AMONG the thousands of letters which I received two years ago from people thanking me for my article “How to Drive the New Ford” were several containing the request that I “tell them how to distinguish a major poet from a minor poet.” It is for these people that I have prepared the following article, knowing that only through one’s ability to distinguish a major poet from a minor poet may one hope to improve one’s appreciation of, or contempt for, poetry itself.
TAKE the first ten poets that come into your head—the list might run something like this: Robert Frost, Arthur Guiterman, Edgar Lee Masters, Dorothy Parker, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Stephen Vincent Benét, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Lorraine Fay, Berton Braley, Edna St. Vincent Millay. Can you tell, quickly and easily, which are major and which minor? Or suppose you were a hostess and a poet were to arrive unexpectedly at your party—could you introduce him properly: “This is Mr. Lutbeck, the major poet,” or “This is Mr. Schenk, the minor poet”? More likely you would have to say merely: “This is Mr. Masefield, the poet”—an embarrassing situation for both poet and hostess alike.
All poetry falls into two classes: serious verse and light verse. Serious verse is verse written by a major poet; light verse is verse written by a minor poet. To distinguish the one from the other, one must have a sensitive ear and a lively imagination. Broadly speaking, a major poet may be told from a minor poet in two ways: (1) by the character of the verse, (2) by the character of the poet. (Note: It is not always advisable to go into the character of the poet.)
As to the verse itself, let me state a few elementary rules. Any poem starting with “And when” is a serious poem written by a major poet. To illustrate—here are the first two lines of a serious poem easily distinguished by the “And when”:
And when, in earth’s forgotten moment, I
Unbound the cord to which the soul was bound …
Any poem, on the other hand, ending with “And how” comes under the head of light verse, written by a minor poet. Following are the last two lines of a “light” poem, instantly identifiable by the terminal phrase:
Placing his lips against her brow
He kissed her eyelids shut. And how.
All poems of the latter type are what I call “light by degrees”—that is, they bear evidences of having once been serious, but the last line has been altered. The above couplet, for example, was unquestionably part of a serious poem which the poet wrote in 1916 while at Dartmouth, and originally ended:
Placing his lips against her brow
He kissed her eyelids shut enow.
It took fourteen years of knocking around the world before he saw how the last line could be revised to make the poem suitable for publication.
WHILE the subject matter of a poem does not always enable the reader to classify it, he can often pick up a strong clue. Suppose, for instance, you were to run across a poem beginning:
When I went down to the corner grocer
He asked would I like a bottle of Welch’s grape juice
And I said, “No, Sir.”
You will know that it is a minor poem because it deals with a trade-marked product. If the poem continues in this vein:
“Then how would you like a package of Jello,
A can of Del Monte peaches, some Grape Nuts,
And a box of Rinso—
Or don’t you thin’ so?”
you may be reasonably sure not only that the verse is “light” verse but that the poet has established some good contacts and is getting along nicely.
And now we come to the use of the word “rue” as a noun. All poems containing the word “rue” as a noun are serious. This word, rhyming as it does with “you,” “true,” “parvenu,” “emu,” “cock-a-doodle-doo,” and thousands of other words, and occupying as it does a distinguished place among nouns whose meaning is just a shade unclear to most people—this word, I say, is the sort without which a major poet could not struggle along. It is the hallmark of serious verse. No minor poet dares use it, because his very minority carries with it the obligation to be a little more explicit. There are times when he would like to use “rue,” as, for instance, when he is composing a poem in the A. E. Housman manner:
When drums were heard in Pelham,
The soldier’s eyes were blue,
But I came back through Scarsdale,
And oh the …
Here the poet would like to get in the word “rue” because it has the right sound, but he doesn’t dare.
SO much for the character of the verse. Here are a few general rules about the poets themselves. All poets who, when reading from their own works, experience a choked feeling, are major. For that matter, all poets who read from their own works are major, whether they choke or not. All women poets, dead or alive, who smoke cigars are major. All poets who have sold a sonnet for $125 to a magazine with a paid circulation of four hundred thousand are major. A sonnet is composed of fourteen lines; thus the payment in this case is eight dollars and ninety-three cents a line, which constitutes a poet’s majority. (It also indicates that the editor has probably been swept off his feet.)
All poets whose work appears in “The Conning Tower” of the World are minor, because the World is printed on uncoated stock—which is offensive to major poets. All poets named Edna St. Vincent Millay are major.
All poets who submit their manuscripts through an agent are major. These manuscripts are instantly recognized as serious verse. They come enclosed in a manila folder accompanied by a letter from the agent: “Dear Mr.——: Here is a new group of Miss McGroin’s poems, called ‘Seven Poems.’ We think they are the most important she has done yet, and hope you will like them as much as we do.” Such letters make it a comparatively simple matter for an editor to distinguish between serious and light verse, because of the word “important.”
Incidentally, letters from poets who submit their work directly to a publication without the help of an agent are less indicative but are longer. Usually they are intimate, breezy affairs, that begin by referring to some previously rejected poem that the editor has forgotten about. They begin: “Dear Mr. ——: Thanks so much for your friendly note. I have read over ‘Invulnerable’ and I think I see your point, although in line 8 the word ‘hernia’ is, I insist, the only word to quite express the mood. At any rate, here are two new offerings. ‘Thrush-Bound’ and ‘The Hill,’ both of which are rather timely. I suppose you know that Vivien and I have rented the most amusing wee house near the outskirts of Sharon—it used to be a well-house and the well still takes up most of the living room. We are as poor as church mice but Vivien says, etc., etc.”
A poet who, in a roomful of people, is noticeably keeping at a little distance and “seeing into” things is a major poet. This poet commonly writes in unrhymed six-foot and seven-foot verse, beginning something like this:
When, once, finding myself alone in a gathering of people,
I stood, a little apart, and through the endless confusion of voices …
This is a major poem and you needn’t give it a second thought.
THERE are many more ways of telling a major poet from a minor poet, but I think I have covered the principal ones. The truth is, it is fairly easy to tell the two types apart; it is only when one sets about trying to decide whether what they write is any good or not that the thing really becomes complicated.
1930