POETRY
39
appeared early in 1933 and was greeted by Isidor Schneider in
The New
Republic
with the following words:
"For Americans th" publishing of
"We Gather Strength"
is an event worth dating. Here are four young writers who
are building their careers as poets outside the capitalist pub–
lishing apparatus ... The struggling left-wing literary mag–
azines have provided them their public ... They are not only
creating a revolutionary poetry out gathering together what
will probably be the most responsible and satisfying audience
poetry can hope for in our time. We can look forward to
something more from their joined strength than from any
other group in America ..."
Shortly afterward, Alfred Hayes's poems began to appear regularly
in the Daily Worker, and sections of Muriel Rukeyser's
Theory of Flight
were published in
Dynamo, The Student Review
and the
New Masses.
Partisan Review
and
Dynamo,
both edited (resthetically as well as politic–
ally) on solid, valid principles, commenced publication.
These poets are still writing, but seem at present to be at a standstill.
For one thing, they are not sufficiently prolific, which is something a grow–
ing mass working class movement must demand of its artists in all fields.
In many cases this is caused by their poverty, and by the fact that they
must spend a too-considerable portion of their time at their jobs, earning
a living. Although these jobs keep them alive, they do not permit them
the time and energy needed for creative work. To the time spent working
must be added the time devoted to political and organizational activity,
which saps their creative energy still further. Their lack of fecundity is,
therefore, due
no~
only to their limitations as artists, but also in great part
to their circumstances.
There are, moreover, more serious shortcomings in their work. A
revolutionary sensibility can be nurtured most perfectly by a complete
identification of the poet with the class whose struggles and destiny he
champions. This identification must be emotional, ideological, not alone–
as
is the case very frequently-intellectual. Such an identification, again,
does not mean that the poet will discard the great historical traditions with
which he has become acquainted in the bourgeois world. Quite the con–
trary: it means that he will perceive tradition and history in clearer, more
understandable terms. This is one of the reasons, I think, for the frequent
obscurity in the poems of Ben Maddow and Muriel Rukeyser. It is the
reason for the vagueness of Rukeyser's images and heavily-weighted allu–
sions; she refers to historical figures, phenomena, events seeing them
through the misty bourgeois spectacles of her earlier training, not through
