POETRY
Edwin Rolfe
THE HOPE FOR A RENAISSANCE
in American poetry has been expressed
continuously ever since the abortive poetry revival of 1910-1920. The
shouting has come from all directions: from the extreme right as well as,
more recently, from the left; from the little half-dead lyricists who ape
and thereby insult what they regard as "tradition" as well as from the
boisterous and prosaic school which is blatant not only in its manifestoes
but in its verse.
Let there be no mistake. There has been no renaissance in American
poetry: ·the time is not yet ripe. But all the elements prerequisite to a
profound revival are present: the hope, the energy, the revolutionary world–
view and its clear sense of tradition, of continuity, of exciting living in the
midst of profound social and spiritual change. It is these things which,
if fused with and expressed in our work, can speed a real revival in Amer–
ican poetry.
These virtues cannot be claimed by any of the bourgeois poets. Trad–
ition and continuity die for them as their contemporary world and values
fester. Their worldview is that of a drowning swimmer whose strength
ebbs with each motion; their energy is born of panic and the struggle
against certain defeat. They can be falsely blatant and rhetorical or
meekly and mystically resigned. Certainty and hope are beyond them.
Only the revolutionary poets can today claim possession of the qualities
which nurture and feed a great art. Only the poets who announce change,
who as men are certain of the road they travel, can herald a new day in
American poetry. These poets-the revolutionaries, whether of proletarian
origin or not-belong to us, the working class. Their very youth provides
h~pe.
Let us survey the American scene and attempt to eliminate the dead–
wood.
No one today takes seriously the infrequent and progressively-de–
teriorating work of Carl Sandburg, Edgar Lee Masters, Edwin Arlington
Robinson, the Benets, Robert Frost. These poets, in their present state
of inactivity or tiresome repetition, belong together today, although at one
time the work of each was distinct from that of the others.
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