INTRODUCTION TO THE PRESENT EDITION The first edition of The New Poetry was prepared in 1916, and published the following February. The present edition aims simply to add to that collection of twentieth-century verse in English the most significant work of the period which has passed since the book first appeared. The plan of the book, therefore, is to represent each poet of the first edition, with a few exceptions, by his former group, adding, in certain cases, such of his later poems as may seem best to suggest his later mood and manner; and to insert new names in their proper alphabetical order. In the case of two poets, however, this arrangement has to be waived: Mr. Witter Bynner requests a rearrangement of his group, old and new; and Mr. Conrad Aiken exacts the omission of the three early poems which have hitherto represented him, and restricts the editors' choice to a list which excludes two coveted Senlin monologues, these having been, in his opinion, "too much anthologized." In considering the make-up of this edition, the editors have been compelled to put aside two temptations. The first was the temptation to disregard certain limitations mentioned in the introduction to the first edition-limitations drawn by time and death-in order to trace the beginnings of the modern movement wherever the quest might lead. It might have led us even to Blake. Obviously it would have led us to Whitman, though we might legitimately have refrained from quoting so great a master, so ancestral a revolutionist. But we should have been compelled to represent generously such nineteenthcentury moderns as Emily Dickinson, Gerard Hopkins and Stephen Crane; to acknowledge the new austerities practiced by the Celtic group of poets during the 'nineties; to admit a deviation from the Victorian tone and manner in a few poets of the closing century, like Robert Bridges, Wilfred Blunt, and the Shropshire Lad (A. E. Housman); to pay tribute to Rudyard Kipling's easy fling in mod ern balladry, and to his incisive directness in certain later poems; and possibly even to point out wherein some of the Victorians, especially Robert Browning and Christina Rossetti, were prophetic of change in certain poems. Also we should have had to revoke our omission of such twentieth-century poets now "enshrined by death" as Synge and Moody and Riley-the first a modern triumphantly, but greater as playwright than as lyrist; the others leading toward the more recent groups in certain aspects of their art. We were tempted especially by three nineteenth-century poets who were unfairly obscure in their day and who really belong in "the new movement." Two of them were singularly reticentboth Emily Dickinson and Gerard Hopkins waited for posthumous publication. But the former achieved a vivid directness and compactness worthy of the imagists, as well as a very personal technique which searched for hidden, rather than obvious delicacies of assonance and rhythm; as in many poems like this one on despair: The difference between despair The mind is smooth-no motion- Upon the forehead of a bust, That knows it cannot see. And this poem shows the intensity of her spiritual life: There is a solitude of space, A solitude of sea, A solitude of death; but these Society shall be Compared with that profounder site, That polar privacy, A Soul admitted to Itself: Finite Infinity. Hopkins, in his Jesuit seclusion, worked out a deeply original metric pattern, capable of exquisitely rich, subtle and flexible modulations, though always thoroughly controlled. In certain poems he presented an impressionistic rush of splendor, a veritable tumble of gorgeous colors and sounds, as different from Swinburne's smooth expansive patterns as Tschaikowsky is different from Chopin. Almost any of his poems would carry conviction of the essential modernness of this priest who could ring adjectives like a chime of bells in such lines as Tatter-tassel-tangled and dingle-a-dangled We quote a passage from The Leaden Echo, a maiden's plaint, to show his luxuriant style and his "terrible immediacy of utterance": How to keep is there any any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, lace, latch or catch or key to keep Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, from vanishing away? . Oh, is there no frowning of these wrinkles, ranked wrinkles deep, Down? no waving-off of these most mournful messengers, still messengers, sad and stealing messengers of grey? No, there's none, there's none-oh no, there's none! Do what you may do, what, do what you may, And wisdom is early to despair: Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done To keep at bay Age and age's evils-hoar hair, Ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, death's worst, winding sheets, tombs and worms and tumbling to decay; So be beginning, be beginning to despair. Oh there's none-no no no, there's none: Be beginning to despair, to despair, Despair, despair, despair, despair. And here is the beautiful sonnet, God's Grandeur: The world is charged with grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And, for all this, nature is never spent― There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs: World broods with warm breast and with-ah!-bright wings. The modern mood of Stephen Crane was perhaps more militant. Taking a hint possibly from Yone Noguchi, he printed during the later 'nineties two books of free-verse poems which challenged the established metrical order and were not without influence in beginning a new fashion. Most of them sound a bit sententious today; the best is the passionately ironic War is Kind: Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind. Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky Do not weep. War is kind. Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment, These men were born to drill and die. The unexplained glory flies above them; Great is the battle-god, great-and his kingdom A field where a thousand corpses lie. Do not weep, babe, for war is kind. Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches, Do not weep. War is kind. Swift blazing flag of the regiment, Eagle with crest of red and gold, Mother whose heart hung humble as a button War is kind. Synge's few poems have influenced "the movement," by their hard simplicity, toward a more direct attack and a more vital imaginative speech. Still more his plays, by the marvellous lyricism of their rhythmic dialogue, derived from the speech-rhythms of a primitive people, have taught many lessons to modern poets. Probably this great Irishman has ended forever the long reign of Elizabethan blank verse in English dramatic poetry; and has given aid and comfort to all the groups of present-day poets who are trying to study anew the rhythmic bases and resources of the language. But we need not repeat what was said of the Celtic group and of other influences in the original introduction to this volume. By the time Synge died, in 1909, Edwin Arlington Robinson had published two or three books of stringent poems; in 1909 Ezra Pound's Persona appeared in London, and three years later the establishment of Poetry in Chicago gave an organ to the poets who were separating from the old tradition. By introducing the imagists and such other independents as Carl Sandburg and D. H. Lawrence and Vachel Lindsay, by presenting foreign poets like Rabindranath Tagore and Charles Vildrac, besides many in translation, and by encouraging an experimental spirit and certain new austerities of technique, the magazine exerted a definite influence. To trace the origin and development of the new movement before 1900 was indeed a temptation; but the quest would have led too far, would have made the book not only unwieldy, but theoretic and controversial. It has seemed best to adhere to the limitations imposed in the introduction to the first edition, except that Mr. Yeats, |