Glenway Wescott
A SUCCESSION OF POETS
I began life as a poet but was always somewhat inartic–
ulate in verse, and in due course ceased and desisted. Which is
not my theme. Early in my lifetime I met various writers of verse
far superior
to
myself, especially two, and this essay is to express
something that has been in my mind more and more of late: a
sort of mystique of the literary life as worth living for its own
sake, on whatever terms, with or without self-satisfaction. It is
about slight encounters with poets from 1921 on; myself as a
would-be poet somewhat omnipresent, but in the periphery or in
a corner, like the donor in a religious picture kneeling in admi–
ration, or later on, keeping an intense professional and vocational
watch upon my elders and betters, spying out secrets of their
poetical art, patterns of their mentality.
Summer 1957 the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough,
New Hampshire, celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, and upon
that occasion awarded its Gold Medal
to
the beloved octogenar–
ian, Marianne Moore. I was asked
to
make an informal address
of presentation. Gladly undertaking to do this, I did not stop to
think that I should be speaking in Miss Moore's presence. In a
large bl ue and yellow tent we sat side by side on the platform.
Captain John Warner Moore, the poet's aged seafaring brother,
and his wife and his daughter, were also at hand. Furthermore
there were eminent creative and academic personages, and a
larger number of familiar friends than I care
to
see in any audi–
ence. The festive atmosphere filled me with anxious emotions.
And even as I spoke, I found myself assailed by extraordinary ad–
ditional little memories, forty years back and in between, and
ever since have wanted
to
do more justice to them and to my
famous poet friend than I did that day.
That was my second visit to the MacDowell Colony. The
first was in the summer of 1921, just for a day. On the way from
my native Middle West to England and Germany, I was spending
some months in a large and rather new log cabin perched up in
the woods over West Cummington, Massachusetts, belonging to
