Monday, Jan. 16, 1939
Poets, Poetasters, Poeticules
Sirs:
In re poet, -s, -asters, -icules under Books in the issue of Dec. 26, my curiosity will allow me no peace.
What college is currently graced by attendance of the brilliant sophomore who perpetrated that six-column atrocity ?
It is difficult to decide which is grossest: the vapidity of the introductory apologia; the cant of the individual critiques; or (he high-handed inanity of the whole approach.
The effort is reminiscent of the gentleman who, observing Apollo's Hyperborean journey, declared emphatically, "I shall compass this in terms of Quately's logic, or bust." He bust.
GUY RUNNION
Kansas City, Mo.
Sirs:
I never read poetry but your editor on Books has written such an attractive and interesting description of poets and poetry that I cannot refrain from expressing my appreciation. . . .
JOHN R. STEVENSON
Ivywild Presbyterian Church
Colorado Springs, Colo.
Sirs:
Your classification of poets . . . makes a sorry exhibition of criticism. What does all your confident assertion about poets, poetasters, poeticules, and the function of communication mean? Not much I think, except your own sense of power--for one issue--over persons whom you obviously don't understand nor even recognize. Jeffers is a vasty poetaster, William Carlos Williams is a poetaster, Prokosch is an accomplished poetaster, Taggard is empty, nondescript, Donald Davidson is poeticulous, Fearing is a poeticule, say you. Where is your badge for all this authority? Probably it's a book by I. A. Richards or perhaps the history of the French Academy.
Your criticism of poets like Jeffers and Taggard--and I imagine you would include Lola Ridge, Tagore, Anna Hempstead Branch and others called mystical and "metaphysical" --unerringly indicates your own limitation as critic. You simply missed the boat so far as they are concerned, and in my humble opinion you always will miss it, so long as your ideas of poetry are based on semantics.
When will critics learn how ruinous are these single standard, monistic systems of criticism clamped down on art? It is a bad day for poetry when as powerful and as ordinarily valuable a magazine as TIME gets into that line. It will promote careful mediocrities but not many poets.
BAKER BROWNELL
Fort Myers, Fla.
> TIME'S "ideas of poetry" are based not on semantics--the science of meaning--but on poetry--the articulation of reality. Because many "poets" are adept at articulating unreality does not seem to TIME good reason for it to desert its single standard of poetry criticism: poems that articulate real sense are poems; poems that articulate unreal non-sense are not poems.--ED.
Sirs:
If TIME really feels, as it claims to feel, a responsibility towards its readers to review books of poetry, may I suggest that its manner of discharging that responsibility is unfortunate? Even omnibus criticism owes the reader a greater courtesy than that of the smart epithet. You have shown, in your excellent reviews of the poetry of Cummings and Garcia Lorca, that you can describe verse intelligently and soberly. Consequently it is all the more disheartening to read your high-school wisecrack dismissals of Dr. Williams and Miss Taggard--writers whose long service to American poetry certainly deserves more consideration than you seem willing to pay it. No one will quarrel with reasoned, documented condemnation; what is really immoral is this arbitrary fixing of labels--"poetaster," "poeticule," "ham" (in a recent "review" of unhappy memory)--and then forcing the material to correspond to them. The pity of it is that you are influential. Your treatment of Dr. Williams' book does much to explain the indifference you mention in your first sentence.
DUDLEY FITTS
Boston, Mass.
> In calling certain poets "poets, poetasters & poeticules," for reasons that TIME'S editors seriously tried to make self-evident, TIME does not feel that it was arbitrarily affixing labels, but responsibly naming names.--ED.
Sirs:
Your job . . . was well done. After all, what you said for Riding applies as well to the whole of the work in the modern field, where we are all laborers together. In that there is plenty of room for disagreement without forsaking the solidarity of purpose which we all respect and work for.
For myself, I do not feel quite as confident about Laura Riding's status as you do. What's the difference? What you said . . . was a great boost for a viewpoint which it has taken some of us a third of a century |to present. . . .
To get such a viewpoint into the public press was the main thing. I salute you and regret only that you did not find in my own work more to satisfy your logic.
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
Rutherford, N. J.
Social Security
Sirs:
In TIME for Dec. 26 on p. 11 under "Social Security" you state, "instead of upping the present tax rates of 1% on employer and 1% on employe . . . the Council advised calling a halt for 'further study' after they have been upped to 1 1/2% January 1." Is TIME Inc. going to start January 1, 1939 to deduct 1 1/2% from its employes' payroll checks ?
The 1% rates now in effect are for the calendar years 1937, 1938, and 1939. The 1 1/2% rate is not effective until January 1, 1940. Had this article appeared in a later issue it might have been construed correctly.
HERBERT W. PROBASCO
Lincoln, Neb.
> TIME'S calendar slipped: 1940 is right.--ED,
Viewpoints Change
Sirs:
Some 300 years ago, a family of Fletchers came to America to escape religious persecution.
This week's issue of TIME (Dec. 19) prints a letter from one Dana Fletcher expressing the sentiment of exclusion of "Europe's unwanted."
Strange how viewpoints change, isn't it?
FLETCHER BARKER
Alhambra, Calif.
Shirt
Sirs:
I was very much surprised to read in TIME, Dec. 5 that Mrs. Chamberlain had sent an old shirt of Mr. C's to a shirt collector in the U. S. I was surprised because after what happened at Munich, I doubted very much that he had one left. . . .
DANNY DARE
New York City
Word
Sirs:
TIME seems always in the market for new words so here's one my little niece coined. She was excited about a man on the street trying to crank an old-model car. In describing it to her Grandpa she said, "It was just a 'jalopidated' old car."
MURIEL M. CAIN
Armour, S. Dak.
Man of 1938
Sirs:
All insinuations contained in the "Man Of 1938" cover of TIME are very obvious.
The figure of the pastor in the Lutheran ministerial garb behind the medieval wheel of torture, serving near the altar with the chalice, and participating in the service in a Lutheran edifice by singing from a hymnbook with uplifted, blessing arm under the glaring light falling upon him, permits only one interpretation:
The Lutheran Church blessing the Hymn of Hate played by the blasphemer with the Nazi emblem on his left arm at the church organ.
In the name of the many thousands of Lutheran ministers suffering today in Germany unimaginable misery with no means to voice their protest and in the name of all those of my fellow-ministers in the U. S. who shall rise as one against such an interpretation I must ask you, the editors, and the designer to clarify that phase of the picture, in order to dispel any doubt in the minds of your readers.
I hope you realize the seriousness of my request.
ARTHUR J. A. KOERNER
Lutheran Pastor Gatesville, Tex.
> No reflection on the Lutheran Church was TIME'S cover. It was only a reflection on the pseudo-religious pretensions of Nazi barbarism, which takes the form of paganism and of the so-called German Christian (Nazi) Church.--ED.
Sirs:
Congratulations to TIME for fulfilling its rightful purpose of evaluating the world of 1938 as it was, not as we would have preferred it. . . .
W. F. SHELTON
Berkeley, Calif.
Sirs:
. . . The Man-of-the-Year cover is to me the lowest and foulest thing TIME has done.
B. J. SCHWIND
Mt. Plymouth, Fla.
An accolade for your inspired, mordant solution of an odious yet historically necessary selection.
C. L. STEINBERG, M.D.
St. Paul, Minn.
Sirs:
. . . I wish to deplore your selection of the inhuman beast in control of the German Government as TIME'S Man of the Year. . . .
PETER HODSON
Wyandotte, Mich.
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