ity, of "ancient sureness always," to the last wi~h
its moral insight into the changes which have wiped
out every former "guide-mark of the mind," leaving
only the love that "hardens into hate" and "leads
now when all others darken"-an intensely and tra-
ditionally poetic expression of the love for humanity
which is one of the primal drives against a reac-
tionary social system.
Unlike most of the political verse being written
today, there is nothing cocksure or blatant about
Public Speech.
There is no easy sloganizing or par-
roting of doctrine or eagle oratory. Instead, there is
an ideological depth to these poems, a firmness
about their thinking which comes from an inner
compulsion. They are not synthetic, fabricated out
of external materials; they ring true because their
philosophy is perfectly attuned to the poet's personal
emotion and the emotion to the philosophy, and be-
cause one arises out of the other.
The
sureness
of thought in these verses speaks
forth in unwavering tones that carry farther than
the irresolute Hamlet-voice of the early MacLeish.
The ideologic ballasting in
Public Speech
has
strengthened the hull and indeed the whole struc-
ture of his poetry. It has brought greater force and
clarity to his type of verse-making, although it has
also brought a certain bare and abstract statement.
In spite of this, it has added firmness to his imagery,
without draining the sensitive lyricism of his earlier
work. If anything, it has deepened the imprint of
that imagery-as,
to take one isolated phrase, where
he recalls the "metal odor of danger" sensed by
Americans overseas in
1917.
Even from a formal
point of view, MacLeish has reached out in new
directions, extending the range of poetic instruments.
His technical dexterity has led him to an excellent
device-illustrated in this collection by the end
rimes of "The sunset piece"-whereby he eliminates
the sweetish effect that has virtually banned rime
schemes from modern verse.
Compared with MacLeish's new book, most of
the efforts of our younger proletarian poets loom
rather small. This may be an unpatriotic remark to
make about one's own generation; yet such a judg-
ment is hard to avoid when one considers the ag-
gregate of recent political verse written in this
country.
Anyone who has watched the emergence of the
younger poets-most
of the new voices in this de-
cade are somewhere near the left-must
have
noticed the lack of deep devotion to their craft, the
absence of a profound sense of the integrity of their
writing, which one finds in all of MacLeish\s work.
There are few evidences among them of a real de-
termination to accept the discipline of their craft-
painstakingly to chisel line and phrase, to freshen
language, to wrestle with the problems of form, to
assimilate a usable tradition, to penetrare
w
the
20
bone of contemporary reality and put its essence In
enduring poetic shape.
To some extent this is undoubtedly due to short-
comings in their own characters and abilities. Yet
there is a certain external force inherent in the whole
nature of our time which pulls them away from an
earnest concern with poetry. The younger writers
have been particularly affected because they came of
literary age during this period, whereas MacLeish's
generation reached maturity before its arrival. This
social influence has been pointed to many times: it
has been shown that in a period like the present,
when severe political crises and economic stress oc-
cupy the foreground of our existence, the struggle
to achieve artistic excellence, or even expression,
tends to become marginal, if not entirely irrelevant.
It is natural to find this objective social force operat-
ing within the revolutionary movement.
While Communism has elevated the place of
literature in society, the close connection of the poet
with the labor movement has affected him in an op-
posite way: it has emphasized the insignificance of
phrase-making as compared with practical activity.
Again, while the spread of Communist ideology has
swung the poet away from Axel's castle toward
social reality-a change which has turned him in the
direction of major literature-his
contact with a
mass movement has to some degree distracted him
from his craft, tending to make his poetry an avoca-
tion in the midst of organizational and journalistic
demands. More, it has encouraged him to think and
see-and write-in terms of other
media;
it has
helped to reduce his poetry to a reporting of "mili-
tant" ideas and events, and to direct political pro-
paganda.
Although the Marxian movement has led the
poet out of the corral of preciosity into the open
spaces of central human experience, it has tolerated
a narrow utilitarian conception of art, identifying
the logic of the creative process with the logic of
political agitation. This emphasis has produced some
interesting minor experiments; but such a notion
ultimately has the effect of confining the poetic spirit
to a narrow vein of inspiration and experience which
is quickly exhausted-which has been largely ex·
hausted already, if we are to judge by the product
of some of the younger poets. It leads to a type of
sterility as harmful in its own way as the arid results
of pure estheticism.
There is still another way in which external fac·
tors exert their pressure upon revolutionary litera-
ture. While the latter is helping to build a bridge
for the re-communication of the serious artist with
a mass audience, this very situation makes it easier
for the vulgar habits of "popular" commercial writ·
ing to seep in. The same get-famous-quick psychology
which has cheapened so much talent in America
seems to be lurking around the proletarian camp.It
has tempted some of the younger poets to forsake
MAY,
1936
