lOOKS
139
despite Macdonald's impatient assertiveness of his identity, his exper–
iences seem to be almost completely "political," symbolic of a whole
generation.
If
he had been able to think of his subject as the plight of
a representative group of intellectuals, his book would have had a less
self-conscious quality and a more obvious purpose. The "radical" ex–
perience, however unimportant, humorous, incredible it may seem to
be
needs to be studied with detachment-for it has shown itself, in
,
many hands, to lead to goals which are the very opposite of those which
radicals profess.
Alfred Kazin
A POET'S
MATURITY
ON POETRY AND POETS. By T. S. Eliot. Forror, Strous ond Cudohy. $4.50.
There are two sorts of criticism of poetry: the kind that
poets
write and the kind that everybody else writes. I agree with Mr.
Eliot when he says that "the poet at the back of his mind . . . is always
trying to defend the kind of poetry he is writing or to formulate the
kind he wants to write." But I would go a good deal further and claim
that
this poets' criticism is in the long run the most useful kind both
for poets themselves and for readers of poetry: because poetry is a way
of living and one which implicitly tries to heal the artificial separation
between life and art; and because poetry, ill-paid and often disliked
even by poets themselves, cannot help at least aiming at disinterested–
ness. And whereas all the critics of the other or non-poetic kind get
committed to their views, both of life and art, as other people get
committed to prison, the poet, even if he has ground away as hard as
any,
can sometimes, in the long run, melt down his axes into a steel
tonic for his verse. Or to change the metaphor, poetry is an enzyme
which
digests views. Abstract opinions are like cellulose: a poet has a
leCond stomach.
I said "in the long run." What I am discussing is a phenomenon
of maturation. Before long, we are told, the general increase in ex–
pectation of life will become a serious problem. Poetic gerontology may
soon provide material for a thesis. Poets once died young either phys–
ically
or poetically. It is only if, like Wordsworth and Yeats, they live
to
a
fair
age, that there can
be
some convincing opinion why they live
or die as poets.
