POETRY
45
Alfred Hayes:
I gather from Edwin Rolfe's article that the decisive milestones in
his development as a revolutionary poet were the illuminating "talks" he
quotes with Joseph Freeman. These "talks" see·m to have been of an
extraordinary character since following them, Rolie says, "revolutionary
poetry began to emerge as a conscious art, well on its path to maturity."
What Freeman set as an axiom of our poetry: "Remember you are revolu–
tionary poets. Then work hard at your poetry. The rest will follow"
is,
of course, correct. But it appears as though the "rest" did not follow
quite as simply as it should have. '·'Serious shortcomings" have arisen.
Our poetry is at a "standstill." We are guilty of "formula-writing", etc.
Are we to assume that there was a lapse in memory perhaps to account for
the lapse in poetry? Or that Maddow, Fearing, Rukeyser and the others,
with the exception of Rolfe, somehow inissed up on these talks and left
to their own solitary devices became subject to these "shortcomings"? And
if these "talks" produced · so excellent a result that first time, what has
prevented Comrade Rolfe from further "talks" with Comrade Freeman?
Perhaps that is what we need to "cure" us, a good "talk."
On the score of my own poems, I would like to ask certain questions
the criticism raises.
I am told that my verse is sometimes "didactic," and therefore fails.
Yet Rolfe suggests, as one of his "cures," the "possibility of writing didac–
tic verse as one of the means" to solve our present difficulties.
I am told that I use a "startling, sloganized line, badly thought
through, and used for its effect rather than its truth." It may be that
the line quoted is poetically bad, but surely it is not "untrue." Surely
the events in Austria did precipitate a crisis in Social-Democracy, did
begin its break-up, and herald the coming of a new ideology, a Bolshevik
one, among the Vienna workers. Or do-es Comrade Rolfe contend that
the February uprising caused no political change among the workers? That
Otto Bauer ·remained the same to the workers after as before February?
I am told that a "quieter, deeper, truer" emotion in a poem is
"authentic" and "honestly-conceived" while "verbal pyrotechnics" is the
implied opposite. Assuming that the line is "verbal pyrotchnics," I am not
aware that this constitutes a poetic failing. There are many poets (some
are Rolfe's own favorites: Crane, Hopkins, Auden, Lewis) all guilty of
"verbal pyrotechnics," yet Rolfe would hesitate to apply his generalization
to them.
What I object to principally in Rolfe's criticism is the use of un–
critical terms and words, "slick, neat, superficially exciting" as critical
definitions and generalizations. They are so obviously expressions of a
