 But we moderns are impatient and destructive. |
| Till now poets were privileged to insert a certain proportion of nonsense - very far in excess of one-half of one per cent - into their otherwise sober documents. |
| When critics are waiting to pounce upon poetic style on exactly the same grounds as if it were prose, the poets tremble. |
| And how can poetry stand up against its new conditions? Its position is perfectly precarious. |
| Now between the meanings of words and their sounds there is ordinarily no discoverable relation except one of accident; and it is therefore miraculous, to the mystic, when words which make sense can also make a uniform objective structure of accents and rhymes. |
| For no art and no religion is possible until we make allowances, until we manage to keep quiet the enfant terrible of logic that plays havoc with the other faculties. |
| The arts generally have had to recognize Modernism - how should poetry escape? |
| And yet what is Modernism? It is undefined. |
| It is a miracle of harmony, of the adaptation of the free inner life to the outward necessity of things. |
| Too much is demanded by the critic, attempted by the poet. |
| Or he can work it out as a metrical and formal exercise, but he will be disappointed in its content. The New Year's prospect fairly chills his daunting breast. |
| Their free verse was no form at all, yet it made history. |
| He can develop sense and style, in the manner of distinguished modern prose, in which event he may be sure that the result will not fall into any objective form. |
