472
PARTISAN REVIEW
magazine and a persistent effort
to send many telegrams at small
cost to oneself-if all this was the
case, what of it? A dangling
participle is no crime. Everything
has its good side; the befuddle–
ment of Miss Rukeyser's syntax
rendered her lines less and less
meaningful-a keen relief! One ·
thing was clear: this young poet·
ess was intent on being friends
with everyone, though in citing
Waldo Frank as a source of her
ideas she exposed her proper af.
filiations. It is true that indis·
criminate friendship
makes
for
promiscuity. But why carp when
so many human beings hate each
other?
Yet one must draw the line
somewhere. The Japanese did not
astonish Miss Rukeyser, much as
they surprised Admiral Kimmel
and General Short. Sooner than
one can say iambic pentameter,
Miss Rukeyser, though deep in re·
searches for a big book, produced
Wake
Island,
a poster-poem in
which she wrapped herself in Old
Glory, sang the Star Spangled
Banner, and chased the Marines
in lines that resembled not a bath·
robe but a blimp. Poetic consid·
erations and considerations of a
decent respect for one's previous
wowals may be for the moment
put aside, for we cannot live by
art alone and consistency is obvi·
ously for small minds. At about
the same time she published, in
Twice-a-Year,
the text of a lecture
on poetry, addressed to Vassar
girls. Here she was revealed. in a
new role: that of a big-league rep·
resentative of the "creative spirit,"
speaking her piece with all the
unctuousness and
culture-sohmerz
of a junior theologian of poetics.
Soon after Miss Rukeyser's hi·
ography of Willard Gibbs ap·
peared. In this biography it was
difficult to make out which was
worse, the abuse of the mind or
the abuse of the English language.
Gibbs as a great physicist was
celebrated in this book for many
.reasons, such as the fact that his
father was opposed to slavery and
that Gibbs' discoveries had made
possible the overwhelming might
of the
Wehrmac/lt.
And Gibbs
appeared to be (although one can·
not be sure, so vague are some of
the sentences) not only a great
physicist but somehow a great poet
and a great mysti<: in a confusion
of the nature of art and the nature
of science not heretofore unknown,
but here rhapsodized in such terms
as to deprive both science and
art
of all meaning. Surely even friend–
ship has its limits. Even if
all
things are one, where is the neces–
sity of unifying them anew by
beating language to a pulp?
And now, tireless and amiable
as ever, Miss Rukeyser has turned
to critical prose. She writes in
the summer issue of
The Kenyon
Review
of Rilke's great sonnets
with such lucid metaphors as
these: "All the pieces of his fear,
all the withdrawals are here; but
in this book, since the object is
acknowledged dead, there is no
threat." "Here is the long un·
folding of a single image-cluster,
transformed and killed and taken
up again, sustained by Rilke
through wartime." But more is to
come: expect to be astonished.
In
The New Republic
for
August 2 Miss Rukeyser plumps
for words and images on posters.
She unites the Detroit race riots,
conquest of North Africa, the
food problems, the ruin of cities,
the man-power situation with the
necessity for good posters, as if a
race-riot and a poor poster were
disasters of equal seriousnes&, or
effect
and cause. It is all, she feels,
