Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1921/Introduction

What makes an American poetry is a question that has never been and can never be solved by criticism. It is time that we repudiate the concept of what is American that was held, we will say, about the middle of the last century before the great flood of emigration from Europe began or we must set up positively a new concept of that word. The idea of Americanism, certainly during and especially since the end of the World War, has been in solution. The idea of Americanism is, in face of much contrary emphasis, a matter of psychology rather than political. The suggestion of the difference here vaguely remarked is too complicated to be pursued, and is referred to merely to bring over into the domain of poetry some fundamental inquiries regarding the character of "American poetry."

I suppose that any art may be considered American which conforms in expression to the ideals of the American people. But who are the American people who create or preserve these ideals? It must be admitted that the descendents of the original founders of the Nation are at present in a numerical minority. Do their ideals prevail? Or have their ideals been modified by the majority who are the descendents of immigrants of the last two or three generations? The great political and social effort during the last few years has been to inoculate the great non-Saxon strain with the ideal of the founders of the Nation who are represented to-day by the minority population. After all this is the hue and cry of Americanism. A hue and cry losing its vigor against the persistent modification of American institutions by the new-comers and their ​descendents, It is not intellect that has brought this about; less has it been due to education; it has been due to character and character is the expression of habits and ideas which cannot be changed in the brief period of a few generations.

To get at the character of an American Poetry then, we must understand these forces which have been at work upon our national experiences. It is interesting in light of what I have said to quote this passage from a letter which I received from an interested reader of these anthologies. "In the 1920 Anthology," it runs, "you speak of we Americans as being without a 'taproot' in literature. I know we are young, yet it seems to me that if the real hundred per-cent American writers were encouraged the 'root' would respond by a greater depth of growth and in time we would have an American literature, and I am going to suggest that you in the 1921 Anthology select writers as nearly American as possible in name and in harmony with our country—make this issue American in every way—descendents of the New England and New York and Pennsylvania and Virginia settlers.

"I have all the books you have compiled and it seems to me there are more new names of people who are not Americans, than Americans, and I am so good an American that I want us to have the first place in our literature. I do not like the melting-pot process—we really have writers who have ability and though not perfect as to literary finish, they write of things as they hear and see them and because it is the land they love—not for effect. I hope you will feel I do not mean this in criticism but as a real deeply felt plea for our people, and our America and I hope you will select from more magazines and less of the writings of the few as in especially 1919 and 1920 books."

The sentiment expressed in this amounts to a conviction though strongly and surreptitiously held is being over-borne by the changing conceptions of the ​the light of psychological truth upon the literary ideals of Americanism. It is interesting to throw conflict that is waging around this ideal. Gustave Le Bon remarks in his latest book that "If it is difficult to understand the mentality of a people, this is because its literary, artistic and scientific productions, which reveal its intelligence, do not by any means interpret its character. Now, a man's behavior depends upon his character not upon his intellect, and there is no parallelism between these two regions of personality."

It is the superficial belief of some critics that "American" poetry has its ideal and embodiment in Walt Whitman. It has been impossible for them to distinguish the fact that Whitman was only a rebel in form and not in ideas and substance. His radicalism consisted in breaking up forms merely as a chemical process to hold and shape the new solutions of his ideas of American democracy. This process was in keeping with the evolutionary tradition of the Saxon peoples. Whitman was not then a revolutionist, as so many of his non-Saxon disciples of to-day believe. In our current art it is very easily determined by name those poets whose art express evolutionary principles of substance and ideas and those who express revolutionary social doctrines. The question of form scarcely matters; for though Masters, Amy Lowell, Vachel Lindsay, John Gould Fletcher, John Hall Wheelock, and H. D., to name a few of the best, are often radical in form, in substance they carry on the evolutionary principle of the Saxon traditions. Add Frost, Robinson and Aiken, to their names and you get the Saxon continuity of poetic spirit. How much or how little you may like their themes or their qualities of vision, these poets are constructive. Now, the revolutionists tumble out of the category of this Saxon nomenclature. Sandburg, Oppenheim, Untermeyer, Giovannitti, Rosenfeld, and the increasing number of Russian ​names that are invading the table of contents and title pages.

I come to no conclusion as to what is to-day, or what may be to-morrow, American poetry. It may or may not follow the crystallization of "an American language." These reflections, I hope, serve merely to call some attention to the fact that there is an influence more mystical than the average critic gives credit for being which is reshaping the foundation of our poetic ideals and visions. In the art of poetry as well as in our national temper, there is a psychologic conflict taking place which may be revealed in the words of Gustave Le Bon when he says that "in addition to the shifting elements of the individual character there are extremely stable ancestral elements established by the past. Strong enough to limit the oscillations of personality, they immediately establish national unity in times of crisis."

Arlington Heights
Massachusetts