Don’ts for Critics[2]

Don’ts for Critics[2]

(Apropos of recent criticisms of Imagism, vers libre, and modern poetry generally.)

ALICE CORBIN HENDERSON

Don’t confuse vers libre and Imagism. The two are not identical. One pertains to verse, the other to vision.

Don’t attempt to “place” Imagism until you know what it is.

Don’t substitute irritability for judgement.

Don’t attempt to establish absolutes—positive or negative—by precedents of a half or a quarter of a century, or a mere decade ago.

Don’t be a demagogue.

Don’t try to speak the last word—you can’t.

Don’t be dishonest with yourself. Analyze your own inhibitions.

Don’t believe that beauty is conventionality, or that the classic poets chose only “nice” subjects.

Don’t forget that the age that produced the cathedrals produced also the grotesques.

Don’t be afraid to expand.

Don’t deny the poet his folly, or expect him to appear always pompously on stilts. Think of the poets who have fun in their make-up, and you think of some of the greatest—Shakespeare, Chaucer, Villon,—(by no means excepting Lewis Carroll, whose Jabberwock is almost “pure” poetry and the poetic prototype of much excellent modern painting.) Don’t relax your own appreciation of humor to the soft, easy level of the newspapers.

Don’t squirm when a poet is a satirist. We need the keen vision. Not all pessimism is unhealthy, and not all optimism healthy.

Don’t think that Spoon River is more sordid than Athens, Greece, or Athens, Georgia, than Sparta or Troy, or—the Lake Shore Drive.

Don’t think that the poet must always copy something or somebody, and that something usually of a recent date. Correspondences, to be valuable, must be genuine and of the spirit, rather than of the letter.—When Mr. Powys brackets the names of Chaucer and Edgar Lee Masters, he is illuminating. When Mr. Hervey or Mr. Willard-Huntington-Wright discover each a different one of Mr. Masters’ copybooks, and publish their discoveries, the absurdity is manifest. Picture Mr. Masters sitting with Robinson’s book in one hand, and somebody’s Small Town in the other, inditing Spoon River with his teeth!

Don’t expect a poet to repeat himself indefinitely, however much you may admire his earlier work. You may appreciate his later work in time.

Don’t condemn the work of a man whose books you have not read. Unfortunately there are no civil service examinations for critics.

Don’t think that competition is unhealthy for the poet, or that his poetry suffers thereby.

Don’t be confident, as Mr. Arthur J. Eddy said at the “Poetry” dinner, that no good thing is ever lost. Ask Mr. Eddy, who is a lawyer, to prove that no good thing is ever lost.

Don’t expect poets to refrain from writing about one another—even in praise. If you don’t enjoy the feast, don’t eat it. When the poets tear one another to pieces, don’t you enjoy it? But if, like most critics of poetry, you are a poet also, take warning. Be prepared!

Don’t wait until a poet is dead before you discover him.

Don’t gnash your teeth and expect the public to take it as a sign of force and insight.

Don’t forget that prosody is derived from poetry, not poetry from prosody.

Don’t waste your time trying to squeeze exceptions into the rule. Remember that exceptions in poetry, as in music, are the variations that give life.

Don’t measure English poetry by English poetic standards alone. Consider the sources of English poetry, and don’t begin with Chaucer, or stop with Tennyson.

Don’t think that English or American poetry may not assimilate as much new beauty and richness from foreign sources in the future as it has in the past.

Don’t consider rhyme as the be-all and end-all of poetry. Rhyme is sometimes as beautiful as the reflection of trees in water; it is sometimes as monotonous as a stitch in time.

Don’t substitute vituperation for the “critique raisonné”—almost an unknown quantity in this country.

Don’t look first at the publisher’s imprint.

Don’t cling to convictions that you fear to have upset.

Don’t, because you fail to share the convictions of a fellow critic, think that he is a bigger fool than you are—unless you can prove it.

Don’t imagine that printing a poem as prose makes it prose. A musical masterpiece may be distorted by unrhythmic playing, yet the composer’s rhythm remains intact in the score.

Don’t object to conceptions in poetry that you might find striking and powerful in bronze or plaster. “The Hog Butcher of the World” is one picturesque attitude of Chicago.... Is the truth unbearable? One may still love Chicago in spite of its dirty face.

Don’t try to establish even a distant kinship between poetry and ethics. The relation is illicit.

Don’t tell the poet what he must, or must not, write about—he doesn’t hear you.

Don’t be tedious.

Don’t take ten times as much space as the poet to prove that he is a bad poet. Your sin against the public is more grievous, and your art less, than his.

Don’t make up your review from the publisher’s advance notice. The poet might like to know what you think about his work—not what he told the publisher to tell you.

Don’t expect a poet to punch a time-clock, or record only the emotions of his fellow townspeople.

Don’t limit a poet to primary emotions, or find decadence in a refinement that may exceed your own.

Don’t fancy that brutality is strength, or delicacy weakness.

Don’t fancy that the poem that gives up its meaning quickest gives most, or lives longest.

Don’t make the mistake of believing that vers libre is easier to write than rhymed metrical verse—or the reverse.

Don’t think because you say a thing, it is so. Your venture is as uncertain as the poet’s. Authority, unless bestowed by the Mayor, is the gift of time; and then not unassailable.

Don’t reverence only dead poets or be certain that the dead poets would think just as you do about contemporary poets.

Don’t discard the past for the future, or the future for the past. We learn about the earth from the telescope, and about the stars from the microscope.

DON’T be as negative as this list, or sit on the fence. It is better to be on the wrong side than to straddle.