Pound once wrote: “No good poetry is ever written in a manner twenty years old, for to write in such a manner shows conclusively that the writer thinks from books, convention and cliché, and not from life. …”

Again: “Poetry is a centaur. The thinking, word-arranging, clarifying faculty must move and leap with the energizing, sentient, musical faculties. It is precisely the difficulty of this amphibious existence that keeps down the census record of good poets.”

Further: “Don't imagine that a thing will ‘go’ in verse just because it's too dull to go in prose.”

Further still: “When you have words of a lament set to the rhythm and tempo of There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town To-night you have either an intentional burlesque or rotten art.”

And then: “Poets who are not interested in music are, or become, bad poets. I would almost say that poets should never be too long out of touch with musicians. … I do not mean that they need become virtuosi. … It is perhaps their value that they can be a little refractory and heretical, for all arts tend to decline into the stereotype; and at all times the mediocre tend or try, semi-consciously or unconsciously, to obscure the fact that the day's fashion is not the immutable.”

Finally, anent the types of verbal clarity: “There is the clarity of the request: Send me four pounds of ten-penny nails. And there is the syntactical simplicity of the request: Buy me the kind of Rembrandt I like. This last is an utter cryptogram. It presupposes a more complex and intimate understanding of the speaker than most of us ever acquire of anyone. It has as many meanings, almost, as there are persons who might speak it. To a stranger it conveys nothing at all.”

I am not sorry to quote Ezra Pound at such length. As far as I have served any master during my thirty years' apprenticeship in poetry, he has played the part, and I have never tired of returning to the best of his critical writing, so pointed and spirited, so deeply instinct with formative energy. Wherever I find it I always enjoy it. So do other readers, I know. But at present I have a separate reason for wishing to buttress myself with Pound's authority, for now I feel obliged, actually impelled against my natural desire, to say something that many people will think heretical and stupid, and in doing so to tread on a few toes. My strategy is to disarm these people by quoting to them from texts which they, too, acknowledge as originative, so that they may listen to me without offense. Yet isn't the truth simply that I think these people have paid scant heed to what Pound actually thought and wrote, and that offense is probably inescapable? So much the more reason to have no taste for it, then. The older I get the less I wish to tread on anyone's toes, certainly not for poetical reasons—politics being another matter. As Pound also remarked, “Beauty is difficult,” damned bloody difficult, and the one aspect of his critical method which I somewhat disparage is his hauteur toward other writers, especially from his own generation, who were working at it as hard as he was. Let me try to do what I must without hauteur.

If what I have suggested is true, namely, that some of Pound's present-day followers accord his teaching more hebetude and neglect than real understanding, this is not the first time. We know what became of Imagism in the years following the first Imagist anthology in 1912: hordes of unfavored vers-librists, mostly Americans, crashed the gate, many under the flowing standard of Amy Lowell, which caused Pound to say that the movement had degenerated into Amygism, and caused both him and his friend Eliot to revert to the corrective traditionalism of Mauberley and the Sweeney and Hippopotamus poems. Pound and Eliot are no longer able to apply the corrective; yet I am certain it is coming from someone, somewhere, somehow, because the condition of poetry today resembles closely the condition of poetry in 1915. The common American poetic style, descended lineally if deviously from what Pound proclaimed in his Imagist manifestoes, has become again so common that it is ridiculous; riddled with triteness, sameness, and dullness. It is being turned out virtually by rote at tens of thousands of writing tables all over North America, and given to us, thrown at us, in poems which are interchangeable, in books whose authors, relentless ego-tripping solipsists though they are, remain as indistinguishable as the obit-writers of the Times. The tricks, metaphors, cadences, topics, vocabularies: they are standard. “Procedures,” as Pound once complained, “are already erected into rules!” We have “syntactical simplicity” by the yard, conveying “nothing at all.” I do not mean that there are no good young poets. There are a fair number, and I have praised them, publicly and privately, whenever I could; there would even be enough to sustain this particular “heave,” as Pound would say, for years to come. The trouble is that in order for the good poets to sustain themselves, at least in the public or cultural sense, they must be able to offer their work clearly, freely, and with a certain distinctiveness and purity. Today the work of our good young poets is in danger of being swamped by the mass of similar but inferior writing. And the danger is heightened by the fact that many of the inferior writers have worked themselves into positions of power, since a sign of flatulence in any particular poetic movement is its concomitant institutionalization within the structures of academic and literary life.

We are accustomed to think of poetry as sustained by its leaders, because this is the case during periods of innovation when we are all caught up in the sociological dynamism of literary processes. But at other times, just as important in terms of art, when matters of principle are abeyant and each of us turns to the exploitation of his personal capacities, then we are all, leaders and followers alike, sustained by the health of poetry-at-large; or, conversely, let down by its weakness.

But my interest now is poetry itself, the lines that lie on the page and sound in the ear, and I hope my interest agrees with Pound's sense of the perennial needs: for craft, for understanding of technique, for honest serious work, and against carelessness and imprecision. Great poetry is another matter. We know little of its origins, and nothing at all of how to predict it. But poetry that can serve us, as farming and artisanship serve us, poetry that does not smudge its standards, poetry that by the very tension of its striving confutes the recurrent social philosophies of expedience and claptrap: this is what we are looking for. I remember a couple of years ago a good friend of mine, who is also one of our most prominent poets, showed me a new poem in manuscript. I read it, and then read aloud the first seven or eight lines, to show that their language was flat and prosaic. “Ah,” was the response, “but you don't understand my prosody.” Whereupon the same passage was reread aloud to me, with exaggerated pauses at the end of each line. “Prosody be damned,” I said. “Prosody alone doesn't make poetry. And language that is lifeless, syntax that is dead, cannot be vivified merely by typographical division: that's nothing but elocution. If the poetic line means anything, it must mean more than that!”

Here is a paragraph for general inspection:

“Summer Morning”

I love to stretch like this, naked on my bed in the morning; quiet, listening. Outside they are opening their primers in the little school of the cornfield. There is a smell of damp hay, of horses, of summer sky, of laziness, of eternal life. I know all the dark places where the sun hasn't reached yet, where the singing has just ceased in the hidden aviaries of the crickets—anthills where it goes on raining—slumbering spiders dreaming of wedding dresses. I pass over the farmhouses where the little mouths open to suck, barnyards where a man, naked to the waist, washes his face with a hose, where the dishes begin to rattle in the kitchen. The good tree with its voice of a mountain brook knows my steps. It hushes. I stop and listen. Somewhere close by a stone cracks a knuckle, another turns over in its sleep. I hear a butterfly stirring in the tiny soul of the caterpillar. I hear the dust dreaming of eyes and great winds. Further ahead, someone even more silent passes over the grass without bending it. And all of a sudden in the midst of that silence it seems possible to live simply on the earth.

And here is another:

“Moons”

There are moons like continents, diminishing to a white stone softly smoking in a fogbound ocean; equinoctial moons, immense rainbarrels spilling their yellow water; moons like eyes turned inward, hard and bulging on the blue cheek of eternity; and moons half-broken, eaten by eagle shadows. But the moon of the poet is soiled and scratched, its seas are flowing with dust. And other moons are rising, swollen like boils. In their bloodshot depths the warfare of planets silently drips and festers.

I don't know if it is still done—pray heaven it's not—but when I was in public school the poor old maids who taught English would often assign as a class exercise the writing on set themes of what were called “descriptions,” or sometimes “word-paintings.” Rarely did they turn up anything with the facile imagery of these two paragraphs, though this was what they wanted, what they forlornly strove for among their pubescent charges. Nothing could remind me more forcefully than these two paragraphs, with their complacent suggestiveness, passiveness, inertness, of the chalkdust sentimentality of my early education. It is Proust's madeleine exactly. Yet surely by now everyone recognizes what I have done, and what a sorry old trick it is. I have printed two poems as prose. And their authors are far from being schoolboys, or beginners in any sense; quite the contrary. They are poets who have published a good deal in the past half-decade or longer, and their names are known to everyone who follows contemporary poetry with more than passing attention. They are, respectively, Charles Simic and John Haines.¹

Now let me restore their poems to the forms they gave them.

“Summer Morning”

I love to stretch
Like this, naked
On my bed in the morning;
Quiet, listening:
Outside they are opening
Their primers
In the little school
Of the cornfield.
There is a smell of damp hay,
Of horses, of summer sky,
Of laziness, of eternal life.
I know all the dark places
Where the sun hasn't reached yet,
Where the singing has just ceased
In the hidden aviaries of the crickets—
Anthills where it goes on raining—
Slumbering spiders dreaming of wedding dresses.
I pass over the farmhouses
Where the little mouths open to suck,
Barnyards where a man, naked to the waist,
Washes his face with a hose,
Where the dishes begin to rattle in the kitchen.
The good tree with its voice
Of a mountain brook
Knows my steps       [sic]
It hushes.
I stop and listen:
Somewhere close by
A stone cracks a knuckle,
Another turns over in its sleep.
I hear a butterfly stirring
In the tiny soul of the caterpillar.
I hear the dust dreaming
Of eyes and great winds.
Further ahead, someone
Even more silent
Passes over the grass
Without bending it.
—And all of a sudden
In the midst of that silence
It seems possible
To live simply
On the earth.

.....

“Moons”

There are moons like continents,
diminishing to a white stone
softly smoking
in a fogbound ocean.
Equinoctial moons,
immense rainbarrels spilling
their yellow water.
Moons like eyes turned inward,
hard and bulging
on the blue cheek of eternity.
And moons half-broken,
eaten by eagle shadows …
But the moon of the poet
is soiled and scratched, its seas
are flowing with dust.
And other moons are rising,
swollen like boils—
in their bloodshot depths
the warfare of planets
silently drips and festers.

You see? I have changed nothing in my prose versions but typographical arrangement and punctuation (including the possible typographical error in the sixth stanza of Simic's poem). Yet the meaning of my little experiment is so plain that I am willing to risk four contentions upon it.

First, these two poems, taken as formal structures, are perfectly characteristic not only of the work of these two poets but of the great mass of other poems by poets under forty now writing in the U.S. This is crucial, all the rest depends on it. Of course anyone can deny what I say and find plenty of exceptional cases to “prove” the point, but I rely on the good sense and good will of poetry-readers to concede my argument: that in look, tone, movement, imagistic structure, and all other textural qualities, these two poems are fairly and widely representative. For I have no wish to attack Simic and Haines, and would not mention them if it weren't necessary to argue from examples. They are honest, devoted workers. Here I am interested only in what is happening to poetry. What is happening to poets is another—probably far more difficult—question.

Second, both these poems not only lose nothing by being printed as prose, they actually gain from it. This is not because the poems are badly written. I pass over substantial triteness and silliness (dreaming spiders, the caterpillar's tiny soul, moons like rainbarrels, etc.), because I believe that in terms of structural and verbal elements both poems would be passed in any writing seminar in the country. The life endings are reasonable, the diction is simple and expressive, the poets have avoided the amateurish anapestic rhythms of much free verse (caused by excessive dependence on prepositional phrases in standard English speech: to the end, in a nutshell, etc.), and really there seems nothing to criticize: except that the language, taken altogether, is slack, so devoid of formal tension and impetus, that the poems cease to function. What purpose do these lines serve, beyond making us read with unnatural emphasis and in a joggy cadence? It's all very well to say, as we did twenty-five years ago, that the language of prose cast against poetic measures will make good prosody. It wasn't true then and it isn't true now. These poems in free measure are just as flaccid as the limp iambics of the earlier period, and for the same reason. Let me say once and for all: not only must poetry be as well written as prose, it must be better written.²

Third, both these poems are part of the main evolution of modern American poetry, descended from Pound and especially from Williams, through Olson-Duncan-Creeley, with a very strong influence from Levertov, a certain influence from the Beats, and a reversionary influence from older poets like H. D., Zukofsky, Oppen, Ignatow, and many others. A few people perhaps even remember the part played by Byron Vazakas. No matter; the point is not to recapitulate a tired history but to recognize that the idea of the poetic line is central to it all. From first to last, whether conceived as a breath unit, an aural device, an inherent function of language, part of a culturally necessary tradition, or whatever—from first to last the line has been our functional key to poetry. I am not speaking of developments outside the main evolution, such as prose poetry, which has not progressed much beyond Fiona Macleod, or poetry based on arbitrary typographical designs, like James Laughlin's little poems that I greatly admire. I reject the feeble conundrum of what is poetry and what is prose, simply say that historically and at present the line is our basic unit of poetry, that for my part I would not have it otherwise, and that ninety-five per cent of the other working poets in America agree with me, whatever their particular allegiances may be.

Fourth, when poems gain in fluency and intelligibility, and hence in meaning, from being printed as prose, it is because the line has ceased to function, as I have already said, and when the line has ceased to function it is because the language has become too dull to sustain the measure. This, incidentally, is the right way to say it: language sustaining measure, not, as many have thought or hoped, the other way round. From this it is not hard to deduce the anterior reason for all language, which is simply the loss of formative energy in the current phase of American poetry. Whatever name we call it, the heave has subsided. If this has happened sooner than we would have expected, I believe the cause lies demonstrably in the proliferation of verse-writing classes at our universities during the past decade; we have been turning out poets by the tens of thousands. These are the poets who give us the evidence of collapse, evidence that smothers us and stultifies our sensibilities as the wave of poetry mounts. The masters, the leaders, are in no danger; in most cases their work continues fresh and strong, though we note that, formally speaking, they are not breaking new ground—not even in the sense that Pound, Williams, and Eliot continued to break new ground as long as they were active. But the followers, not the leaders, are the sufferers now. One needs no great acumen to foresee that a revulsion will come, even if one has no idea of its potential source nor any arguable notion of its form. But unless the vitality has suddenly departed from American poetry, which I do not believe, or unless there are countervailing political and social factors that lie outside the scope of this discussion, which I do not really believe either, it will come soon.

Notes

1. Dismantling the Silence, by Charles Simic. Braziller. $3.95. The Stone Harp, by John Haines. Wesleyan University Press. $4.00 (cloth); $2.00 (paper).

2. Who wants prose now anyway, if prose is the leaky string of sausage that goes by that name? Barth, Mailer, and Tom Wolfe are welcome to it.