Poetry of High Standard in Current Number of Advocate

I was much struck by the Advocate's second editorial in the current issue "A Plea for Prose." So far as my own experience goes, it is unique in either academic or professional journalism. Yet I should not be surprised if it were found significant of the general literary situation. I understand that it has become increasingly difficult to get good stories for the magazines, one reason being the greater profit from writing scenarios for the "movies," another the deductive attraction of vers libre. The latter enables a writer to utilize at once, it primitive, semi-poetic, material--idea of image--that, in the past, has had-to be worked up slowly and elaborately into conventional fiction form. Much of the "free verse" seen in the magazines is of this type--some of it quite successful and interesting, in its way, like Mr. Snow's poem, "The Girardian," in the Advocate--while a certain amount of the residual prose itself, like Mr. Low's sketches "Inspiration" and "The Forest," in the same number, tends to approximate the same type.

From the first I was impressed by the amount of space allotted to verse in the Advocate--a paper with poetic traditions, if ever paper had them--and I cannot see why one whole issue should not be devoted to it from time to time. Surely it is not necessary to remind the editors that the qualities that make vital all literature exist in what we roughly classify as poetry, to a far higher degree than in what, with equal roughness, we classify as prose. As an ex-editor, I sympathize with their professional zeal for "balance," while realizing that this word is merely a euphemism to justify an attempt to meet all tastes.

The poetry in the current number of the Advocate, as in other numbers of both the Advocate and Monthly I have seen this year, seems to me of remarkably high quality, even for undergraduate verse which, in the bulk, has always been the best written in this country. Mr. Norris and Mr. Hillyer easily take the lead with their contributions in the present list. Of the two, Mr. Norris, in "An Apple," strikes the more modern note. Here, as elsewhere in his work, he displays much of that "witty delicacy" which so many of the younger English poets today have derived from Andrew Marvell and others of the 17th century. In point of style, he may already be classed with writers like Rupert Brooke, Harold Monro, and Walter de la Mare. With a little more intensity of mood, he might even suggest Ralph Hodgson, for he has at times a distinct trace of Hodgson's mystical vision. But the closest resemblance of all, in this particular poem, is to James Stephens, of whom there is a very good reminder in the touch, in the last stanza, about the "lone God."

Mr. Hillyer, less original, as he is less modern, in form, is perhaps, even more original in spirit, in expression. He accepts the great tradition of English poetry--the tradition of Spenser and Shakespere--as Mr. Norris accepts the lesser, but accepts it freely and boldly, as if born to the purple. In "The Question" one is struck first of all by the individuality and evocative quality of the diction, then by the sustained sweep and music of the line, as contrasted with the briefer felicity of Mr. Norris' phrase. In fact, the two poets present an interesting and suggestive opposition throughout. If in Mr. Norris I find sentiment, fancy, wit--in the older sense--in Mr. Hillyer I find, above all, passion and imagination. But their latest poems are both equally beautiful in their different ways, and both offer promise of even higher performance.

Next to these two Mr. Malcolm Cowley's clever and attractive verses "On Visiting the Revere" form the most striking contribution to the number, while, of the remaining poems, it is perhaps enough to say that, with possibly a single exception, all are worthy of the place they have won in the Advocate. The stories, too, are well written, though slight and immature artistically, as compared with the verse, and depend too exclusively for their effectiveness upon some simple, strong, unshaded contrast, or upon some element of surprise--extravagant or farcical--in the denouement. Except in "A Fool," by Mr. Putnam, there is little attempt at characterization, and even here it is rather rudimentary. The one article "Concerning the Young Russians" is interesting and well-informed, though more might, with justice, be said for Artsybashey and the philosophical significance and artistic quality of his novels, "Sanine" and "The Breaking Point.