Lionel Abel
IN THE SACRED PARK
For Meyer Schapiro
The great poet is always an
amateur
poet, in need of what
Goethe called "occasional" inspiration: at the same time he has to
be a
professwnal
poet, given to the continual practice of his craft
and able to produce at will, as Hopkins has it, "good" parnassion;
and he will also necessarily be a
total
poet, since for greatness
the
commitment he gives to his art must involve his whole nature.
So the great poet is rich. He is also poor. He has three postures
toward poetry, but of these only one can finally typify him. Thus
we see 3.t once that Baudelaire is a total poet, though the amateur
and professional are clearly evident in him; and we see that Pound
and Eliot are professional poets, though their commitment to poetry
is
as thorough as you please; and, clearly, they ,allowed themselves
enough
of the amateur to be
great
as professionals.
But where are we to find the maker of great verse whose atti·
tude was essentially that of an amateur? The name that comes to
mind
is
that of Wallace Stevens. To call him an amateur poet
im·
plies no questioning of his attachment to poetry and no imputation
against his professional skill. My claim is simply that by seeing Stevens
as an amateur we can best gain access to the meaning of his poet's
craft and, paradoxically, to the real extremity of his commitment to
his art. In viewing Stevens, we should emphasize what he himself em·
phasized, underlining in him what his own verses underline.
This
modern master gave to his amateur's attitude a singular content, yet
one that is intrinsically historical; he is wholly contemporary,
yet
there is, in fact, no one else like him, no one with whom, except for
certain details of craft, he may be profitably compared.
