It's
disgusting! An old man writing verse. Verse is for youth, after 30 the only
honorable thing to do is give it up.
"No matter what, though, I'm still writing poetry. And, without any exaggeration, I'm still, if not the best, at least the closest thing to what a poet should be. The more I read these Cambridge poets the more I'm convinced of this. These New England poets, apocalyptic crocodilians, the whole horde of them. They do not realize that poems are nothing without the poet. Why are Shelley, Chatterton, Byron, Rimbaud, to name but a few, so beautiful? I'll tell you why, they and their works are one the same, the poet and his poems are a whole. These New England poets aren't hip enough to realize that. They stand away from their poetry, as though it was something they were ashamed to be associated with. That's why they write for the New Yorker. Not only can they be poets but sophisticates, too. How can anyone truly be a poet who goes to the john with a clothespin on his nose? Fops, that's what they are, not poets. I dare one of them take rat poison like Chatterton did. They wouldn't dare. Aside from wanting to be buried in some quiet Episcopal graveyard, they want to endure-endure. And they do! How old is that Frost? It's disgusting! An old man writing verse. Verse is for youth, after 30 the only honorable thing to do is give it up. Look at what happened to Goethe-Wordsworth.
But Frost there's an
excuse for him. In his own words: "I'm just a [nut] from Vermont".
That's excusable because it's so, but when it's not so, then it's inexcusable,
and I refer to the young New England poets-damn lawyers all of them. Completely
bereft of sorrow-and that, dear Hans, is the essence of all great poetry,
sorrow. And I mean that one sorrow, that only sorrow, that one wondrous sorrow
which in the soul of the true poet, renders both joy and calm. I believe, Hans,
that the most joyous poems were written with a tremendous culture of sorrow,
for is not joy the true essence of sorrow?
God, if anyone else
said that, I'd say he was coming on pretty corny. But, nevertheless, I say,
without sorrow these poets are nothing. Sorrow. This noble sentiment will
forever be foreign to them if they persist in dilly-dallying among prisms. (A
favorite word of theirs, by the by). Shelley's life, Chatterton's life-those
lives were poems! These poets, their lives are writs. Ah, if I were dictator
I'd have poets throwing bombs!"
