218
PARTISAN REVIEW
sense; and certainly the "free fierce
bird . . . speeding" bears an uncommon
resemblance to an eagle. Whether the
bird nailed up for target-practice has
suffered torture or not strikes one as a
pretty fine distinction. The reference to
The Turning Wind
was a figurative use
of the title of the volume in connection
with a particular poem. But in general
it seems to us that
The Turning Wind
is marked throughout by a shift from '
Marxism to Americanism, and that the
poem about the Stalinist organizer Ann
Burlak is more than counterbalanced by
poems about Gibbs, Chapman and lves,
and a general lack of relation to work–
ing-class allegiances.
3. The remark about Miss Rukeyser
not being astonished by the Japanese
was obviously not meant as a comment
on her military acumen. It meant that
Miss Rukeyser's poetic equipment was
available, on short notice, for any pa–
triotic emergency, and that
Wake
Island,
with its apostrophes to the Ma–
rines and spectacular Americanism, was
scarcely an organic development from
her earlier work. We recall that in
1936, when Miss Rukeyser wrote anti–
Japanese captions, she had not yet
yielded to the super-class and national–
ist approach to fascism so popular to–
day.
4. Nobody questions the efficacy of
propaganda or the right of a poet to
make use of it. But surely a stream–
lined poster is hardly a substitute for
po–
litical principles. Are we to assume that
all is right with the aims and conduct
of the war and all that is necessary is
to prevail upon the big shots in Wash–
ington to allow us to state "our" case
in better posters?
Now that we have reached the third
and last round of the Rukeyser imbro–
glio, it should be clear that further
quibbling about this or that detail of
Miss Rukeyser's work is beside the
point. We deplore the unduly personal
tone in the original handling of the
matter. But the "main issue" is the gen–
eral pattern of Miss Rukeyser's career,
and it is plain that her defenders are
not disposed to see its implications, or,
what is more important, to see it as a
symptom of the backsliding so common
among writers today and their irrespon–
sible exploitation of political motives
and ideas for purposes of literary ag–
grandizement.-The
Editors.
