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Number 52 December 2009 The Alarming Spread of Poetry A Little Free Speech About Free Verse by P G Wodehouse Editor’s note: Following Simon Brett’s masterful performance of A Crime in Rhyme at the Society’s meeting in July (see Wooster Sauce , September 2009), we sent our intrepid staff on a search for similar stuff among the works of one P G Wodehouse. Alas, nothing quite in the style of Simon’s narration was found, but we did unearth the following essay , which appeared in Vanity Fair in June 1916 (under the name Pelham Grenville) and, in slightly different form, in the Los Angeles Times on August 31, 1930. Herewith we offer the Vanity Fair version as a rather jolly Christmas present to our readers. Enjoy – and have a Happy New Year ! ecently I had occasion to visit, on business the I obeyed the child’s instructions, and, entering nature of which does not come within the scope the office, accosted the office-boy. He had long hair oRf this article, my old friend Dodd of the firm and was dictating something to the stenographer. I Winchley, Dodd and Co. It was a perfect day, and as caught the words “breath” and “death.” I was not pressed for time I thought it would be “Who is that you wish to see? Be candid and pleasant to stroll part of the way, smoking confide in me.” thoughtfully. Entering a tobacco-store, I addressed I said I wished to see Mr. Dodd. the youth behind the counter. He was a dreamy-eyed “Mr. Dodd? Why, that’s odd. There’s his room, young man, and as I entered he was scribbling but he’s not in it. He’s gone out. Not a doubt! He’ll something on his shirt cuff with a stub of pencil. I be back in half a minute.” could hear him muttering something about “light” And then I perceived with that clarity which and “bright.” comes from actual personal observation how “I want a mild cigar,” I said. universal the once sporadic disease of He bustled about among his poetry had become in our midst. boxes, all eagerness and efficiency. “A mild cigar? About what price? o the thinking man there are few Ah! here you are. You’ll find this things more disturbing than the nice. I hear each day somebody say reTalization that we are becoming a this brand’s the best by far. All other nation of minor poets. In the good old smokes are simply jokes compared with days poets were for the most part this cigar.” confined to garrets, which they left I thought little of the incident until I only for the purpose of being reached the office building where my ejected from the offices of the friend works. A child of tender years was magazines and papers to which standing in the elevator, gazing they attempted to sell their wares. heavenward in a rapt sort of way and Nobody ever thought of reading a chewing a fountain-pen. I addressed book of poems unless accompanied him. by a guarantee from the publisher that “Take me to Winchley, Dodd and the author had been dead at least a Co. They are on the second floor.” hundred years. Poetry, like wine, “Step right inside, and up we go. certain brands of cheese, public The elevator isn’t slow. In fifteen seconds, buildings and Hans Wagner, was rightly sir, or so, you’ll tap upon their door.” Are we all really poets at heart? considered to improve with age: and no Wooster Sauce – December 2009 connoisseur would have dreamed of filling himself Willie?” you replied, and the eager light died out of with raw, indigestible verse, warm from the maker’s. the boy’s face as he perceived the catch in what he Today all this is changed. Editors are paying real had taken for a good thing. You pressed your money for poetry; publishers are making a profit on advantage. “Think of having to spend your life books of verse; and many a young man who, had he making one line rhyme with another! Think of the been born earlier, would have sustained life on a bleak future, when you have used up ‘moon’ and crust of bread, is now sending for the manager to ‘June,’ ‘love’ and ‘dove,’ ‘May’ and ‘gay’! Think of find out how the restaurant dares try to sell a fellow the moment when you have ended the last line but champagne like this as genuine Pommery Brut. one of your poem with ‘window’ or ‘warmth’ and Naturally this is having a marked effect on the life of have to buckle to, trying to make the thing couple the community. Our children grow to adolescence up in accordance with the rules! What then, Willie?” with the feeling that they can become poets instead Next day a new hand had signed on in the of working. Many an embryo bill clerk has been fertilizer department. ruined by the heady knowledge that poems are paid But now all that has changed. Not only are for at the rate of a dollar a line. All over the country rhymes no longer necessary, but editors positively promising young plasterers and rising young prefer them left out. If Longfellow had been writing motormen are throwing up steady jobs in order to today he would have had to revise “The Village devote themselves to the new profession. On a sunny Blacksmith” if he wanted to pull in that dollar a afternoon down in Washington Square one’s line. No editor would print stuff like: progress is positively impeded by the swarms of young poets brought out by the warm weather. It is Under the spreading chestnut-tree a horrible sight to see those unfortunate youths, who The village smithy stands. ought to be sitting happily at desks writing “Dear The smith a brawny man is he Sir, Your favor of the tenth inst. Duly received and With large and sinewy hands. contents noted. In reply we beg to state . .” wandering about with their fingers in their hair and If Longfellow were living in these hyphenated, their features distorted with the agony of free and versy days, he would find himself composition, as they try to find rhymes to “cosmic” compelled to take his pen in hand and dictate as and “symbolism.” follows: And, as if matters were not bad enough already, along comes Mr. Edgar Lee Masters and invents vers In life I was the village smith. libre . It is too early yet to judge the full effects of I worked all day this man’s horrid discovery, but there is no doubt But that he has taken the lid off and unleashed forces I retained the delicacy of my complexion over which none can have any control. All those Because decent restrictions I worked in the shade of the chestnut-tree which used to check Instead of in the sun poets have vanished, Like Nicholas Blodgett, the expressman. and who shall say what I was large and strong will be the outcome? Because I went in for physical culture ntil Mr. Masters And deep breathing came on the scene And all those stunts. tUhere was just one I had the biggest biceps in Spoon River. thing which, like a salient fortress in the After publishing a few like that he would have midst of an enemy’s had to keep a dog to chase away the editors who advancing forces, acted cluttered up his door-step and pestered him for stuff. as a barrier to the He would have had to wear a false mustache if he youth of the country. The cause of it all: meant to walk anywhere near the magazine offices. When one’s son came Edgar Lee Masters (1868 –1950) And if he had seen Charles Hanson Towne coming to one and said, “Father, I shall not be able to fulfill he would have run like a rabbit. your dearest wish and start work in the fertilizer department. I have decided to become a poet,” ho can say where this thing will end? Vers libre although one could no longer frighten him from his is within the reach of all. A sleeping nation purpose by talking of garrets and starvation, there hWas wakened to the realization that there is money was still one weapon left. “What about the rhymes, to be made out of chopping its prose into bits. Page 2 8 Wooster Sauce – December 2009 Ninety million people are discovering that they have been giving away all their lives what they might have sold for good money. Only the other Letters to the Editor day I myself was stricken with the disease. I From Charles Gould happened to be writing to my landlord what is technically known as a “strong letter” about Regarding Wodehousean/Wodehousian, Shakespearean/ Shakesperian, and Spenserean/Spenserian: if the name ends the state of the roof, dwelling on its with the vowel e I don’t see any reason to change it to an i. imperfections and hinting at the probable H. W. Fowler, however, seems to like the i form in all cases: danger of allowing it to continue in its present ‘Shakesperian’ etc. ‘Wordsworthian’, obviously, but then state. I had not got half-way through it when I there’s ‘Coleridgean’ . and then we have ‘Miltonic’, perceived that I was letting good stuff go to ‘Petrarchan’, and ‘Shavian’ (not that Shaw ever wrote a waste. I tore up the letter and sent the sonnet in his whole puff).

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