Page Ten
PE RS P E CTI V E S
THE NEW POETRY OF FAITH
..Continued from Page 1
- and in the very last stanza he re-
iterates that warning, placing the re-
sponsibility for its execution with youth.
His company is gone, his enemy
Like Egypt or Cathay, museum-ban-
ished;
Yet have we known blood-relative and
heir,
Whose carrion skull, marked Rome,
Berlin, shouts
The death wish in his ,tribal mono-
tone,
Whose sterile corpse, immaculate with
lust.
Dance the tintinnabulary miles
As loveless as a hurricane or plague.
The year is crucial; choice is ours.
Direction spreads its arching strands
that are
(Dark-in-light, Light-in-dark) so
strange, so taut,
So venomously threaded with defeat,
Mr. Brinnin has shown us our heritage
and our problems. His parting words
leave us at the "starting point," the
present, and direct our eyes to the
Suture.
That gay myopia of dreams persists
Through motors, breadlines, and en-
during steel;
The capturable Now, the starting
point, awaits
Who must decide, and in unger's
logic, act.
N 1939, one of the contestants so far
eclipsed the others that the judges
felt obliged to award him all three prizes.
His name is John Ciardi ,and his book,
"Homeward to America," has since been
published. His parents came to America
shortly before he was born, and he grew
up under the influence of their ideas.
As a result his ideas cannot be called
traditionally American and his poetry is
written from a different point of view
than most. Mr. Ciardi does not have an
unquestioning faith in America, although
he feels that
America offers hope to those who re-
turn to it from foreign oppression.
Instead, he is alert, and he recognizes
certain faults which have grown out of
the lazy attitude of the citizens. He
sees a certain element of youth who are
working against the democratic princi-
ples, and he shouts a warning of them.
1 warn you, Father Smith, your daugh-
ter knows,.
And your son. Sit calm, spread out
the evening News
Between you and the room, growl at
the Reds
For having split your peace, go heav-
ily t bed -
The clock lets down tremendous mid-
night now,
Rebellion hurls new focus through
the slow
Down-lipped atmosphere and finds its
star
Spotlit and sure - and shines into
your parlor.
Because you have grown old and have
forgotten
That there are plans beyond the cal-
endar
Of daily interviews, you could not
guess
What telegraphic lightnings were be-
gotten
Out of your drowsy loins. This for
reminder:
Your house has come alive: it breathes
downstairs.,
le, like Mr. Brinnin, looks at Lincoln,
and im the incident of his death finds
another warning, this time from history.
Bat something of his faith in the
strength of America to combat its ene-
mies is shown in the last line.
Abe Lincon we have not forgotten,
It is not the end
Yet of saveries to be smashed. Booth
Stalks the passages of the opera
house and waits,
But his lead is mouldered now, while
in you
Are both spirit and substance, Abe
Lincoln.
Swirling through the Mississippi and
the lakes and the many rivers,
Arterial passion of a continent's heart
remembers -
Not yet has Booth's lead done murder,
Abe Lincoln, nor ever.
Mr. Ciardi says, "Take care of this
American heritage" in many different
ways, often showing us the reasons for
our weakness. Always, the reasons are
indolence and carelessness. Here he asks
that we house-clean our meaningless
customs and traditions, because they
have become dangerous.
Out of immemorial accident
the precedent is established.
From the father's father's chance
or immediate design, the line is thrown
that binds the word with customary
gestures.
In the embroidery of ceremony
the ancient accident made ritual
becomes the dogma of our innocence
and we are lost ...
O turn,
abruptly as the heart permits
to the enlarging lens of truth.
Behold the texture of yesterday's coat:
see how the threads are split:
in the next wind that blows we shall
be naked.
Unless with sacrifice
of some dear sentimental prejudice
the ancient hand-me-downs are stored
away,
and a new cloth cut.
And again, he says:
Now arise. Nothing is done
that time and many tears may not
reverse. The blind
may purify their sight, the maimed
walk whole,
wonders be written yet into the books
of how the day grew marvellous with
the sun.
Now rise.
Break dune and pyramid and the lech-
erous weight
of fear made flesh and pressing you
to earth.
He sees in youth both the enemy of de-
mocracy (as has been shown above)
and the hope for its future. Democracy,
he says, moves in a cycle. It grows old,
until youth, active and alert, overthrows
the old elements and puts new life into
its veins.
Or in your prime light-footed and
bronzed athlete,
Man, tiger-graceful, lion-heart, yes
world's champion
And a thing for the envy of Apollo,
the complete
Once-around cycle is a sadder thing.
As it grows late
Look how your paunch softens. Your
decline is a thug
With cauliflower ears, spread nose,
and punch-drunk.
The machine that was re-animate
Hercules is a broken pug,
A beggar of dimes, a sleeper in parks
- done, sunk.
Despair now. For the fallen from vigor
there shall be no rising.
Pick your butts from the gutter, wan-
der, and one morning or another
be found dead and none to mourn.
Nothing
Is more certain than the challenge of
the new comer
And the crowning again; For you:
wander away and be lost
In your improvident old age. Once
King-pin-cock-of-the-walk, you are
done now. Last
Long enough only to hear that the
sequence
Is unbroken: the crown passes on:
Again and again: man, athlete: yes
Hercules when young: champion.
W HILE MR. CIARDI looks at America
with a practical and analytical
mind, pointing out its difficulties and
its dangers, Mr. Rosten, whose work was
judged best in 1938, accepts, in a more
romantic vein, the American tradition.
He represents a group who have the
strongest feeling toward democracy, the
greatest faith in its doctrine. His poem
takes the form of a pilgrimage through
America in the course of whi he dis-
covers many stimuli for his ardent faith.
. . my eyes
explore (epening upon the west at
dawno) my country:
folded in hills, boldly this land leans
upward
into the sky cutting passing clouds
through their centers.
Westward is the graveyard of heros:
turn the stones
and footprints tell of lost brave ad-
venturers to the sea.
Many women and men have died in
the level plains, left
where the streams widened covering
thseir graves.
Children have also died.
Our rested earth is ancient: only the
pride I bear it
brings the immediate history to my
eyes and this history
moves me strangely. My fathers of
many mixed bloods
have crossed these hills, hammered the
spike of crossties,
barrelled the black oil as it flowed
in huge upward rivers.
I shall become part of this procession
myself.
I have worked on a road gang with
Poles, Irish, Jews.
The intersecting concrete will be our
crossed nerves
imbedding one country's flesh:
and my mark will be there too!
In beautiful Oregon he sees security from
the threatening clouds of European op-
pression and finds that America's heri-
tage far outweighs any other.
(O these European-drifted clouds are
pure
In Oregon's air: soft as no hand or
woman's hair touching the metrical
shoreline!) -. "
(See the stars are crowns prouder set
than any Eastern kingdom: you step
on heirlooms more precious than any
metal.)
He extends an invitation to all who
are suffering in other countries to par-
take of the freedom America offers -
Rise up in yourself, murder the
assassin voice, derail the dream
of return, close the returning waters,
-make this land your home!
Now you are free! Burn candles
into dawn! Bind the brush by day
sen dat night the flame's signal
lighting horizon city to city.
- and he relates to them his own first
experience of that freedom.
all citizens: town hall tonight ..
O but this was holy ground
where early freemen stood!
all in favor raise hands
Equality made them fearless,
gave them iron for heart and tongug.
But I was still afraid!
(Did they mean me?
Was I free too?)
'Yes, free to fight for freedom;
make gunstocks out of lumber,
drill your own barrel for liberty.'
(Cotton Mather, barefoot, defiant)
'Without shoes,' he said, 'I came
over the valley to get your vote.
Did we get this far to crawl
again? How much of God and man
is in you that you still stand high!'
I ran forward:
Tell me where to go! I'll die!
He finds also along the way of his
pilgrimage reasons for 'strong words
sometimes -
Young men of this generation:
Do not hide the adult indignation
our parents lacked! Pound new letters
in ycur village bronze, visable to avi-
aar: Drop no war propaganda here!
- and sometimes for alarm,
(addressing himself to Walt Whitman)
O poet, O voice of splendid people,
how constant will your vision remain?
How undiluted your perfect dream?
(What unforseen tyranny gathers on
horizon,
evades your serene unsuspecting
eyes...)
Mr. Rosten shows us his great belief
in America by this incident. Upon being
jailed for vagrancy
In the space for religion [ wrote:
American. And the jailor told me,
'That ain't no religion,' and I smiled.
I shall be found among ancient sta-
tistics:
my signature next to Cortez, selaced,
preserved in City Hall.
He assures us that a faith in the Amer-
ican method is still very much alive
in its youth, and that there is yet a
difference over which youth can lead uts
to still greater freedom.
(There is distance to go yet, new
equalities
yet to be gained. They fought for
greater freedom
than we share now, gave us a greater
prophesy .. )
But prophesy lives, parents live in
their sons;
our myth is the sacred ancestry of
fighters
who live again: 1 have seen them new-
ly alive!
I, returning from long pilgrimage, re-
port them living!
And so Mr| Rosten has returned from
his pilgrimage. Did he know before he
set out that this was to be a pilgrimage?
A pilgrimage is more than a trip - it
has a destination hallowed in heart of
,the traveller. At any rate, Mr. Rosten
found his destination, a secure trust
in America and all that its way of life
implies.
Here we have the testimony of three
poets, representatives of American youth
of the last three years. However varied
may be the method of their presenta-
tion, their works, when viewed together,
point definitely in a single direction.
The new poetry is a poetry of faith.
And the youth of today is a youth that
cherishes its belief in democracy and is
eager to prove the mettle of its enthus-
iasm for America.