[13] We know that there is much bad
poetry in the Georgian book, and less in _Wheels_. We know that there is
one poem in _Wheels_ beside the intense and sombre imagination of which
even the good poetry of the Georgian book pales for a moment. We think
we know more than this. What does it matter? Pick out the good things,
and let the rest go.
[Footnote 13: _Georgian Poetry_, 1918-1919. Edited by E.M. (The
Poetry Bookshop.)
_Wheels_. Fourth Cycle. (Oxford: B.H. Blackwell.)]
And yet, somehow, this question of modern English poetry has become
important for us, as important as the war, important in the same way as
the war. We can even analogise. _Georgian Poetry_ is like the Coalition
Government; _Wheels_ is like the Radical opposition. Out of the one
there issues an indefinable odour of complacent sanctity, an unctuous
redolence of _union sacree_; out of the other, some acidulation of
perversity. In the coalition poets we find the larger number of good
men, and the larger number of bad ones; in the opposition poets we find
no bad ones with the coalition badness, no good ones with the coalition
goodness, but in a single case a touch of the apocalyptic, intransigent,
passionate honesty that is the mark of the martyr of art or life.
Pages:
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199