Mlle. Poetry Meets Me at the Church

ROSCOE WILLIAM BRINK

To a New York poetry society one night with a friend of a friend.... I had always wanted to see that society. Long have I listened in awe to the unutterable rhythms of the city itself: the daily ictus of the workward crowds in the morning, the beat again in the homeward evening, lyric activity of the weeks rising to a crest like an Elizabethan sonnet to end in a Saturday-Sunday couplet of application to the heart of man, involved quatrains of the seasons, free verse epochs and tensions, years and decades. As I listened to these bigger canticles of New York City I have wanted to see its poetry society, fancying it some homely cricket on its communal hearth—my pleasant heart-warming dream. You see, also, besides listening in on this great, loud city voice, I once wanted to write poetry myself—but that was long ago before, under penalty of death by starvation, they took me and put me to work and rediscovered vers libre.

As I sat beside the friend of a friend, gazing in glad surmise at an elegant assembly of ladies and gentlemen, the poetry society meeting came to order. Not since I was fourteen-fifteen, and went to prayer-meeting because the girl I adored would be there, have I experienced such emotions as I experienced then.

I don’t suppose you know my particular old white church prayer-meeting. I used to go, rain or shine, every Friday night, and sit where I could watch the door admit the pretty upward toss of curls of my affections’ desire. Sometimes she didn’t come and didn’t come. The opening hymn would be sung and I would hear it not, for my eyes were upon the door. Another hymn and the preacher would begin to speak with a gentle, gushing, splashing sound at the mouth, but the door would remain closed; and knotted, stifling disappointment be clutching at my throat. Another hymn, and the discussion would be thrown open to the congregation. Well, the door was stolid; I would slide back from the edge of my chair and breathe thickly of the resisting air. So late, she would not come now. To be sure, the congregation was some comfort: there were the frisky young lady and the frisky middle-aged lady who would pop to their feet with a squeal of enthusiasm, the deacons and the elders, the sincere girls, the succinct young men with a duty to perform, the conservatives and the infirm—all of them to speak. There came one night when there was rejoicing in heaven’s hour. Somebody had sent a check to pay for a new coat of white paint for the church. The treasurer arose from his chair and lifted up the check for all to see. Then were hymns and glad talks with God and with woman and man. The banks next day refused to honor the check.

In the New York poetry society meeting appeared no novelty for me. I had been there before, so it seemed. Then, as of old, the meeting-room was more charming, the congregation more elegant, but the same, even to the frisky ones, with an exception in the authors’ literary agent I saw just a few feet from me. Otherwise the same—a prayer-meeting, the great American habit, a community impulse boiled down to four-square-wallsful.

As the meeting progressed I knew I had been there before. Absently I looked toward the door for the pretty upward toss of curls again, but I caught myself in time. Notices were read—again I looked toward the door, and stopped. Jokes were made about vers libre; several very interesting recitations were given; restlessly my eyes wandered doorward again. One always forms such bad habits when he is young. Poems now were being read, and criticized. But I had given up: I was looking toward the door and willing to acknowledge it. But she for whom I looked, came not. Then the leader with pleasure read a list of several new members—one of them with the name of a certain rich person, a name I had often seen associated with the millions of commerce but never with the measures of verse. An uncrushed sigh of self-congratulation went up over the room. I took my last look at the stolid door, slid back from the edge of my chair; gave up. I knew She would not come. My heart beat as of old, whimsically and sadly. She would not come.

I took my friend of a friend by the hand and sidled out of the room into the night. A few corners away we came upon a news-stand, full of magazines, upon every magazine a cover, upon every cover a girl, one and the same forever and ever. “If She had come, would She have been so grown that She would have looked like them?” I asked.

“Who come?” asked my friend of a friend.

“The Spirit of Poetry,” says I. “She hadda right, you know.”

American modernity, I bless thee through closed teeth—get thee to thy prayer-meetings or some Billy Sunday will Carl Sanburg thee.