1926-28, when many a writer had more "feelings" with
respect to factory life than understanding of its meaning.
Burnshaw knows now that the fevered antagonism between
factory discipline and the calls of the blood, lead, when
uncorrected by Marxist thought,
to conceptions of release
through sabotage,
loitering,
and tramp-defeatism,
rather
than to working-class organization.
But to know a thing
and to be capable of making it into emotional poetry are
two different matters.
It is interesting to observe the degree to which this in-
ternal struggle between the image of freedom and the de-
mands of practical life is absent from Rolfe's work. Rolfe,
a younger poet, has been active in the radical movement for
many years, and his verse, so far as I know, has all been
written within the left-wing revolutionary movement. Hence,
while it might be meaningless to say that he is less "sub-
jective" than Burnshaw,
it cannot be denied that his ego
itself is more informed with non-personal reactions. Rolfe,
too, is moved by springtime, and the girls, and the idea of
being a poet, but apparently he does not concerve of these
sentiments as values with which to interpret his experience.
The obligation to learn and to correct himself plays a good
part in his spontaneous response to events. This causes his
feelings to appear at once more modern and more mature
than the older writer's:
To welcome multitudes-the
miracle of deeds
performed in unison-the mind
must first renounce the fiction of the self
and its vainglory.
Rolfe has overcome the naive delirium of the young man
who feels himself alone in the trap of capitalist industry.
His poems consist in the main of emotionalizations of ob-
jective events and situations. When he returns to the re-
collection of personal impressions, it is to make a critical
reconstruction of past motives on the basis of communist
values.
I feel that Rolfe's major problem is that of language, and
that the value of his accomplishments in the future will turn
on this element. The problem of language is, of course, the
technical form of the problem of imagination. Rolfe's poems
have the important negative virtue of renouncing the attempt
(made by MacLeish, Rukeyser, etc.) to reach a solution by
means of. metaphysical overtones which are essentially ir-
relevant to their subjects. He believes sufficiently in the
significance of his communist experiences to feel that in
themselves they contain the materials of a convincing poetry.
Thus his assertions remain simple, decisive, and as direct
as he can make them. But what he does too often is to take
the stuff which forms the atmosphere of the ·revolutionary
movement in America and to give an emotional rendition
of it, without adding anything to the concrete image of the
situation already existing in the reader's mind. When he does
this, the poem merges in the reader's general awareness of
the events dealt with, and neither augments his consciousness
of them nor becomes memorable in itself. The results of such
radical virtuosity,
which contents itself with the use of
cliches and flabby language, are editorials keyed with T. S.
Eliot-ish despair or hope-in-the-future enthusiasm of a typical
species. To overcome this tendency, it is necessary that the
words in the poems possess the evocative energy of the work-
ings of an actual experience. In passages like the following,
from the poem "Asbestos," describing an un-class-conscious
worker, Rolfe's imagination,
with its communist training,
takes a good hold on the verbal instruments of modern
poetry:
3
0
John's deathbed is a curious affair:
the posts are made of bone, the spring of nerves,
the mattress bleeding flesh. I n/inite air,
compressed from diz.zy altitudes, now serves
his skullface as a pillow. Overhead
a vulture leers in solemn mockery,
knowing what John had never known: that dead
workers are dead before they cease to be.
HAROLD ROSENBERG
A Night Letter on
William Saroyan
*
NL56 COLLECT NEW YORK NY 8 54-0P
EDITORS PARTISAN REVIEW
4-30 SIXTH AVENUE
GENTLEMEN SAROY AN STILL BEST SYNTHETIC GENIUS
ON THE MARKET AS GOOD AS NATHALIA CRANE AND
BETTER THAN THE OTHER CHILD PRODIGY THOMAS
WOLFE BUT I CANT REVIEW INHALE AND EXHALE IT
GETS ME HERE AND TO HELL WITH SAROY ANS
UNHAPPY CHILDHOOD LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY
OWN SOME DAY OK SKIP IT NERVES ALL SHOT AFTER
TOURING THE GLOBE WITH SAROY AN HOLD ON TO
YOUR HAT LETS GO STOP FROM NEW YORK QUOTE OF
COURSE THERE IS NOTHING ANYONE CAN DO AND NOT
MUCH OF A REASON WHY ANYONE SHOULD EVEN
WANT TO DO ANYTHING BECAUSE EVEN IF YOU
THROW AWAY YOUR ROLLER SKATES AND SELL YOUR
CAR AND REFUSE TO GO ANYWHERE EVERY MORNING
THE SUN RISETH AND EVERY EVENING IT GOES DOWN
AND ONE SEASON FOLLOWS ANOTHER AND NO
MATTER WHAT YOU DO OR DO NOT DO THE ANSWER
WILL BE MUCH THE SAME UNQUOTE DESPATCH FROM
THE NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN QUOTE IT IS ONLY
A
BODY OF WATER IT IS ONLY THE ATLANTIC AND I
WENT DOWN TO MY CABIN AND CLOSED THE DOOR
AND SAID I AM ON A SHIP CROSSING THE OCEAN
MOVING IN A VESSEL FROM NORTH AMERICA TO
EUROPE THATS ALL UNQUOTE FROM LEMBERG QUOTE
AND THE PEOPLE WALK IN THE STREETS THEIR FACES
ARE THE FACES OF NOTHING ALL THEIR FACES ARE
NOTHING IT IS GOD SLEEPING A BAD DREAM IN ALL
THEIR FACES IS ONLY ONE THING EMPTINESS
UNQUOTE SUSPENSE MOUNTS IN KIEV QUOTE WHAT
THE HELL HUMAN BEINGS ARE HUMAN BEINGS AND
YOU CAN CALL THEM ANYTHING YOU LIKE AND THEY
CAN CALL THEMSELVES ANYTHING THEY LIKE BUT
THEY ARE THE SAME ANYWHERE ANYTIME UNQUOTE
STARK DRAMA IN KHARKOV QUOTE TELL HIM YES I
SAID TO THE JEWISH GIRL TELL HIM IT IS THE SAME
EVERYWHERE TELL HIM IT HAS NOTHING TO DO
WITH THE FORM OF GOVERNMENT CAPITALIST
FASCIST OR PROLETARIAN IT IS THE SAME
EVERYWHERE UNQUOTE WITH THE GREAT TRUTH
SEEKER IN THE FRONT LINE TRENCHES OF MOSCOW
AND KIEV QUOTE THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD
CHANGES EVERY MINUTE OF COURSE IT IS WEDNESDAY
FOR EXAMPLE THEN THURSDAY THEN FRIDAY THEN
SATURDAY AND EVERY DAY THE HISTORY OF THE
WORLD CHANGES UNQUOTE HE CAN ALSO COUNT UP
TO A HUNDRED BELIEVE IT OR NOT AND WE ARE NOW
IN HELSTNGFORS QUOTE LAST YEAR IN ENGLAND THE
KING LISTENED AND KNEW THE TRUTH AND
TOMORROW IN NEBRASKA A CHILD WILL LISTEN AND
• Inhal~ and Ex"al~, by William Saroyan. Random Houu. $2.50.
APRIL,
I
9 j 6
