Sword Blades and Poppy Seed | Page 2

ours. I prefer to call them poems in "unrhymed cadence", for that conveys their exact meaning to an English ear. They are built upon "organic rhythm", or the rhythm of the speaking voice with its necessity for breathing, rather than upon a strict metrical system. They differ from ordinary prose rhythms by being more curved, and containing more stress. The stress, and exceedingly marked curve, of any regular metre is easily perceived. These poems, built upon cadence, are more subtle, but the laws they follow are not less fixed. Merely chopping prose lines into lengths does not produce cadence, it is constructed upon mathematical and absolute laws of balance and time. In the preface to his "Poems", Henley speaks of "those unrhyming rhythms in which I had tried to quintessentialize, as (I believe) one scarce can do in rhyme." The desire to "quintessentialize", to head-up an emotion until it burns white-hot, seems to be an integral part of the modern temper, and certainly "unrhymed cadence" is unique in its power of expressing this.
Three of these poems are written in a form which, so far as I know, has never before been attempted in English. M. Paul Fort is its inventor, and the results it has yielded to him are most beautiful and satisfactory. Perhaps it is more suited to the French language than to English. But I found it the only medium in which these particular poems could be written. It is a fluid and changing form, now prose, now verse, and permitting a great variety of treatment.
But the reader will see that I have not entirely abandoned the more classic English metres. I cannot see why, because certain manners suit certain emotions and subjects, it should be considered imperative for an author to employ no others. Schools are for those who can confine themselves within them. Perhaps it is a weakness in me that I cannot.
In conclusion, I would say that these remarks are in answer to many questions asked me by people who have happened to read some of these poems in periodicals. They are not for the purpose of forestalling criticism, nor of courting it; and they deal, as I said in the beginning, solely with the question of technique. For the more important part of the book, the poems must speak for themselves.
Amy Lowell.?May 19, 1914.
Contents
Sword Blades and Poppy Seed
Sword Blades and Poppy Seed
Sword Blades
The Captured Goddess?The Precinct. Rochester?The Cyclists?Sunshine through a Cobwebbed Window?A London Thoroughfare. 2 A.M.?Astigmatism?The Coal Picker?Storm-Racked?Convalescence?Patience?Apology?A Petition?A Blockhead?Stupidity?Irony?Happiness?The Last Quarter of the Moon?A Tale of Starvation?The Foreigner?Absence?A Gift?The Bungler?Fool's Money Bags?Miscast I?Miscast II?Anticipation?Vintage?The Tree of Scarlet Berries?Obligation?The Taxi?The Giver of Stars?The Temple?Epitaph of a Young Poet Who Died Before Having Achieved Success In Answer to a Request
Poppy Seed
The Great Adventure of Max Breuck?Sancta Maria, Succurre Miseris?After Hearing a Waltz by Bartok?Clear, with Light, Variable Winds?The Basket?In a Castle?The Book of Hours of Sister Clotilde?The Exeter Road?The Shadow?The Forsaken?Late September?The Pike?The Blue Scarf?White and Green?Aubade?Music?A Lady?In a Garden?A Tulip Garden
Sword Blades and Poppy Seed
Sword Blades and Poppy Seed
A drifting, April, twilight sky,?A wind which blew the puddles dry,?And slapped the river into waves?That ran and hid among the staves?Of an old wharf. A watery light?Touched bleak the granite bridge, and white?Without the slightest tinge of gold,?The city shivered in the cold.?All day my thoughts had lain as dead,?Unborn and bursting in my head.?From time to time I wrote a word?Which lines and circles overscored.?My table seemed a graveyard, full?Of coffins waiting burial.?I seized these vile abortions, tore?Them into jagged bits, and swore?To be the dupe of hope no more.?Into the evening straight I went,?Starved of a day's accomplishment.?Unnoticing, I wandered where?The city gave a space for air,?And on the bridge's parapet?I leant, while pallidly there set?A dim, discouraged, worn-out sun.?Behind me, where the tramways run,?Blossomed bright lights, I turned to leave,?When someone plucked me by the sleeve.?"Your pardon, Sir, but I should be?Most grateful could you lend to me?A carfare, I have lost my purse."?The voice was clear, concise, and terse.?I turned and met the quiet gaze?Of strange eyes flashing through the haze.
The man was old and slightly bent,?Under his cloak some instrument?Disarranged its stately line,?He rested on his cane a fine?And nervous hand, an almandine?Smouldered with dull-red flames, sanguine?It burned in twisted gold, upon?His finger. Like some Spanish don,?Conferring favours even when?Asking an alms, he bowed again?And waited. But my pockets proved?Empty, in vain I poked and shoved,?No hidden penny lurking there?Greeted my search. "Sir, I declare?I have no money, pray forgive,?But let me take you where you live."?And so we plodded through the mire?Where street lamps cast a wavering fire.?I took no note of where we went,?His talk became the element?Wherein my being swam, content.?It flashed like rapiers in the night?Lit by uncertain candle-light,?When on some moon-forsaken sward?A quarrel dies upon