The Congo and Other Poems | Page 4

where every line may be two-thirds spoken and one-third sung, the entire rendering, musical and elocutionary, depending upon the improvising power and sure instinct of the performer.
"I respectfully submit these poems as experiments in which I endeavor to carry this vaudeville form back towards the old Greek precedent of the half-chanted lyric. In this case the one-third of music must be added by the instinct of the reader. He must be Iophon. And he can easily be Iophon if he brings to bear upon the piece what might be called the Higher Vaudeville imagination. . . .
"Big general contrasts between the main sections should be the rule of the first attempts at improvising. It is the hope of the writer that after two or three readings each line will suggest?its own separate touch of melody to the reader who has become accustomed to the cadences. Let him read what he likes read, and sing what he likes sung."
It was during this same visit in Chicago, at `Poetry's' banquet on the evening of March first, 1914, that Mr. Yeats honored Mr. Lindsay by addressing his after-dinner talk primarily to him as "a fellow craftsman", and by saying of `General Booth':
"This poem is stripped bare of ornament; it has an earnest simplicity, a strange beauty, and you know Bacon said, `There is no excellent beauty without strangeness.'"
This recognition from the distinguished Irish poet tempts me to hint at the cosmopolitan aspects of such racily local art as Mr. Lindsay's. The subject is too large for a merely introductory word,?but the reader may be invited to reflect upon it. If Mr. Lindsay's poetry should cross the ocean, it would not be the first time?that our most indigenous art has reacted upon the art of older nations. Besides Poe -- who, though indigenous in ways too subtle for brief analysis, yet passed all frontiers in his swift, sad flight -- the two American artists of widest influence, Whitman and Whistler, have been intensely American in temperament and in the special spiritual quality of their art.
If Whistler was the first great artist to accept the modern message in Oriental art, if Whitman was the first great modern poet to discard the limitations of conventional form: if both were more free, more individual, than their contemporaries, this was?the expression of their Americanism, which may perhaps be defined as a spiritual independence and love of adventure inherited from the pioneers. Foreign artists are usually the first to recognize this new tang; one detects the influence of the great dead poet and dead painter in all modern art which looks forward instead of back;?and their countrymen, our own contemporary poets and painters, often express indirectly, through French influences,?a reaction which they are reluctant to confess directly.
A lighter phase of this foreign enthusiasm for the American tang is confessed by Signor Marinetti, the Italian "futurist",?when in his article on `Futurism and the Theatre', in `The Mask', he urges the revolutionary value of "American eccentrics",?citing the fundamental primitive quality in their vaudeville art. This may be another statement of Mr. Lindsay's plea for a closer relation between the poet and his audience, for a return to the healthier open-air conditions, and immediate personal contacts, in the art of the Greeks and of primitive nations. Such conditions and contacts may still be found, if the world only knew it, in the wonderful song-dances of the Hopis and others of our aboriginal tribes. They may be found, also, in a measure, in the quick response between artist and audience in modern vaudeville. They are destined to a wider and higher influence; in fact, the development of that influence, the return to primitive sympathies between artist and audience, which may make possible once more the assertion of primitive creative power, is recognized as the immediate movement in modern art. It is a movement strong enough to persist in spite of extravagances and absurdities; strong enough, it may be hoped, to fulfil its purpose and revitalize the world.
It is because Mr. Lindsay's poetry seems to be definitely in that movement that it is, I think, important.
Harriet Monroe.
Table of Contents
Introduction. By Harriet Monroe
First Section
Poems intended to be read aloud, or chanted.
The Congo?The Santa Fe Trail?The Firemen's Ball?The Master of the Dance?The Mysterious Cat?A Dirge for a Righteous Kitten?Yankee Doodle?The Black Hawk War of the Artists?The Jingo and the Minstrel?I Heard Immanuel Singing
Second Section
Incense
An Argument?A Rhyme about an Electrical Advertising Sign?In Memory of a Child?Galahad, Knight Who Perished?The Leaden-eyed?An Indian Summer Day on the Prairie?The Hearth Eternal?The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit?By the Spring, at Sunset?I Went down into the Desert?Love and Law?The Perfect Marriage?Darling Daughter of Babylon?The Amaranth?The Alchemist's Petition?Two Easter Stanzas?The Traveller-heart?The North Star Whispers to the Blacksmith's Son
Third Section
A Miscellany called "the Christmas Tree"
This Section is a