~... TWENTIETH -I. CENTURY

THE ODYSSEY SUHVEYS OF AMERICAN WRITING General Editor: C. Hugh lIolman, University of North Carolina AMERICAN

COLONIAL AND FEDEHALIST AMERICAN WHrnNG (1607-183°) Edited by George F. Horner and Robert A. Bain University of No'rth Carolina WRITING THE ROMANTIC MOVEME:NT IN AMEl\ICAN WmUNG (l830 ­ 186S) Edited by Richard Harter Fogle Tul.ane University ~ 00 THE REALfSTIC MOVI~MENT IN AMEHlCAN WRITING (l865- 19 ) (' Edited by Bruce H. McElderry, Jr. University of S(Httlwrn Califo11lia

TWENTIKrIl CI.;NTUl\Y AM~:RICAN WnrnNG (lg00-lg6o's) By WILLIAM T. STAFFORD Edited by William T. Stalford PURDUE UNIVERSITY Purdue University

THE ODYSSEY PRESS . INC NEW YORK

--l~ CONTENTS

Introduction

New Directions

Chapter One. The New Poetry 9 Edwin Arli/lgtor~ Robinson 14 From Letter to Harry de Forest Smith 15 From Letter to L. N. Chase 17 Credo 18 Luke Havergal 19 Zola 20 Boston 20 Aaron St,uk 20 Richard Cory 21 Miniver Cheevy 21 Cassandra 22 Eros Turannos 24 Flmnmonde 25 The Man Against the Sky 28 Bewick Finzer 35 The Rat 36 New England 36 From Tristram. 37

Robert Frost 42 An Introduction to [Edwin Arlington Robinson's] King Jasper 43 Mowing 49 The Tuft uf Flowers 49

x;ii xiv / Contents Contents / xv Mending Wall 5U Edgar Lee Masters 143 The Mountain 52 From Spoon River Allthology Home Burial 55 The Hill 144 After Apple.Picking 58 Cassitls Hueffer 145 The Wood-Pile 59 Knowlt Hoheimer 145 Birches (jo Lydia Puckett 145 "Out,Out-" 62 Margaret Fuller Sh1Ck 146 Fire and Ice 62 Editor Whedon 146 Stopping by Woods 011 a Snowy Evening 63 Daisy Fraser 147 West-Running Brook 6.'3 Mrs. Kessler 147 A Soldier 66 Harry Wilmans 148 What Fifty Said 66 Godwin James 149 The Bear 66 Lucinda Matlock 149 Design 67 The Silken Tent 68 Carl Sandburg The Subverted Flower 68 150 From Notes for a Preface 15 1 Our Hold on the Planet 70 Chicago 152 The Secret Sits 70 Monotone 153 Forgive, 0 Lord 70 Nocturne in a Deserted Brickyard 153 Lines Written in Dejedioll on the Eve of Great Succe.ss 7 1 I Am the People, the Mob 153 The Figure a Poem Makes 72 Under a Hat Rim 154 Flux 154 Chapter Two. The New Fiction 75 Broken-face Gargoyles 155 Accomplished Facts 155 Theodore Dreiser 80 Flowers Tell Months 156 From Hey. Rllb-a-Dub-Dnbl 81 From The People, Yes 156 Public Letter to EmiJy Dickinson 158 Willa Cather 92 From a "Preface" 'lo The 13c:.~t Stories of Sarah Qrlle Jewett 93 Amy Lowell 159 The Sculptor's Funeral 94 Patterns 159

Sillclai-r Lewis 105 edna Sf. Vincent Millay 162 Nobel Prize Addrcss 106 Renascence 163 You Know How Womcn Are 11(j If I Should Learn, in Some Quite Casual Way 168 Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare 168 Chapter Three. Imagists and Regional Poets 133 Vachel Lindsay 137 Dedication and Preface of A /lallely Guide for Beggars 138 New Achievements A Net to Snare the Moolllight 139 HeaV(~l The Triumph of the Expatriates General William Booth Enters into 140 Chapter Four. 171 Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight 14 1 Gertrude Stein The Flower-Fed BuIraloes 14 176 2 From The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas 177 xvi / Contents Contents / xvii Sherwood Anderson 18 3 Of Modem Poetry 292 From Winesburg, Ohio Study of Two Pears 293 The Book of the Grotesque 184 The Ultimate Poem Is Abstract 294 Sophistication 186 The Triumph of Modem American Drama F. Scott Fitzgerald 192 Chapter Six. 295 From The Crack-Up 193 /Elmer Rice 3°0 Crazy Sunday 194 The Adding Machine 301 (.. Eugene O'Neill Ernest Hemingway 208 348 Desire Under the Elms 349 From The Green Hills of Africa 209 Big Two-Hearted River (Parts I-II) 216 L. Tennessee Williams 395 The Glass Menagerie 396 Chapter Five. The Triumph of 'Modern Poetry' 23 1 Ezra Pound 236 A Retrospect 237 Chapter Seven. Experimentation in Poetry 453 A Virginal 242 Hart Crane 45 8 The Jewel Stairs' Grievance 242 Ghaplinesque 459 The Beautiful Toilet 242 From The Bridge The Rest 243 Proem: To Brooklyn Bridge 459 A Pact 243 Van Winkle 461 From Hugh Selwyn Maubc:rley The River 462 E. P. Ode pour l'Election de Son Sepulchre 244 Envoi (1919) 246 Archibald M cu:Leish 466 Letter to T. S. Eliot-19Zl 247 Ars Poetica 467 You, Andrew Marvell 467 T. S. Eliot 249 Immortal Au tu mn 468 The Function of Criticism 250 "Not Marble nor the Gilded Monuments" 469 The Love SongofJ. Alfred Prufrock 258 Empire Builders 470 The Hippopotamus 262 Winter Is Another Country 472 The Waste Land 263 The Hollow Men 276 Robinson Jeffers 473 Ash-Wednesday 279 Shine, Perishing RepubliC 473 Boats in a Fog 474 Wallace Stevens 285 Joy 475 On Poetic Truth 285 Fire on the Hills 475 Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock 287 The Purse-Seine 475 Anecdote of the Jar 288 The Bloody Sire 477 A High-Toned Old Christian Woman 288 The Emperor of Ice-Cream 289 E. E. Cummings The Plot Against the Giant 289 477 Foreword to Is 5 478 Floral Decorations for Bananas 290 [in Just-] 479 The Idea of Order at Key West 291 xviii I Contents Contents I xix [Buffalo Bill's] 479 James Thu.rber 587 [when god lets my body be] 480 The Unicorn in the Garden 588 [i sing of Olaf glad and big] 480 [anyone lived in a pretty how town] 481 Wolcott Gibbs 589 [one's not half two. It's two are halves of one:] 482 The Factory and the Attic 589 [pity this busy monster, manunkind] 483 [what if a much of a which of a wind]' 483 Leo Rosten [Leonard Q. Ross] 593 o KOAopoLoAoNI MY KOAopoLoAoNI 593 New Consolidations Peter De Vries 598 Requiem for a Noun, Or Intruder in the Dusk 5g8 Chapter Eight. Representative Novelists 487

Thomas Wolfe 49 1 Chapter Ten. Representative Later Poets 603 From Letter to His Mother, May, 1923 492 From Look 11omeward, Angel Marianne Moore 606 The Return of the Far-Wanderer 494 Poetry 607 To a Steam Roller 608 John Dos Pa.ySOS 5°2 To a Snail 609 Preface to U.S.A. 503 The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing 60g From 1919 Newsreel XXXIV 505 William Carlos WiJliamy 610 The House of Morgan 506 Danse Russe 611 Newsreel XXXV 509 Tract 612 The Camera Eye (39) 510 The Red Wheelbarrow 614 This Is Just to Say 614 John Steinbeck 512 From The Grapes of Wrath 51 3 John Crowe Ransom 614 Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter 615 Chapter Nine. Representative Modem American Essays 533 Here Lies a Lady 616 H. L. M encken 536 Blue Girls 616 The Husbandman 537 Chapter Eleven. The Southern Achievement in Fiction 61 James Baldwin 540 7 Stranger ,in the Village 540 Robert Penn Warren 622 Blackberry Winter 623 Leslie Fiedler 55° Nol In Thunder 551 Katherine Anne Porter 640 Lionel Trilling 564 Introduction to Flowering Judas and Other Stories 641 Reality in America 564 Flowering Judas 642 E. B. White 577 William Fau.lkner 652 Walden 578 Faulkner's Nobel Prize Award Speech, Stockholm, Joseph Wood Kru.tch 583 December 10, 1950 653 G.B.S. Enters Heaven(?) 583 A Rose for Emily 654 ·xx / Contents

At Mid-Century

Chapter Twelve. Recent Poetry 665 Robert Lowell 666 Mr. Edwards and the Spider 666 After the Surprising Conversions 667 Words for Hart Crane 669 Karl Shapiro 669 Auto Wreck 669 Drug Store 670 Randnll Jarrell 67 1 Twentieth Century The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner 672 The Orienl Express 672 Richard Eberhart 673 American Writing The Groundhog 673 Richard Wilbur 674 Juggler 675 Museum Piece 676 Exeunt 676 Theodore Roethke 676 Dolor '677 ~ Night Crow 677 Old Florist 677

Chapter Thirteen. Recent Fiction 678 J, F. Powers 679 The Valiant Woman 679

Saul Bellow 687 A Father-to-De 687

John Updike 695 A&P 695

A Selected Bibliography 701

Index 707