The Dial, 75 (Dec 1923) [594]-97
Two years ago Miss Moore’s book of Poems– so far as I know her only book – was published in London by The Egoist Press; and I then undertook to review it for The Dial. 1 This promise, for one reason after another, I never fulfilled. Now another poem has appeared, Marriage, published by Manikin, printed apparently in Germany, and with a parenthetical introduction by Mr. Glenway Wescott. 2 Meanwhile I have read Miss Moore’s poems a good many times, and always with exactly the same pleasure, and satisfaction in something quite definite and solid. Because of a promise which, because of the long delay, may be considered as having been broken, and because I can only, at the moment, think of five contemporary poets – English, Irish, American, French, and German – whose work excites me as much as, or more than, Miss Moore’s, I find myself compelled to say something about them. Not that there is much that is usefully said about any new work of art – I do not rate criticism so highly; but one ought, in honesty, to publish one’s beliefs.
Mr. Wescott has, in fact, written a good introduction; I only think that his distinction between proletariat art and aristocratic art is an artificial and unimportant distinction with dangerous consequences. 3 So far as a proletariat art is art at all, it is the same thing in essence as aristocratic art; but in general, and at the present time, the middle-class art (which is what I believe Mr. Wescott to have in mind when he speaks of proletariat art; the proletariat ismiddle class in America) is much more artificial than anything else; it plays with sham ideas, sham emotions, and even sham sensations. On the other hand a real aristocracy is essentially of the same blood as the people over whom it rules: a real aristocracy is not a Baltenland aristocracy of foreign race. 4 This apparently purely political definition applies to art as well: fine art is the refinement, not the antithesis, of popular art. Miss Moore’s poetry may not seem to confirm this statement. I agree with Mr. Wescott that it is “aristocratic,” in that it can only please a very small number of people. But it is not, or not wholly, aristocratic in the Baltenland sense. I see in it at least three elements: a quite new rhythm, which I think is the most valuable thing; a peculiar and brilliant and rather satirical use of what is not, as material, an “aristocratic” language at all, but simply the curious jargon produced in America by universal university education – that jargon which makes it impossible for Americans to talk for half an hour without using the terms of psychoanalysis, and which has introduced “moron” as more forcible than “idiot”; and finally an almost primitive simplicity of phrase. There may be more. Up to the present time Miss Moore has concerned herself with practising and perfecting a given formation of elements; it will depend, I think, on her ability to shatterthis formation and painfully reconstruct, whether Miss Moore makes another invention equal in merit to the first.
Rhythm, of course, is a highly personal matter; it is not a verse-form. It is always the real pattern in the carpet, 5 the scheme of organization of thought, feeling, and vocabulary, the way in which everything comes together. It is very uncommon. What is certain is that Miss Moore’s poems always read very well aloud. That quality is something which no system of scansion can define. It is not separable from the use of words, in Miss Moore’s case the conscious and complete appreciation of every word, and in relation to every other word, as it goes by. I think that “Those...
