

without personality

I do not

seek a path

I am still with

Gipsie lips pressed

to my own —

It is the kiss

of leaves

without being

poison ivy

or nettle, the kiss

of oak leaves —

He who has kissed

a leaf

need look no further —

I ascend

through

a canopy of leaves

and at the same time

I descend

for I do nothing

unusual —

I ride in my car

I think about

prehistoric caves

in the Pyrenees —

the cave of

Les Trois Freres

The nature of the difference between what is termed prose on the one hand and verse on the other is not to be discovered by a study of the metrical characteristics of the words as they occur in juxtaposition. It is ridiculous to say that verse grades off into prose as the rythm becomes less and less pronounced, in fact, that verse differs from prose in that the meter is more pronounced, that the movement is
more impassioned and that rhythmical prose, so called, occupies a middle place between prose and verse.

It is true that verse is likely to be more strongly stressed than what is termed prose, but to say that this is in any way indicative of the difference in nature of the two is surely to make the mistake of arguing from the particular to the general, to the effect that since an object has a certain character that therefore the force which gave it form will always reveal itself in that character.

Of course there is nothing to do but to differentiate prose from verse by the only effective means at hand, the external, surface appearance. But a counter proposal may be made, to wit: that verse is of such a nature that it may appear without metrical stress of any sort and that prose may be strongly stressed — in short that meter has nothing to do with the question whatever.

Of course it may be said that if the difference is felt and is not discoverable to the eye and ear then what about it anyway? Or it may be argued, that since there is according to my proposal no discoverable difference between prose and verse that in all probability none exists and that both are phases of the same thing.

Yet, quite plainly, there is a very marked difference between the two which may arise in the fact of a separate origin for each, each using similar modes for dis-similar purposes; verse falling most commonly into meter but not always, and prose going forward most often without meter but not always.

This at least serves to explain some of the best work I see today and explains some of the most noteworthy failures which I discover. I search for
“
something” in the writing which moves me in a certain way — It offers a suggestion as to why some work of Whitman’s is bad poetry and some, in the same meter is prose.

The practical point would be to discover when a work is to be taken as coming from this source and when from that. When discovering a work it would be — If it is poetry it means this and only this — and if it is prose it means that and only that. Anything else is a confusion, silly and bad practice.

I believe this is possible as I believe in the main that Marianne Moore is of all American writers most constantly a poet — not because her lines are invariably full of imagery they are not, they are often diagramatically informative, and not because she
clips her work into certain shapes — her pieces are without meter most often — but I believe she is most constantly a poet in her work because the purpose of her work is invariably from the source from which poetry starts — that it is constantly from the purpose of poetry. And that it actually possesses this characteristic, as of that origin, to a more distinguishable degree when it eschews verse rhythms than when it does not. It has the purpose of poetry written into and therefore it is poetry.

I believe it possible, even essential, that when poetry fails it does not become prose but bad poetry. The test of Mariane Moore would be that she writes sometimes good and sometimes bad poetry but always — with a single purpose out of a single fountain which is of the sort —

The practical point would be to discover —

I can go no further than to say that poetry feeds the imagination and prose the emotions, poetry liberates the words from their emotional implications, prose confirms them in it. Both move centrifugally or centripetally toward the intelligence.

Of course it must be understood that writing deals with words and words only and that all
discussions of it deal with single words and their association in groups.

As far as I can discover there is no way but the one I have marked out which will satisfactorily deal with certain lines such as occur in some play of Shakespeare or in a poem of Marianne Moore’s, let us say: Tomorrow will be the first of April —

Certainly there is an emotional content in this for anyone living in the northern temperate zone, but whether it is prose or poetry — taken by itself — who is going to say unless some mark is put on it by the intent conveyed by the words which surround it —

Either to write or to comprehend poetry the words must be recognized to be moving in a direction separate from the jostling or lack of it which occurs within the piece.

Marianne’s words remain separate, each unwilling to group with the others except as they move in the one direction. This is even an important — or amusing — character of Miss Moore’s work.