Poetry in 1929

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 903, 21 February 1930, Page 16

Poetry in 1929

A Critic’s Defence "HE FUTURE PLACE OF “TESTAMENT OF BEAUTY” 'Writing in the "Observer,” J. C. Squire, the eminient critic, makes the following observations on the poetry published during 1929. o£ 1929”: there need necessarily be any book of verse worth mentioning, but there was one very great one, and that is something worth being thankful for. I notice that Mr Hugh Waltole, in a retrospect in the “Saturday Review,” complains that hardly anybody is writing good poetry: I notice lhat Mr Arnold Eennett complains hardly anybody is reading it. I believe that both these eminent novelists are wrong. It may be that they are demoralised by their own surroundings and profession: that they suppose that the reviewers ought to announce at least two great poetio masterpieces a week, or that they assume that a poet worth his salt ought to be able to produce a good fat volume of poetry every year. It is more likely that they have illusions about the past. Since the reading of books ceased to be almost entirely confined to a small highly-educated public, poetry has never appealed to a large proportion of readers, except for occasional narrative poems and occasional bad, sentimental, "nearbeer” poems. “The Lay of the Last Minstrel” was read by multitudes: so was "The Everlasting Mercy.” “L. E. L.” was universally known; so are Miss Wilcox, Mr Service, and Mr Oxenham. Wordsworth had to hide his time, so had Keats, so had Shelley. If a great lyric or philosophic poet

live long enough he may receive the equivalent of a welcome from posterity; if he die in middle life he will not be fully recognised until hta

“Collected Poems” have been produced, until his place in history la settled and until school-children compelled to be bewildered by hlfiti. And people rfo tend to telescope tha performances of the past. Except during one or two ebullient periods, the major works of poets have usually taken a long time to mature, and their whole production has been scattered over many years. Mass-production cannot be expected frorfi good poets, nor even a substantial work every year. Virgil is alleged ♦ o have written 12 lines a day; that was a large "output” (foul, but unavoidable, wordl which few can equal; and the regularity of it is beyond most poets' compass. There are good poets living and that should suffice us. It they publish no volume In a year they are upbraided for silence; if they publish small volumes they are Asked why the volumes are so small. Mr Yeats Is alive and Mr Housman, "lE,” and Mr Binyon, Mr de la Mar e and Mr Hodgson. Mr Sassoon and Mr Blunden, with others who have written, and probably will again write, “immortal” things, “leaving great verse unto a little clan.” Why. then, grumble because only one or two of them happen to have given the bookshops new volumes in a particular year? Especially when that year has seen the appearance of the greatest long philosophical poem since “The Prelude”: the Poet Laureate’s “Testament of Beauty.” I have written about that so recently here that I need say little about it. Its profundity of thought, its religious and moral range and penetration, Its frank contemplation of the problems of the tim.fi in the light of eternity, have given it a sudden vogue that its author’s exquisitely wrought short lyrics have never had. After being for a geueration a dominating Influence over poets younger than himhim. and a favourite butt of facetious journalists, Mr Bridges has been suddenly recognised for what ho is: the worthy successor of Wordsworth and Tennyson in the Laureateship. By the same token most of his critics have been disarmed. The year which has seen Mr Bridges become a “bestseller” (and little does he care about that) has seen the exuberant Mr James Douglas recant his opinion about Mr Bridges. Unless I am mistaken it was Mr Douglas who, when Mr Bridges was made Laureate, asked the question. "What are Bridges?”; it was certainly he who, more recently, quoted with approval an American's breexy headline, “King's Canary Refuses to Sing”—when the octogenarian poet had just finished a very productive decade in poetry and scholarship. The "Testament,” or its universal reception, has beaten him. As was written in “Chevy Chase”: “The Douglas never went away.” A hundred years hence, unless our civilisation has collapsed, "The Testament of Beauty” will be known not merely as a surpassingly beautiful poem, but as a landmark in our moral recovery after the cruellest and most despairbreeding of wars. It will also be used by critics as a stick with which to heat the poets, should such exist, of kihat day,.